Hi, I’m Jack, and I’m a recovering sports executive.
If that sounds a bit like a joke from a movie, you’re probably onto something. After two decades in sports, I had something of an awakening to all of the anxiety I’d put myself through over the years and decided to move on. I’m a full-time filmmaker now… not that making movies isn’t anxiety-provoking in and of itself. But we’ll talk about that more in future posts (or, if you really want to, head over to my film site and see more about my career making movies).
Despite it all, I do still enjoy watching sports, doing in-depth analysis (in my mind, at least), and sharing stories from that other life, which is why I’ve started this here blog. (“Beyond the Scoreboard” – is that a good name? Sounded cool when I thought of it.) This is my third attempt at a sports writing side hustle. When I made the switch from scouting to marketing (check out my bio if you haven’t already), I worked as a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report for a while. I really enjoyed that – great group of people to work with, and enough creative freedom to feel like us writers had ownership in the stories we had to tell. I got out of that when I was trying to buy an Arena Football League team, and didn’t revisit it for over a decade.
A couple of years ago, I staged a sports writing comeback with another site. That… I did not enjoy. The site was too focused on sports as content – everything we did had to satisfy the “algorithm,” which was held over our heads like some bastardized version of the Wizard of Oz. For example, when the Washington Commanders went through an ownership change, I offered to lend my experience working through an ownership change of my own (not to mention that I personally worked for one of the minority owners for a long time). I was told no. It seemed that the “algorithm” wouldn’t like it if I covered my beat on the Cleveland Browns while also writing Commanders content. Also – god forbid – we were not allowed to tell stories from the first person. In the end, what the site really wanted was cookie-cutter content designed to push themselves up the search rankings. It is a reasonable business model but a rather boring and disheartening experience for a storyteller like me.
That brings us to this blog. You’ll see it’s ad-supported. Yeah, I like money and would love it if you clicked on some of the ads from time to time. But here’s my promise to you: I’m going to tell the story of whatever I’m writing about in a way that I see fit. If – without changing anything – I can do that in a way that makes the “algorithm” happy, then fine. No point in pissing off something that would make me money. But otherwise, like in my filmmaking career, I just want to share a good story in what I hope is a pleasing and entertaining way.
“Algorithm” be damned.
Happy reading.
Jack Gorman
February 19, 2025
Mentor, Ohio
