A brief history of Sportable thus far, and a glimpse into the future

It’s been almost six years since Kevin, Ryan and I first started Sportable. One day we went to a nearby library to brainstorm ideas for projects (because that’s what college kids do, they brainstorm projects) and went on a tirade about ESPN’s “stranglehold on East Coast storylines.” So naturally, we started a sports blog. We dreamed of becoming the first sports blog to garner millions of monthly unique visitors (before Deadspin was the gargantuan it is today), and we planned to… well, revolutionize sports media.

We promised we wouldn’t regurgitate news and game recaps (which we did anyway), we promised we would cover “everything imaginable concerning sports” (which we didn’t), and we said that we wanted to become the “first stop for sports news throughout the day.” (which clashes with the first point) That being said, we did alright considering we were three college kids who a. had no idea how to start/run a blog, and b. had no real experience writing about sports.

Over the years we were somehow linked to by SI’s Extra Mustard, Deadspin, ESPN’s True Hoop, ESPN’s Hashmarks, AOL’s Fanhouse, Dime Magazine, featured in a local TV show in Washington DC, quoted in MIT’s Technology Review, had the pleasure of interviewing Gus Johnson, covered the Holiday Bowl and Poinsettia Bowl, covered the IRB Sevens, went to Canada and Florida to preview EA games, attended the ESPY’s, and we even had two of our writers on the short-lived TV show “Fanarchy” on Versus Network. We also recreated Michael Phelps’ diet and stuffed our faces for more than 100,000 people on YouTube. And that’s just a sample of what we managed to accomplish. Not bad for a handful of dumbass college kids.

After all that, we peaked in 2008 and the site dropped off. We wrote less, focused on school and life, and the site grew dormant.

Fast forward four years, countless “site revivals,” a laughable number of half-ass attempts to bring the site back, and we’re going for it again. What’s changed? Why now?

Well, why not?

So we’re back, and with a new focus. We’re not going to don Anonymous masks and incite a revolution in sports media. What we ARE going to do is collect a group of quality writers to help us put together some great sports features. Whether it’s character assassinations of prominent athletes or an in-depth psychological profile of Jose Canseco’s daily Twitter meltdowns (none of us are licensed psychologists), we’re looking to put together content that we enjoy writing as much as you enjoy reading. Terrible cliche aside, look out for new features in the coming weeks as well as a weekly podcast. Who know, maybe we’ll forget about you guys again, lose interest, and Sportable will die forever. Or maybe we’ll actually do it right this time.

Stay tuned.