by Rupert and Stan, Ghosts of Wayne Fontes
Ladies and Gents, welcome to yet another edition of the always-entertaining Blog Wiser Hot Seat. Today’s guest is the man, the myth, the legend: Eric Horowitz of Shakedown Sports fame. As you may or may not know, Eric is the kid brother to the Beastie Boy Ad Rock and is making his own waves as an up and coming blogger/sportswriter (Just kidding about the Beastie Boys part). If you haven’t checked him out, get in there before he blows up, Eric was recently featured on CNNSI.com and is on the fast track to getting a real paid gig out of this. In the meantime… that’s enough screwing around. It’s time for the hard-hitting tear jerk stuff from here on out.
Ghosts: Congratulations on getting published on Extra Mustard this week with recent Week 1 NFL article. How did that come about and are you going to be contributing to SI.com on a regular basis from now on? Also, did your parents send the link to all of your relatives?
Eric: First let me say it’s great to be here. This seat is everything I dreamed it would be. I think they best way to answer this question is just to tell my whole life story as it pertains to blogging.
Two years ago, I had a sports talk show on my college radio station with Mini-Me from the WBRS Sports Blog. (Pradamaster from Bullets forever and the Blog Show was also part of the radio station. Brandeis University: The new Sportsblogger U!!!). Anyway, radio station members were supposed to do three hours of bitch work per month (stacking cds, cleaning the station, etc.), but people in the sports department never did it. Well, that year the head of the station decided she was going to make the sports people do it. To get out of doing the work, Mini-Me started the WBRS sports blog – instead of stacking cds, he was “promoting WBRS and its sports personalities on the internet.” The blog started as a bullshit way to get out of work, but it grew fast and became a lot of fun. I wrote for it from time to time, and that was my first real experience as a blogger.
Soon after that I started a blog of my own that was basically just about funny stuff that happened at college. (I had actually wanted to start a sports blog, but I think I was intimidated by the vastness and quality of the sports blogosphere and wasn’t sure if I would be able to come up with good original material everyday. So I chickened out and wrote about college instead).
Eventually an editor from SI.com on campus emailed me out of the blue and asked if I wanted to write the same kind of stuff for SI.com. It was basically a sports blogger’s wet dream. I got extremely lucky. The right person saw my stuff at the right time. It’s like Yogi Berra always says, “Sportsblogging is 50% talent, 50% hard work, and 50% luck.” I got really lucky.
This summer, after about a year of writing for On Campus, I asked about the NFL picks column. Fortunately, I got lucky, again. Extra Mustard had space for a picks column and I was able to convince them to give me a chance.
Ghosts: How do you feel about Rick Reilly?
Eric: That’s a great question, but I think it’s best if I leave it alone. I don’t want to become the next Jason Whitlock.
Ghosts: As a fellow Carny, what do you think the odds are that Extra Mustard just buys the whole EC Kit & Caboodle and we become full time writers? (Sorry, I just threw up milk through my nose from laughing so hard).
Eric: I’d say 22-1, with an over-under of 4 years, 6 months, and 22 days.
Ghosts: Everybody has had at least one moment in their sports career, where the stars were aligned and you really knew what the “being in the zone” was all about. Whether it be a Rec league men’s basketball game, a little league game, on the golf course, at a bowling alley, etc. Please describe that one shining moment.
Eric: My senior year, I was the quarterback of our IM flag football team and the quarterfinals and semi-finals were both on a Sunday. We won the quarterfinal game 33—6, and after giving up a opening drive touchdown in the semi-finals, we scored 39 straight points to win 39-6. I was just on fire both games – they couldn’t cover our guys and I probably threw 8 or 9 touchdown passes. That was my one shining moment, but the story isn’t complete without the ensuing downfall. After the game, somebody from the school newspaper called me and wanted to interview me as the “athlete of the week”. (Apparently somebody decided it would be a good idea if they did an intramural athlete). Anyway, about an hour later the sports editor calls me back and says there was a mistake. They didn’t think they were going to be able to cover the championship because it was the day before the deadline, but it turns out they are going to cover it. In the nicest way possible he basically tells me that I’ll only be athlete of the week if my team wins. So, of course we go out the next day, the whole team plays like sh*t, we lose, and the newspaper picks a guy on the other team and then writes a story meticulously detailing all my interceptions – which by the way, were all on 4th down or bounced of receivers hands. (That’s right, I just provided the hot seat with a personal link). As a joke, my dad makes sure to casually mention the article about the game every few weeks.
Ghosts: Between ShakedownSports, Epic Carnival, emails and now SI.com. Where the Hell do you find all the time? Is this becoming a career and if so…we are jealous.
Eric: My laptop is basically attached to my hands at all times. It’s starting to become a problem.
I’d like this to become a career, but you never know what’s going to happen. I’ve been very lucky so far, but blogging/freelance sportswriting might not be the best career if I ever want to take part in the joys of home ownership or sending kids to college. The good news is right now I’m young enough that I have one part-time gig with SI.com and call it a career.
Ghosts: How long have you been blogging?
Eric: About 18 months.
Ghosts: What is the single best moment in your life as a sports fan? Could be an actual live game, getting autograph, going to a specific ballpark, etc. yup, we know that is a tough call.
Eric: The summer after my sophomore year of college – after three years of emailing every TV and radio station in the DC-Baltimore area – I managed to get an internship with a radio station in Baltimore. I had no idea what I was going to do – I though I might just sit at a desk for 8 hours a day – but I ended up going to Orioles games and doing pre and post-game interviews on the field and in the clubhouse. My best moment was the first time I got to go into the Camden Yards clubhouse and hang out on the field during batting practice. It was absolutely amazing. It was just an incredible feeling to stand on a field with major league players (and for once not have 6 security guards chasing after you), or see them hanging out before a game. The single best moment of that day happened when I was standing in the hallway near the dressing room about two hours before the game—a point in time at which most players were fully dressed. All of the sudden Sidney Ponson comes barreling down the hallway wearing flip flops, gym shorts, and a t-shirt, and he’s eating corn on the cob and yelling to random people in his unintelligible Aruban accent. It has to have been one of the five funniest moments in the history of baseball.
Ghosts: Do you ever get the sense that blogging and the mainstream media will ever just mesh into one or will there always be that shared resentment of one another, so to speak on both ends. Essentially, will bloggers ever be given the credentials and due respect as somebody who writes for a newspaper?
Eric: I think they will definitely mesh into one. For the longest time most newspapers or websites have had reporters and columnists, and I think in the near future bloggers will be just as much a part of everything as the other two. It’s already happening with Dan Steinberg, Henry Abbott, and Matt Mosley, and newspapers around the country are continuously adding blogs to their websites. I think eventually the term blogger will just mean “journalist” the way reporter or columnist means “journalist.”
Ghosts: If you were given the chance to hang out with just one athlete for the day who would it be and why? Keep in mind, this would be on a strictly plutonic level, no gay stuff and totally non-sexual if you pick a female.
Eric: Gilbert Arenas. Can you think of any way you would not have a good time if you spent an entire day with Gilbert Arenas. The best part is that Gilbert is so genuine, after the day you would feel like you really knew him—like you had a connection. You wouldn’t just be the guy he spent the day with – you would be his friend. (I hope that doesn’t count as gay stuff?)
Ghosts: Do you have a fantasy football team? And if so…who are the studs that are going to carry you to a championship? Sleepers?
Eric: Santonio Holmes, Brandon Jacobs (when he’s healthy), Jerrico Cotchery, Kellen Winslow, and Lee Evans.
Ghosts: Nice call on Santonio. I am totally on that train. Who is going to win the World Series?
Eric: Anaheim
Ghosts: Who is going to win the Super Bowl?
Eric: Please not the Patriots… Please not the Patriots…. Please not the Patriots…. Please not the Patriots….
Ghosts: Since joining Epic, we’ve enjoyed meeting a lot of cool people who have interesting blogs we’ve picked up on. Has your experience been similar? And if so, who are some of the people you’ve gotten to know or the blogs that you picked up on?
Eric: It’s always fun to meet like-minded people on the internet. I don’t want to leave anybody out, but just to name a few blogs I enjoy reading – 100% Injury Rate, Deuce of Davenport, Doberman on the Diamond, Winning the Turnover Battle, Our Book of Scrap, and of course, the Ghosts of Wayne Fontes.
Ghosts: (Fist pump) Thanks for the lip service. Obviously, writing for a major conglomerate like SI.com is quite an achievement. Feel free to pass on this if you want, but are there any nervous feelings or fear of being overwhelmed, as per usual when starting most new jobs or challenges?
Eric: Yeah, there are definitely some nervous feelings. The thing that worries me the most with the picks column is that I’ll make a joke about something obscure that I think is really funny, and 90% of the readers won’t get it because they’ll have no idea what I’m talking about.
The other thing to be concerned about is offending somebody. Last year I wrote an NCAA tournament preview for SI On Campus, and I made a silly joke about BYU and bigamy that I didn’t think was at all offensive (even Bill Simmons and D.J. Gallo made basically the same joke on espn.com). Anyway, SI got a few angry emails and had to print a retraction and an apology. The lesson is, you’ve always got to be thinking about who’s reading. Overall though, you get used to that fact that it’s SI and after a few weeks it doesn’t feel that different from writing on your blog.
Ghosts: Are the Yankees and Red Sox good or bad for baseball?
Eric: They’re good for baseball if you’re a Red sox or Yankee fan… or if you have no soul. They’re bad for baseball if you root for one of the other 28 teams.
Ghosts: Who wins Saturday – Michigan or Notre Dame?
Eric: The American public. Because once this game is over we’ll only be subjected to over the top Michigan and Notre Dame coverage two more times this year—when Notre Dame plays USC and when Michigan plays Ohio State.
Ghosts: If there was ever a movie about your story, your blog and your rise in the blogoshpere…who would play your character as the lead?
Eric: Steven Segal. There are two reasons for this. First, if people saw the movie and thought that’s what I was really like, it would drastically raise my street cred. Second, if Steven Segal ever played a sports blogger it would without a doubt be the funniest movie ever made. If Segal is unavailable then I would have to say Ron Livingston as Peter from “Office Space.”
Many thanks guys. Hopefully I reached my goal of being one the three longest hot seat interviews of all time.
Ghosts: Absolutely, the pleasure’s all on this side of the table, trust me… That’s just a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.
by Eric Horowitz, ShakedownSports
