An announcement

A new chapter with a new project

I’ve written on and for the internet for many years now. If you’re a longer-time follower perhaps you recall me writing for a couple of Knoxville-specific outlets, then my own site. The most fun and rewarding place has easily been this one, where I control the flow of what goes out and when. It’s also been the only one I got paid at.

I started this newsletter in fall 2022 after a fairly tumultuous year with three goals:

1. Finally get paid for the work I’d done for free for a decade.

2. Write about college basketball on a national scale, not just the Tennessee stuff I was known for.

3. Eventually get 500 people to sign up for this newsletter.

A little under three years later, this is an incredible success story. For one, after I was laid off in February, the income from this newsletter allowed my wife and I to be fine financially and even supported a trip to the Final Four in April (my second in three years). I no longer write a ‘beat’; rather, I do national basketball coverage as I’d always hoped. But #3 is the wildest to me. I figured that 500 within a year of starting was a reasonable stretch goal. Here are the numbers two years and eight months after hitting publish for the first time.

The support from everyone, regardless of whether you signed up last week or were following me a decade ago, means a lot. It is that support that I’d like to count on and hope for as I announce something new, something that moves away from this Substack format into a new and exciting challenge.

I believe in not forcing you to wait for a news announcement, and I like breaking my own news versus having someone else do it for me. I have two parts of Info You Need to Know: one with pure facts, the second with my reasons for the pure facts.

1. I am joining a website that covers college basketball and basketball at-large exclusively. This will be a paid site as part of a larger network. There are 13 writers, editors, video-makers, insider types, or podcasters (maybe some combo of all those things), including myself, that will be working for the site on Day One. The site has not been publicly announced yet, but it will be in the near future.

2. I’ll be writing 2-3 times a week and podcasting for it. This is NOT me announcing some sort of stepback or retirement or whatever. I still love writing as much as I ever did. The article structures are likely to be similar, if not the exact same, as what I was doing here. I just have help now, which is really nice, because it means I don’t have to do it all anymore. Just the things I want to do.

3. This transition is effective immediately. I’m obviously going to leave this site up for archival and for reference, but there will be no more posts on this Substack specifically, outside of one final one with additional information once the site is announced. They’ll all be on the new site, which will launch in the next month.

I believe those are the bare-bones basics. Some other scattered pure facts: I’ll still write the watchlist and a few conference previews, just not all 31 or 32 or however many we have in 2025-26. The people I share the site with are all people I know and respect through my line of work. I think you’ll like them a lot.

I can also understand some hesitation and/or surprise as to this announcement, particularly when I’ve told you earlier I have a good thing going. I get it, which is why you now get a sort-of FAQ.

Why? Well, many reasons. But the top few all go together. I love writing, but I can’t write about everything all of the time. I love the conference previews, but I don’t love doing all 31 or 32. I want to keep writing about college basketball and exploring its depths, but I can’t do it alone. Joining this site with the people I already know are involved is a tremendous chance to push my career even further and adds flexibility in the event of extremely busy work weeks, whereas previously I had zero flexibility.

Why this site? It’s pretty simple: based on who is involved, this will be the very best college basketball coverage out there. Our common goal is essentially to build Basketball Grantland, before Simmons got fired and the whole thing went belly-up. Hopefully we make it more than four years. (I think we will.) When this is announced, I think people are going to be pretty impressed by the collection of writers at hand.

Why now? Again, simple answer: no one has made me an offer as compelling and sound as this one. Also, I have a full-time job again and I would like to be good at it.

Does this affect my current subscription? It shouldn’t, but more information will be coming on that. I’ve worked on ways to port over emails/sub info/etc. so that you shouldn’t have to sign up twice. The new site is also a newsletter and subscription-based, so the actual experience of the site should be pretty similar. Again: more details when they’re ready. Now, it DOES affect your subscription here in that you won’t get emails from my Substack account anymore, but they’d just come from a new email address anyway.

Is it a newsletter? Yes. And a website. Both/and.

Is the newsletter through Substack? Nope, through Ghost. All that really changes is the font and some design aspects. (This is the part I had a pretty big say in. Sue me, I like my links and everyone else’s links actually working on The Everything App™.)

Cost? COST???? Well, yes, there is one. I don’t work for ESPN or CBS yet. It’s $10 a month. If you’re at all uncomfortable with that fee and would like to end your subscription, no worries, I get it. If you’re uncomfortable but you want to stay on board, email statsbywill at gmail and I can help work something out.

A stereotypical vague question that allows the author to cover any other notes he’s able to mention at this time? Sure. I’ll probably do more interviews or travel stuff that I haven’t done in the past. The pay is more regular and less calendar-dependent. It will be a website and newsletter you actually enjoy reading. If you like my work, you’re going to like the site, and chances are you’ll love it. There will be sponsors, but ones you like that aren’t sportsbooks. I’ll do some podcasts, though probably not every week. The offseason deeper dive articles, such as the Utah piece, are still coming once the site launches. As noted previously, I’m keeping this site around, but there won’t be any new basketball analysis on it. I reserve the right to force people to read free pieces on NASCAR’s championship format.

Anything more to satisfy the parasocial curiosities of readers? Sure. Yes, I sold out. Or I didn’t! I think the definition of ‘selling out’ depends on if you were born before or after 1995. It was rude of me to quit writing about Tennessee, even though the 2024-25 season was far and away the most enjoyable of my writing career. How dare me. I still hit between 75 and 85 free throws in the Jordan Sperber 100 FT challenge every time I do it. The place I ate at near San Antonio is Texas Monthly’s top BBQ in Texas, therefore the top BBQ in known society. I’ve still got a 931 area code. I got new running earbuds and they’re pretty good, but I’m annoyed at how frequently the ‘wind reduction’ thing on it goes in and out. You get what you get for $63 + tax.

As always: thank you for reading, thank you for supporting, and thank you for being along for the ride. More soon; until then, I truly cannot wait to share what’s coming.