In 2007 I started blogging at The Sport News, in the "blogging community"...It was a mix of people who wanted to be sports journalists, that thought The Sporting News would notice them and give them a job...Then there was the rest of us, who just liked writing and talking sports and talking shit...And it was from us regular guys where we who were still subscribers the magazine, that saw the magazine was stealing our ideas...
Eventually there was friction in the "blogging community" lead by a bunch political correct twats...A couple of guys I followed and that followed me started up their own site, YouGabSports.com...A friend who was now writing at both places told me I should jump over and check it out...Since I was spreading my social media seed and digital footprint, I joined...This was a collection of friends with a similar mindset, writing about sports and sometimes other shit as the fans we were...Just regular guys, writing as if they were taking over beers...We were all scattered all over the place blogging and playing fantasy sports together...Syracuse, Vermont, Illinois, South Carolina, California, Michigan, Texas, a few in Massachusetts, Thunder Bay, Cincy, I was in Cleveland and a Bostonian in Georgia...That last guy, in Georgia....That was Sully...We all communicated through email or just the blogs...Sully hated that...He wanted to talk to people...He was old school...So he got peoples phone numbers and he'd talk your ear off...Ranting about this and that and shooting the shit about our families...It gave a personal touch to whatever this thing was...
Shortly after joining they asked to exclusively feature my weekly Monday Moaning post...They saw the numbers it always picked up and I was their style...I was in...I posted it at YouGabSports and Sporting News I would post the title, with only the link to YouGabSports...That really pissed off the growing number of blogging enemies we were building up...
(side note)...We had some big time blogging wars between us and other Sporting News people who didn't like that we would swear in posts or that I often littered posts with a sexy, barely dressed women...One war so big, that a female blogger at The Sporting News said I had no balls...Now, on that site, I couldn't prove her wrong because their guidelines...It would have been blocked and I probably would have been deleted...So I created a blogspot page called Cock Burger and called her out and posted pictures from a few angles of my balls...Also of me jerking-off and a great shot of my jizz shooting...On Sporting News her name was the title and a link was the body of the post....That's the shit that gets mother fuckers cancelled these days...
Sully loved that one...He thrived off of confrontations in the blogosphere...clearly, so did I and that helped our friendship grow...We had each others backs but we had everyone on our site's backs...We felt like a online, Irish, Mob...There were times, late at night I'd be hammering out a fuck you blog about something and Sully was on the phone with me, fueling my fire, putting a line in my ear that I could plug into this next masterpiece...
Eventually I was offered to buy into ownership...Now this thing was profitable at all...It was a hobby...But a few of us felt like we could build it into a site that could make money, even if it was just a little pocket change...
Sully and I talked a couple times a week on the phone, kicking around ideas or sometimes just bullshitting about sports or life...He loved getting a conference call going with one of the other guys...Now there's three of us on the phone, but most of the time was it Sully talking...Always full of opinions and ball busting cracks...The fun calls would be when he was a having a few drinks...Normally I was too as I had just gotten home from a night at work and was winding down, just to get wound up by him and post a blog...There was one time with Sully, myself and B-Dub on a call and mid-sentence, Sully passed out...We were cracking up...Sully and I had built this great friendship and we had never spoken face to face or shook hands...The fucking Internet...
As time went on with YouGabSports things continued to change...Some guys left...A couple of the original guys left, some because there life was changing, they didn't have the time or desire to do this anymore...Some because of butting heads with me and Sully...A couple other guys moved into ownership, splitting costs...
But tensions grew...Like I said, we thrived off of confrontation...I was writing every day, some days 2-4 posts a day to keep fresh content up and keep getting traffic...Sully wasn't writing at all and things weren't getting done like trying to get advertising that could, if nothing else cover the costs we were putting into this thing...He said he wanted to make money off of it been fought against numerous ad vehicles...
Then my life had some major changes and I wasn't the only one on the site...I wasn't writing anymore...I did my Monday Moaning post and that was it...Sully was getting pissed at me about that, yet still wasn't writing.......
And then Fantasy Hockey season came along...He was the Commissioner for most of our site's fantasy leagues...He set the rules....He didn't realize he had no limit on goalies a team could carry...One guy noticed and was loaded up with elite goalies...So, of course a couple of us snatched up an extra goalie or two try to compete...And Sully lost his mind as he sat there with two (1 top tier, 1 average) goalies on his roster...It was stupid...He screwed up and then blew a gasket about it which just fueled a few of the guys (myself included) to throw it back in his face...It was just so fucking stupid...
Shortly after that myself and one of the other owners left...6-7 years I put into that thing and I said fuck it...Other guys left the fantasy leagues and stopped posting there....All of 2017 I didn't write...Like I said, my life had changed...Sully and I didn't talk anymore...I blocked his number...He unfriended me on Facebook...I blocked him on twitter...That relationship was gone...
Then 2020 comes along with all of it's fucked up bullshit...In June, I started thinking about Sully...Wondering how he was...Feeling bad that this friendship had ended...I sent him a message...
He replied, saying he felt the same way and let's talk soon, but he was on his way out to an appointment...The next day we texted, trying to figure out a time to talk...I called him later that day...We caught up on things...How families were doing, all the crazy shit going on, Trump being an asshole...Oh, and he had Stage 4, really bad, inoperable cancer...He had been dealing with it for a awhile now...
I'm not a Karma guy...I'm not the most religious person...I don't know why, out of nowhere I started thinking about Sully and felt like I should reach out to him...But there we were talking on the phone just like we used to...He's talking about what's new with his wife and daughter, and bitching about how the Bruins are getting screwed by this round robin shit...and I'm telling him about the kids, and the pain in the ass of having my dementia riddled mother-in-law living with us in COVID times...
We talked on the phone a few more times...Mostly about Hockey or Football or family...He wanted me to get into a Fantasy Football league he was in...It was just like old times, except we didn't talk about blogging or our blogging enemies...Those days were over and neither of us cared about that shit anymore...He was hoping to get into a trial treatment program...He said, "why not? What's the worst thing it can do? Kill me...Cancer is already doing that."
I planned on calling him this weekend...It had been a couple weeks since we talked...With the kids back at school (at home) and dementia grandma, I lose track of the days sometimes...
Sully died earlier this week....Adding to the list of why 2020 sucks.
Farewell my friend
6 comments:
You know, I started writing something, but somehow I knew you would be far better at it than I. I'm glad I didn't because yours did the man justice. There were some stories in there that I didn't know and I'm still laughing my fucking ass off.
To think that we're going to miss the bitching about Atlanta snow this winter, or the multiple SEC Championship game rants. To hear his thoughts about politics while I'm at the VFW National Convention in Kansas City a couple of hours away from a visit by President Trump.
The coolest for me was when I was in Canton at the Football Hall of Fame and I'm on a conference call with both of you while sitting in the AFL exhibit.
What a crowd - I miss them all. Jeff, 3rd Stone, the Bandit, Andrew, Kyle, Mo, all of them - all who contributed. It was fun times - I laughed, and I learned. Of course it's life and things change but there are days I'd love to go back and yap with them all again.
RIP Sully, you are missed. Maybe in some old school way, I can do something for Tuesday - one final Tantrum that might make Sully laugh?
Thanks friend...I wasn't sure if I should keep all in here that I did...But the good, the bad and the ugly are the truth and that's what made You Gab what it was, we spoke the truth even the ugly...That's always what Sully wanted...I miss many parts of those days...But the people are what I miss most.
I never really made the switch from Sporting News to YouGab (I think I did write there a little bit but I ended up with my own blog and kind of stuck to that). That being said, I do remember Sully and he'll be missed for sure. Thanks for sharing and for the update, and yes...2020 does really, really suck.
I was saddened to hear this news which Jeff shared with me. While Sully and I didn't part ways on the best of terms, I appreciated the fact that he was a straight shooter with little guile in his ways.
I had the pleasure (and it was a pleasure) of meeting him at ATL airport back in about 2015. He loved all things Boston. My family took our first real vacation in 2017 and it was to Boston. I would've liked to have conveyed what a great time we had there and what a great place it was to visit.
We had Camelot on TSN up until about 2008, then they wanted to be like ESPN and that killed it. They could've been Bleacher Report.
@Ark, Thanks for dropping in. Things ended poorly between Sully and a number of people, and I know I lost friends being in lockstep with him so much for so long. I'm glad he and I reconnected and made peace with each other, wish I would have done it sooner.
TSN really blew it. It was truly a great thing and they pissed it away. Sometimes I think if they would have left it alone and shown it the appreciation it deserved, there would still a bunch of us there.
Merry Christmas Beezer. I understand it's a tough thing to remain loyal to people who helped you early on if you substantially disagree with them later. Where does that loyalty end?
I thought you might appreciate this song.... imagine your wife (I presume) or someone else getting you in the mood!
Ark
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMXi3N7K7cc
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