FanHouse DanShanoff

A couple years ago, I was talking to a friend and mentioned having seen something in The Sporting News. My friend said he thought The Sporting News had gone out of business years earlier.

That was wrong (he was thinking of Inside Sports), but it wasn't too far off: Once the Internet came along, no one wanted to wait for the mailman to deliver their sports stats, and The Sporting News -- which was once best known for its box scores -- became close to obsolete.

But Sporting News (they've dropped the "The" from their name) is making something of a comeback online by assembling some of the best sports writing talent on the web. The latest example comes from Dan Shanoff, who announced today that he's joining up with SportingNews.com and The Sporting Blog. Shanoff writes that he's not alone:

Three recent additions are notable – king-of-their-sport talents who I really respect and admire: Spencer Hall (aka Orson Swindle) of Every Day Should Be Saturday, THE definitive college football blog; Eric McErlain of Off Wing Opinion, THE definitive hockey blogger; and Pro Football Talk's Mike Florio, who blew up in 2007 as arguably the most influential voice in NFL media.

But, wait, there's even more: Brian from Awful Announcing, the premier sports-media-criticism blog, is involved. SportingNews.com had already been using David Pinto from Baseball Musings. They have Will Leitch going down to the Super Bowl.

It's a smart business strategy from Sporting News, which all of a sudden feels like a must-read sports site. (It also may explain why Shanoff thinks Sporting Blog is "in" and FanHouse is "out".) Sporting News is never going to win a bidding war for the Rick Reillys of the world with the Sports Illustrateds and ESPNs of the world, but it can attract high-quality sports writers. And it has.

This morning over at his eponymous sports blog, Dan Shanoff made an astonishing confession:

This fall, every Saturday I will wake up with rabid anticipation, choose between a dozen different possible "lucky" outfits, then set up (or stand up) on the couch next to my wife to root on my Florida Gators football team.

Or should I say: HER Florida Gators football team.

[...]

That was the initial attraction to this woman across the table from me on our first date. I have heard stories of people on dates with successful professionals and fantasizing themselves as spouses of a doctor or hedge-fund manager; I sat across from my date and imagined how happy I would be married to a fan of a great sports team.

Now, in my younger days, I might have taken this opportunity to bust on dear old Dan. I'm sure you'd be familiar with all of the old standbys by now, so there's no need to go over them again. Safe to say, if you're a guy and you grew up in North America -- I usually write about the NHL so excuse me for including our Canadian cousins -- you know exactly what I'm talking about.

Fortunately for me, time and tide have made me all the wiser, and led me to conclude that Dan's decision was the right one on more levels than he could possibly know. Why do I say that? Because, unlike Dan, when I had the chance to glam onto the loyalties of a woman who was a fan of one of college football's most storied teams, I blanched.

Did I mention that I did it twice?