Friday, August 28, 2015

Our 1,000th Post: A (Somewhat) Brief History of SuiteSports.com

Pictured: The same logo you see above. Sorry, we only have one logo. Hey, at least the font is a little different.

By Joe Parello (@HerewegoJoe)

I know it's hard to believe, but this is our 1,000th post here at SuiteSports.

After over three years of operation, I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. This humble blog began in December, 2011 when both I (Joe) and my fellow editor Jeremy Conlin were finishing up at Boston University and looking for jobs. Things weren't going well…

So we decided to just start throwing our writing into the void of the internet.



There were some early hits, like this meme ragging on LeBron and the Heat for not winning the 2010-11 NBA championship, and Heidi Leach's piece on which football players should have been pro wrestlers.

There were also some bombs, mostly written by me, that I maintain were darn good! My story on the day the Tim Tebow narrative changed, when the former Florida quarterback went from Heisman-winning stat machine to a guy who "just wins," certainly deserved more than the 80 reads it got way back in the day.

The site then pretty much went dark in 2012 as I worked full-time as an editor at a local news startup.

After taking my life back in early 2013, SuiteSports returned with a comprehensive ranking of the best coaching jobs in football, extensive Super Bowl XLVII coverage (seriously, is Joe Flacco elite yet?), and Jeremy' piece on the fact that LeBron James is, in fact, good at basketball.

We then entered March of that year battling out our favorite man crushes in tournament form, and discussing the fact that Vegas is definitely the best place to watch the NCAA men's basketball tournament.  

April of 2013 brought big changes to the site, as we added legendary Boston sportscaster Bob Lobel, and began covering local high school sports. Bob's first blog on the Boston Marathon bombing is, perhaps, the most important piece we've ever had on the site, and served as a stark contrast to the "lighter" articles that ran that spring, such as the best video game athletes ever, and how to become a sports hipster.

Our summer was certainly interesting that year, as Bob and I interviewed Dennis Rodman. It was, um... Interesting. Sorry to use that word again, but that's all I can really come up with. If you haven't heard it yet, give it a listen, or you can just read my CliffsNotes of the interview here.

We finished out the summer with some of our most comprehensive previews ever, looking at every conference in college football, and the nation as a whole, then tackling the entire NFL division by division. 

The fall featured Bob Lobel's coverage of the eventual-World Series champion Red Sox, whom he and I coined a "team of destiny" after their worst-to-first season ended.

Our NFL playoff coverage then featured looks back at the best quarterback seasons in NFL history, in honor of a Manning-Brady AFC title game, and the best defensive seasons in NFL history, as the Seahawks prepared for a slug fest with San Francisco.

Jeremy Conlin then broke down the Michael Sam story from a unique angle, and we got fully into basketball mode with Jeremy's many NBA playoff previews, but only after our latest March Madness tournament, March Mascot Melee™.

The summer brought the World Cup, and with it my pieces on why soccer will totally stick in America this time, and why America doesn't need to be upset that it isn't special (in the soccer world), plus my "LeBron is Hulk Hogan" piece on LBJ returning to Cleveland.

Over the past year, SuiteSports has continued to grow with takes on the biggest sports stories of the day, blogs and podcasts from Bob Lobel, new contributors and, of course, my award-winning high school sports coverage.

We'd just like to take this time to thank you, our lovely readers, for continuing to give us clicks and make us all wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. We promise to keep bringing you fun and, occasionally, enlightening content, and hope the next 1,000 pieces will be even better!


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