Welcome to Read Rodge!

After a long journey, it's time for me to start writing stuff again. Here's where I'm gonna write it.

To explain why I’m starting a Substack, let me tell you about the two things I can’t stop doing. 

The first is watching sports. Some people are interested in particular sports. Not me. I’m pansportsual. If there are sports on, I’m probably watching them. I am literally years behind on television and movies and video games, forcing me to nod my head and fake-smile through conversations about what other people watched while I was dual-screening the NBA playoffs and NCAA volleyball championships. (I still haven’t seen Succession. I’m sure it’s a great show! I’ve seen all the memes and I know what happens in the show but I haven’t seen it though. Sorry!) I am eternally grateful that they don’t send you a year-end ESPN+ Wrapped at the end of the year.

At The Ringer, I wrote a weekly NFL recap column, made videos predicting NCAA Tournament upsets, and hosted a podcast about the Olympics. Then I left that job so I could go on a 62-game college football road trip. That’s four different topics I’m obsessed with. And the Olympics is really like 40-50 topics wrapped up in one topic. 

I find myself asking the same questions whether I’m watching football for the 5,000th time or sprint kayaking for the first time. How does this thing work? Really, that’s how it works??? What skills make someone great at this? How do athletes have to live their lives to pull that off? Why do people love this thing in spite of all the reasons they shouldn’t? Basically everything I write will revolve around these questions. 

Generally, it’s best for a journalist’s interests to be focused. The old reporting paradigm involves getting assigned a beat, becoming an expert in that topic, and sticking to it, ensuring readers they’re getting comprehension and depth. The internet era has, funnily enough, semi-replicated that through algorithms that prioritize repetition of the same content, making it tough for creators and writers to branch out. 

Whoops! I can’t focus on anything! It’s how I’m able to watch 16 football games in a day and pick out the most interesting storylines to write about. But it’s not necessarily the best way to observe the world as a member of the media.

Thankfully, I’ve found that people are willing to follow me even though I can’t stick to one topic. It brings me such great joy when people tell me they followed me because of, like, a tweet I sent about the Jets being bad at drafting quarterbacks, but then got excited about Olympic racewalking because I told them it would be cool. Honestly: I appreciate these fans more than anything.

The other thing I can’t stop doing is writing. 

After I left my job people kept asking me what I was going to do next, and were generally surprised that I didn’t really know. What about me gives the impression that I have plans for…. anything? Honestly, it’s been fun. I’ve been fooling around on Youtube, I’m writing a book, and I’m reporting out some features and stories. It’s generally stuff I’ve never done before, which makes the work exciting.

But ask anybody I’ve ever worked with: I have a near-compulsive need to squirt the sports thoughts in my head onto digital paper. I will bother my editors on their day off to ask whether the site could use an article about the ridiculous thing that just happened in the game they weren’t watching.

Pretty much every day, one fully fleshed-out concept for an article formulates in my brain. Right now, they’re going nowhere. They’re just clogging up my brain. I really need to get them out of here! I’m freelancing, but I’m really bad at it, because getting a publication to publish your work apparently involves coordinating with other people by sending and reading emails. Sending and reading emails are my two worst skills, by far.

So I’m here, and the more I think about it, the more I feel at home. I came up in the blog era of the internet, when the idea was you’d write about whatever and people would show up if they thought it was worth showing up. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to write stuff here, and it would mean a lot to me if you keep showing up.

What are you gonna post here, and how often?

About 2-3 times a week. Some of the stuff will be reported pieces, most of it will be blogging, because that’s what I’m best at. I’d guess it’s going to be mainly football, but the next few months will definitely be Olympics-heavy.

Do I have to pay?

No! I feel weird about making people pay to read my stuff, so for now, everything is free and unpaywalled. However, I am unemployed, so I’m going to leave an option to pay $5 per month if you’re a fan of my work.

Why should I become a paid subscriber?

Right now, it doesn’t give you access to any exclusive content. But it will help me pay for food and shelter, both of which enable me to produce better content online. As a result, I’d be very grateful.

I subscribed to Road Rodge. How is this different?

Thanks for doing that! My big regret with Road Rodge is that I did a bad job of delivering on the exclusive content I promised, so I’m trying to make clear up front that none of the content will be exclusive. The other big difference is that I’m not going on a 43-state, 62-game trip across the United States, so I’m in less imminent financial peril right now. But again, I’d really appreciate your support.

What’s with the name?

One motivation for wanting to start my own thing was that I kept applying for credentials at sporting events and not being sure what outlet I should claim to work for. (My sincere thanks to the Atlantic 10 Conference and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee for agreeing to credential “Road Rodge.”) 

At first I thought about doing one of those names where you pick a sports term and name your blog after that, like The Fair Catch or Forward Progress or something like that. (I’m saving the second one in case I decide to do a leftist football podcast one day.)

But for now I’m sticking with Read Rodge. I think you’re supposed to read “Read Rodge” as an imperative sentence—you should read the author Rodge. But I never quite figured out whether “Road Rodge” was the name of the project I was doing or a personal nickname for me. This bothered me greatly and nobody else seemed to care.

Long story short, I’m bad at branding. Let me know if the name sucks or if it’s a dumb idea to have two projects that are one vowel apart. (Seriously, I’m very receptive to comments and ideas!)

Did you really just copy-paste an “e” over the “o” in “Road Rodge” for the logo?

Yes.

It looks like crap.

You look like crap, bold font guy.

Will all the Rodger Sherman content in existence be here?

I think I plan on using this as sort of a hub. Like I said, I’m freelancing a few pieces and working on some videos and the book. But when I publish something elsewhere, I’ll let all the newsletter subscribers know about it on here.

What’s coming up this week?

I decided to hit publish today because I have takes about the Knicks. That post will go up tomorrow. I’ve got a post about college football scheduled for Wednesday and another about the Olympics coming up at the end of the week.

Anyway, if you’re here at the end of this post: Thanks. See you tomorrow and the day after that, and for as long as these blogs keep pouring out of my brain.