The KBB status update, and the FTN announcement
When I got fired from PFF, I figured my career within the sports industry had come to an end. There are an absolute boatload of very (very) talented people in the sports world who have found themselves out of work in the last few months (and before) and only so many jobs to go around.
I didn’t know what my next step was going to be on a grand scale. I genuinely considered giving up on that particular dream altogether, taking a job at some sort of factory or office or something that would let me make enough money to support the family, maybe doing some writing on the side. That was what I was thinking of doing alongside this website, continuing to write while turning my main vocation elsewhere.
And then the pandemic hit, and it didn’t make sense to find any job for a while, so I just wrote on here, and wrote on here, and wrote on here. This is the 150th day this site has existed, and when I hit publish on this piece it’ll be the 183rd thing on the site. That’s not “full-time staff” numbers, but considering the staff is just me, I’m happy with it. The Patreon never did much damage, but then the Patreon was mainly for people to pay for my sports work, and there weren’t really sports to analyze, so I don’t want to call that a loss.
But that was it, really. I didn’t know whether I’d ever find a job doing anything sportsy again, because there simply weren’t that many jobs. And then one day, after the latest round of layoffs at some big site or another, I saw a tweet that said “Hey, if you’re one of the people who is out of a job now, hit me up, I might have something. DMs are open.” So I messaged him, and he said to drop him a full email but I sounded promising. At the same time, my former boss told me he might have a line on something, though he couldn’t promise. He reached out to the guy he was thinking of. Coincidentally enough? Same dude as the tweet. Kevin Adams, @MagicSportsGuy, my new boss. It was announced Sunday! It’s official! That’s kismet for you.
That’s a lot of words to say that I’m back sportsing again, now as the editor-in-chief of Fade the Noise, an all-sports fantasy and gambling site that (if I do say so myself) looks amazing, and I’m crazy excited to show it off when it goes live (soon!), and I’m so thankful to have found my way into a job I thought I might never have again.
What’s that mean for danieltkelley.com? Well, I’m no longer counting on this to be a career of any sorts. I’ll still write on it, because there’s really nowhere on FTN I can write about how disgusting pickles are or the ins and outs of A Goofy Movie, or why Chris McCandless was an asshole. So I’ll still write things on here. Will I keep up the 1.22-pieces-a-day pace I’ve set so far? C’mon, no way. My guess is this will drop to about 2-3 pieces a week, and less than that during the busiest of sports weeks. If you’ve signed up for the Patreon, first, thank you so dang much. And second, you are free to keep the subscription going on there, though any fantasy sports content I create is obviously going to FTN, so if you decided to un-be a Patron, I wouldn’t fault you for even a second.
This site lasted as my sole writing home for about four months. Would I call it a rousing success in that time? Nah. It was fun, and I got some clicks, but it showed no signs of becoming a career. But then it didn’t have to be. It kept me going through a pandemic. And now I have a job. It’s going to be such a cool job, too. I’m so excited to show it off.
Anyway, that’s where we stand now. The Kelley Black Book isn’t dead by any means, but it’s going to slow down. But the Kelley behind the Black Book? He’s taking off. It’s pretty cool. Thanks for riding it out with me.