Welcome to Assigned

A (mostly) sports writing project where you help decide my writing topics

I’ve been writing on the internet full-time for a decade now. What I write has been a real hodgepodge; I argued that football should change the rules so that punts cost one point, compared Steffi Graf’s performance in the 1988 French Open Final to perfect games in MLB, dug through archives to find the worst prize package on The Price Is Right, revisited Grambling’s 1976 midseason trip to play a college football game in Japan and, most recently, considered the ramifications of the Venom symbiote fusing with a horse.

The common thread across all my work is that it starts from whatever pops into my brain and goes from there. I can count on one hand the number of pieces I’ve been assigned by an editor, which makes for something of a double-edged sword: while I’ve enjoyed a ton of creative freedom, I never developed a real beat or specialty. 

Congratulations! You, the audience, get to be my assigning editor on this new project, which I’ve fittingly decided to call Assigned. 

Here’s how that will work:

1. I’ll pitch a few ideas for a recurring column. Most of them will have a strong sports element, but there will probably be some that don’t. Each idea is one that I have at least ten (and in many cases a lot more) ideas for specific stories I’d want to tackle within that format.

2. If you’re a paying subscriber to Assigned, you’ll have a two-week window to vote for the idea you like best. If you’re not a paying subscriber, you won’t have a vote but all of the content will be free to read. 

3. Once voting concludes, I’ll start working on the column that is assigned to me (by you). I plan to publish a story once every two weeks.

4. Whenever I feel like an idea has run its course, I will announce that we’re wrapping that one up, starting a new round of ideas, voting, and so forth. We’ll repeat the process, and everyone will have a very good time.

Joining me on Assigned is Martin Rickman, formerly of Uproxx, Sports Illustrated, SB Nation, and a podcast he did with me about The Voyage of the Mimi, the 1984 educational show with a young Ben Affleck learning about oceanography and American Sign Language and so forth. Martin will help me think through concepts for columns, edit my work, and otherwise act as a helpful sounding board as this project unfolds.

These are, in no particular order, the three ideas paid subscribers will choose from for Phase 1 of Assigned:

1. What’s In A Name: A series that examines the stadiums, trophies, bowl games, and other non-human things we have given names to in sports over the years. I’ll cover the history of those names and the people behind the words etched into concrete or marble.

2. The Alternative Sports Almanac: I’ll pick a season and present several stories, players, statistics, and oddities that might not be the first thing you remember from that year. (Or the second or third.)

3. Pointless Advice: An advice column where I answer reader questions about incredibly low-stakes topics like this.

If you’re a paying subscriber, you can vote on the topic you’d like me to cover on this post. Voting will close two weeks from today, and the first story will run shortly thereafter. 

I’m very excited to start this project, and I appreciate you joining me on the ride!