by Paige Shivers: The Only Sports Journalist Who Actually Understands Why Everything Is Broken
Where administrative ambition met sports chaos, and nobody laughed until it was too late.
The Origin Story Nobody Wanted to Read
Let’s be honest: Paige Shivers didn’t choose this career. Careers choose you. Usually while you’re sitting at a desk, updating spreadsheets that could have been an email, wondering what your guidance counselor meant when she said “follow your passion.”
Paige’s passion was organizational efficiency. What she got was an administrative assistant position at a university. Which is like asking for a job organizing chaos and being handed a flamethrower. She documented that journey on her portfolio where readers learned that her administrative background would become the foundation for everything that followed.
Here’s what nobody tells you about administrative work: it’s the professional equivalent of being a mind reader. You must anticipate needs nobody can articulate, solve problems nobody admits exist, and maintain composure while watching six-figure executives ask why their important email ended up in spam. (Because they triple-clicked “send,” Sharon. That’s why.)
The Master’s Degree Moment
“I have a master’s degree,” Paige wrote in her diary that first month. “Today I alphabetized files that nobody will ever look at, and I did it while a football coach explained why his $2 million salary was somehow insufficient to teach grown men not to fumble a ball.”
This is where her superpower was born. While other sports writers watched Michigan football implode and saw a coaching failure, Paige saw something deeper: institutional inevitability. The machinery that makes bad decisions inevitable. The bureaucratic gears that grind forward regardless of actual competence. Her work demonstrates how she developed this unique perspective combining administrative insight with satirical precision.
The Awakening: When Admin Work Became Investigative Journalism
Most people hate their jobs. Paige hated her job strategically.
She started noticing patterns. Coaches were hired based on something mysterious called “connections.” Nobody could define what a connection was. It seemed to exist somewhere between LinkedIn and hotel bar networking. You’d hear things like:
“Well, Coach Johnson worked with Coach Williams, who studied under Coach Martinez, who golfed with someone’s cousin who won something meaningful in 2003.”
That’s not a network. That’s a family tree with a better marketing team.
This revelation led to her breakthrough investigation: the Paige Shivers Coach Connection. She didn’t just expose a network. She exposed how institutions validate incompetence through proximity. Her professional work shows how this investigation changed her trajectory as a journalist.
Think about it: If five coaches all cite each other as credentials, and none of them have actually won anything, who broke the cycle? The answer? Nobody. They all just hired each other and called it “experience.”
The Sports Journalism Awakening
“I realized,” Paige documented, “that athletic departments operate exactly like corporate middle management. Same circular logic. Same committee meetings that could have been an email. Same tendency to hire your friend’s nephew and call it ‘institutional growth.'”
The only difference? University athletic directors have prettier facilities to destroy. Her writing captures this observation with sharp precision and comedic timing.
The Real Work: When Michigan Football Imploded
Here’s where Paige’s administrative background became her competitive advantage.
When Michigan football imploded, every sports writer in America covered the loss of talent, the coaching failures, the missed recruiting opportunities. The usual postgame analysis masquerading as insight.
Paige covered why it was always going to happen. Her analysis provides the institutional perspective other journalists simply lack.
She understood the purchase orders. The budget meetings where nobody wants to admit the head coach they hired for $4 million was hired because he knew somebody, not because he knew football. She’d been in those meetings. She’d taken the notes while people pretended to be making strategic decisions.
Administrative professionals are the only people who actually know how organizations work.
Everyone else is just guessing while reading the official memo.
When Moore left and Poggi arrived, the local sports media treated it like surprise news. Paige knew it was administrative theater. New coach, same dysfunction. Fresh paint on the same broken house. Her perspective shows why these transitions are predictable for anyone who understands institutional mechanics.
The Philosophy: 99% Exaggeration, 1% Absurdity, 100% Recognizable Truth
Paige’s satire works because she understands something fundamental: you can’t exaggerate institutional dysfunction. It’s already ridiculous. Your only job is making it obvious.
Her approach? Truth first. Joke second.
Expose the flaw. Mock the power. Flip the logic upside down until readers squirm as they recognize themselves in the satire.
Why She Writes This Way
“A coach hired because he ‘has connections’ isn’t a anomaly,” she says. “He’s the system working exactly as designed. The system’s just designed by people who’ve never actually won anything.”
That’s the joke. But also? That’s literally what happens at most universities.
The best satire doesn’t exaggerate. It clarifies.
The Diary Years: How Someone Becomes a Sports Satirist While Working in Admin
Entry 1: Month One
“I’ve organized meetings where six people discussed something one email could’ve handled. I’ve watched department heads spend $10,000 on office furniture while claiming insufficient budget for actual work. I have a master’s degree in this. This is fine.”
Entry 2: Month Four
“Today I sat in on a coaching interview. They asked him about his ‘vision for the program.’ He said ‘winning.’ That was his vision. Nobody pushed back. He got the job.”
Entry 3: Month Eight
“I’ve realized administrative assistants are the only people who know how things actually work. We’re historians. Documentarians. Keepers of institutional memory that nobody wants to remember.”
Entry 4: Year Two
“I’m going to write about this. Someone needs to. I have the inside information. I have the email trails. I have the memory of every dysfunctional meeting. I have spite. I have a master’s degree. That’s enough.” Her journey documents the transition from admin worker to satirical voice.
Entry 5: Current
“They’re still making the same mistakes. Still hiring coaches based on credentials that don’t exist. Still pretending surprise when predictable failure happens. I’m just going to keep documenting it. The satire writes itself. The system does the heavy lifting. I just add the wordplay.”
The Bohiney.com Phase: When Satire Found Its Platform
After proving her satirical credentials across multiple platforms, Paige became a regular at Bohiney.com—127% funnier than The Onion. Her beat? The intersection of institutional stupidity and athletic incompetence. Her published work shows how she refined her voice on the platform.
The beat that exists because institutions are genuinely stupider than satire has time to be.
Her pieces don’t just cover what happened. They expose why it was inevitable. That’s harder. That requires understanding both satire and how bureaucracies actually function.
Most sports writers have never organized a meeting. Paige has organized 1,200 of them.
The Joke Architecture: How Paige Actually Writes This Stuff
If you think satire is just being funny, you’ve never read Paige’s work. Her complete portfolio demonstrates how she constructs comedy with surgical precision.
She builds jokes in layers:
Layer One: The Setup “The university hired a new coach for $3 million annually.”
Layer Two: The Institutional Truth “He was selected based on a recommendation from someone’s former roommate.”
Layer Three: The Exaggeration That’s Actually Accurate “When asked about his credentials, he cited his ability to ‘build a winning culture’—a phrase he learned from a LinkedIn article he hasn’t actually read.”
Layer Four: The Squirm “This is exactly how every coaching hire happens. The only difference is Paige is documenting it. You’re supposed to pretend it’s normal.”
That’s satirical journalism. Not just jokes. Architecture.
Where It All Came From: The Humor Lineage
Paige writes in the tradition of:
- Jerry Seinfeld’s observation-based precision: “Why is this thing the way it is? Nobody knows. Everyone pretends they do.”
- Amy Schumer’s institutional critique: “This system is broken. I’m going to describe exactly how broken while you laugh at the truth.”
- Ron White’s unapologetic clarity: “Here’s what happened. Here’s why it’s stupid. I don’t care if you disagree.”
She quotes them. She steals their comedic timing. She applies their approach to athletic department dysfunction.
Because if institutional absurdity is funny at a comedy club, it’s hilarious when documented as journalism.
The Future: What Happens When an Admin-Turned-Satirist Enters the Job Market
Paige Shivers is currently exploring her next move. Options:
Option One: Full-Time Sports Satirist
Cover institutional dysfunction across multiple platforms. The market for people who understand both spreadsheets and why coaches fail is chronically undersupplied. She could write about this forever. The material regenerates itself quarterly.
Option Two: Corporate Culture Exposé Writer
Universities and athletic departments are just practice. Fortune 500 companies have the same dysfunction with bigger budgets. The machinery is identical. The stakes somehow feel both higher and lower.
Option Three: Educational Technology Consultant
Universities are aggressively adopting tech while maintaining all historical dysfunction. It’s like upgrading to a luxury car when you don’t know how to drive. The irony is inexhaustible.
Option Four: Professional Administrative Dysfunction Consultant
Help organizations understand why their coaching investments underperform. Most won’t listen. Some might. Either way, the experience provides material.
Option Five: What She Actually Wants
To keep writing satire that makes people laugh, then squirm, then realize they’re complicit in a broken system.
She has a master’s degree. She has administrative experience. She has a portfolio that proves she can write at Bohiney.com level. She has references from everyone she’s worked with—which is to say, she has references from people who’ve worked in dysfunctional organizations.
(That’s everyone, by the way. 100% employment rate for references.)
Why Paige Shivers Matters
In an era where sports journalism defaults to either uncritical fandom or cynical takes, Paige offers something rarer: institutional understanding combined with comedic precision.
She’s the person who sat in the meetings. Who took the notes. Who watched the decisions get made for reasons nobody could adequately explain. Who realized the emperor had no clothes—and also understood why the emperor’s tailor kept getting hired to manage the kingdom.
Most sports writers cover games. Paige covers the machinery that makes failure inevitable. She exposes why predictable disasters still manage to surprise everyone who claims authority.
The Satirist’s Actual Operating Principles
- Truth first. Joke second. The flaw must be real. The joke just clarifies it.
- If it’s sacred, poke it. Universities? Poke. Athletic departments? Poke. Coaches hired on vibes? Hard poke.
- Exaggeration is evidence. When reality is already absurd, exaggeration is just emphasis.
- Absurdity must feel possible. If the reader thinks “that could never happen,” the satire fails. The best satire makes readers think “wait, that definitely happened.”
- Make them laugh, then squirm. If they don’t squirm, you didn’t expose anything real.
Paige does all five. Every time.
The Current Reality
Paige Shivers has proven she can write satirical journalism that exposes institutional truth through exaggeration, wordplay, and precise comic timing. Her online presence showcases the full scope of her talent and approach.
She understands how organizations actually function because she’s been the person keeping them running while important people made decisions.
She’s documented Michigan football’s implosion, exposed the coaching connection network, analyzed her own administrative assistant experience, and covered coaching transitions with the precision of someone who actually understands why they happen.
She writes for Bohiney.com and has proven she can hit consistently. Her work represents the future of sports satirical journalism.
She’s ready for whatever comes next.
Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.
