On the surface, Scott Sandulli may seem like most other sports journalism boys at Arizona State’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
He loves sports. He loves watching them, talking about them, arguing about them and playing them. Complete with his trademark East Coast demeanor, one’s first introduction to Sandulli will probably include an expletive-laced rant about the New York Mets.
This same Scott who can string together colorful language when his favorite team inevitably fails him once again is the same Scott who values his morality above most else in life.
“I think it’s just your set of laws and how you live your life, what matters to you and what those values mean as to how you go about your daily things,” Sandulil said.
“Like some morals that are very important to me are loyalty [and] humility.”
Raised Jewish with a Catholic dad, Sandulli is no stranger to religion. In his childhood, he had two different belief systems that helped him determine what is moral and what is immoral.
Sandulil internalized what he learned during his religious upbringing, and now uses his beliefs to shape his outlook on life.
While religion has given Sandulli a strong sense of right and wrong, it’s also given him a space to find security within himself. To him, there’s something comforting about having a higher power to believe in.
Security is vital for Sandulli who’s spent most of his life managing his insecurities. He describes himself as an “easy target” of average stature who wears glasses and comes across as somewhat nerdy.
His insecurities led him to make friends with the wrong crowd. Despite spending the effort to make himself likable by playing the class clown role he still struggled to find true friendship through elementary and middle school.
“I was a bit of a punching bag in terms of, you know, I was the first kid everyone made fun of because I wasn’t an athlete,” Sandulli said.
“I wasn’t jacked, I wasn’t anything crazy, and so how that kind of helped me form my morals was I always got kind of dunked on a bunch growing up, and it hurt.”
After being deceived time and time again by the people in his inner circle, his perspective changed. He started to expect the worst from people. He began believing that people only cared about themselves and would always put their own interests above anyone else’s, including his.
Because of his bad luck with friends, Sandulli struggled with anxiety and depression for most of his youth. It didn’t help that his dad, a man he didn’t see much because he was always traveling, was hard on him at times. Sandulli’s father tried to instill traditional masculine values into Sandulli.
Sandulli was taught not to show emotion and when things got tough, to “saddle up and be a man.” His suppressed emotions haunted him. He had scary thoughts of hurting himself. At times, he wished not to be alive.
Although his friends helped keep the dark thoughts away, they always loomed in some form. It wasn’t until the COVID pandemic forced his family to spend more time around each other that the elder Sandulli realized how much his son was struggling.
“It’s hard to make somebody understand what an anxious person thinks when they don’t have anxiety themselves,” Sandulli said.
“These situations and scenarios are constantly coming up in your head, and they’re hard to fight off. I live in that world, and my dad doesn’t, and so it took him a little while to understand this is how my mind goes.”
Sandulli’s fight with mental health persists, but with the support of his parents and his brother, along with a group of friends that he believes truly cares about him, he continues pushing forward, taking it day by day.
Because of what Sandulli has experienced, his religious beliefs provide him with the security he lacked for most of his adolescence. He wants other people to find their security in their own way.
Because of this, he doesn’t force beliefs on anybody in fact, he encourages people to believe whatever makes them the best version of themselves.
“We’re all different people, so we all form our own beliefs in different ways,” Sandulli said.
“I mean, some people will just inherit what their parents give them. Others will go on kind of a spiritual journey for themselves.
“[Religion] may not be for everybody, but it brings me a sense of comfort. My belief in God, my trust in God, and a little bit of a sense of relief … it just brings me comfort and security knowing that someone’s always watching over you.”
