In December 2019, LSU alum and well-known sports reporter Carley McCord was on a plane to cover a college football playoff game. She never made it, she was one of 5 people who died when the plane crashed. Earlier this week her mother released a book about her life.
“This was a process of grief, and this was my way of coping with grief,” the mother of Carley McCord, Karen McCord said.
Karen McCord’s journey to publishing her book was a tough but healing process.
“I did this, dug into her life, did a hundred interviews, over a hundred interviews. And wrote and wrote and wrote, and today I’m getting the final product,” Karen McCord said.
On Tuesday, February 25, “Only Rainbows the Carley McCord Story” was released. Karen and her family and friends celebrated the book’s release in Tiger Stadium. When I asked the family what this book meant to them, they said “everything”.
“It’s a story that we really wanted to tell. It’s a story we needed to get out there. It kind of means everything, to be honest,” Carson McCord brother of Carley said.
Carley was only 30-years-old when she died. She was praised as being a great sports reporter. She freelanced for several news stations and was an in-game host for the New Orleans Saints and Pelicans.
Her family wants the book to inspire the next generation of female sports reporters.
“She was all about women in sports that was her goal, to make it to where a woman could be just as prevalent in the booth and on the sidelines as a man, ” Tracy McCord father of Carley said.
Carley’s brother, Carson McCord continued. “Well, I think we would love for this story to get out and really inspire another generation of female sports reporters, or any other reporting in journalism for that matter,” he said.
Not only does Carley now have a book in her honor, but she also has a clothing line and scholarship in her name at her alma mater Northwestern State University.
So, what’s next for Carley’s legacy?
“Putting her on the national stage,” Karen McCord said. “She was this close to getting a national contract, in fact, she was ready to sign on with one of the big networks right before she passed away. And so this is my of putting her on the national stage. “
