Greetings and salutations Cauldron readers! It’s been a while, but I never really felt right about not telling you the complete story of The Cauldron’s demise after we shut down. Well, consider that wrong righted!

Cheers, Jamie

So, What Really Happened To The Cauldron? was originally published in The Cauldron on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thinking about launching your own media startup? You might want to consider my crazy story first.

The call came in late winter of 2013 from a New York City number I didn’t recognize. I had relocated to North Carolina two years earlier, but recruiters were still trying to lure me back to the Big Apple. I wasn’t remotely interested. The South had become home much faster than I ever expected — the people, the weather, the pace of life, the exponentially lower blood pressure.

The woman on the other end of the line introduced herself as Kate Lee. I had been recommended to her by someone in digital sports media, she said, and her company, something called Medium, was a recently-launched digital platform that was looking to incubate promising publications.

(Translation: She needed content. Good content.)

To that point, I had done a little blogging for the New York Times and Major League Baseball — more as a side hobby than anything else — and built a relatively small, but loyal social media following. No journalism degree. No experience as a Publisher or Editor-in-Chief. My coverage of the New York Knicks had led to a few guest appearances on WFAN-NY and ESPN Radio in New York, but I certainly wasn’t well known in the industry.

Five-thousand dollars a month. For three months.

That was the total funding Medium offered to conceive of and execute my vision for a sports website that would ultimately become The Cauldron. With just a three-month runway, it certainly wasn’t a lot of time or money to launch a national media startup. (And it was the primary reason why someone a lot more proven than me hadn’t already taken them up on the challenge.)

I had been working as a Wall Street lawyer for over a decade at the time, so it wasn’t about the money. Anything Medium paid me would be invested directly into the business. To be fair, it wasn’t even really a “business.” Not at first, anyway.

It was more of a scatterbrained concept:

Finding the time and energy to make a legitimate go of it would be no small feat. My wife was also working full time and sharing the demands of our toddler son and newborn daughter. And yes, there was my pesky day job as in-house counsel to a global investment bank to attend to, but no matter; I was determined.

We launched The Cauldron on June 1, 2014.

By we, I mean Andy Glockner and me, along with the dozens of freelance writers we initially commissioned to write stories and create content for us. Back then, our design sensibilities were, shall we say, nascent.

The practical reality was that The Cauldron never should’ve survived beyond the initial three-month run. Consider the competition we were up against: ESPN’s aforementioned Grantland, VICE Sports, Deadspin, and countless other fully-staffed and fully-funded media outlets with resources and distribution we had no way to emulate.

In fact, our funding was stretched so thin at inception, we couldn’t even afford an image license. Instead of posting pictures of the athletes and sports we were covering, we sourced nondescript royalty-free photos and clip art.

Still, even Deadspin’s resident wiseass noticed.

Sean Newell on Twitter

Remember when The cauldron's logo was literally a clip art cauldron?

Somehow we managed to beg and borrow just enough content from sympathetic and hungry freelancers — some of whom had already established themselves in sports media, others who just wanted the opportunity to have their work seen on a national level.

Notice how I didn’t say steal, though. We paid our experienced contributors as best we could; some getting $50 per post, others up to and exceeding $1,000 per month in exchange for a weekly column. We also published aspiring amateur writers, too. The vast majority of them were unpaid, but we worked tirelessly to help them hone their craft and ensure that their work would be seen by a larger audience.

Andy and I published content at a breakneck pace; at least five 1,000-word-plus pieces a day (and often more than that), doing our best to not make any egregious errors — all while trying to ensure that our product was different than anything else out there.

It didn’t hurt that 20 or so of our better-known contributors trusted me with the keys to their social media feeds, allowing us to post “organic” links to our content directly from their accounts. People like Robert Silverman, Kevin McElroy, Howard Megdal, Greg Hanlon, the Kamenetzky Brothers, Colin McGowan, T.D. Williams, Tim Ryan, Tim Baffoe, and many others.

Can you imagine giving someone carte blanche to post from your Twitter account to build their business? Hell-to-the-no. Those writers’ collective faith in Andy and me enabled us to hit the ground running, and in retrospect, I’m not sure The Cauldron would have become what it became without that access.

Our use of writers’ social media accounts for distribution was never a secret. It was something we needed to do to succeed, and we never abused the privilege.

Andy and I dumped virtually every penny of the $15K of Medium funding into operations during those first few months. And while we started to gain some traction — we averaged around 250,000 unique monthly users by month three of the initial deal — it became painfully obvious that reaching Medium’s performance benchmarks was going to be next to impossible.

Back then, prior to the first of Medium’s endless company pivots, Ev Williams was focused on something called the total-time-read metric (“TTR”), a worthy, if ultimately fleeting content strategy designed to lure brands by touting how engaged the platform’s readership was. You see, if people spend a lot of time at Medium, then they surely will buy the products your company is hawking. Or something.

The problem with Medium’s TTR, however, was that The Cauldron’s traffic, however strong, wasn’t worth much to our bottom line unless people were spending significant time reading each piece. While that may seem like an insignificant detail, the rules surrounding Medium monetization at the time meant that we could only cash in on long-form pieces. Unlike other sites that relied heavily upon short-form aggregation of news and/or poaching content creators’ original work as click-bait, we couldn’t simply duplicate the seemingly successful business models of USA Today’s For the Win and The Big Lead, or Deadspin.

Posting real-time, short-form content simply wouldn’t have created revenue through the Medium arrangement.

In hindsight, though, we should’ve spent fewer resources on publishing so much daily long-form content. At the time, our audience just wasn’t large enough to digest five or more 1,500-word articles each day. And while it felt great to be paying journalists and aspiring bloggers to write, we were essentially lighting our meager funding on fire.

Investing exclusively in athlete-direct and viral videos would have given us a lot more bang for our buck.💡

Making matters worse; though we had demonstrated clear growth since launch, it was communicated to me by Evan Hansen at Medium that unless we exceeded certain TTR expectations by the end of our second three-month term, the Medium funding would not be renewed. Six months had come and gone in an instant, and we were essentially finished before we even had a chance to get started.

And then it happened.

Former NFL punter Chris Kluwe, unbeknownst to him, singlehandedly saved The Cauldron.

You probably saw it. Everybody in the tech and gaming world sure did. Kluwe’s epic, expletive-laced breakdown of the Gamergate controversy, published on October 21, 2014, went viral, garnering over 1.5 million page views.

I paid Chris $2,000.00 for that story. It was the ultimate gamble, mainly because that money represented the very last of the funds in The Cauldron’s bank account. Medium had planned to pull the plug on Halloween, just 10 days later.

Only, The Cauldron’s demise was not meant to be — not then, anyway. That one story paid out a $40K return on investment(!), and in an instant, Andy and I went from bankrupt to flush with cash to fund November operations and beyond.

We were literally that close to going out of business.

The next twelve months were an absolute blur. 19-hour days, very little sleep, a barrage of submissions from a rapidly growing legion of 1,000-plus crowdsourced contributors, and a relentless obligation to keep churning out content.

To the average websurfer, how the sausage is made doesn’t really matter. But for any publisher, keeping pace to ensure the audience comes back for more is a daunting challenge. It just doesn’t stop. Ever.

Even when I wasn’t actually creating or editing content at The Cauldron — or singlehandedly running the company’s social media accounts prior to the arrival of the indispensable CJ Fogler — I was busy recruiting even more writers and multimedia content creators. All while establishing and maintaining relationships with professional athletes, their agencies and management firms, brands, and larger media publishers.

Owing to the magnitude of the athletes I was able to secure, traffic to the site was way up, too.

There was Josh Flash Gordon, the troubled Cleveland Browns wide receiver, who pushed back on what he felt were unfair criticisms of him by the media. His story went absolutely nuclear, and took over coverage of Super Bowl XLIX in 2015. The Cauldron was all over ESPN, FOX Sports, Sports Illustrated and virtually every national sports media television show.

There was two-time NBA MVP Steph Curry, who explained how being typecast as weak and small only fueled him to prove the doubters wrong.

There was Stanley Cup Champion Sidney Crosby of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who shared just what motivates him to keep atop the NHL mountain.

There was NFL All-Pro running back Le’Veon Bell, whose story at The Cauldron led to a video profile at the NFL Network.

There was UFC fighter Chael Sonnen, who went public with his steroid use. And unabashedly defended it.

There was NFL offensive lineman kasey studdard, whose deeply personal story of having been called “retarded” as a developmentally disabled child inspired countless readers.

There was the enigmatic-but-always-entertaining Cleveland Cavaliers guard JR Smith, who finally learned why winning was the best medicine for his controversial reputation in the NBA.

And there were scores of other big names, too.

With our best-in-class athlete-direct content, we broke news, revealed deeply personal insights, and delivered raw, compelling stories that couldn’t be found anywhere else.

When The Players’ Tribune announced its intention to enter the market with the undeniable cache of Derek Jeter, Kevin Durant, and Kobe Bryant — and millions of dollars of Excel Sports Management’s investment capital — we were still in full bootstrap mode, wholly reliant upon the quality of our output and the relationships we had built with our subjects.

That’s not to say that we were better than TPT (or anyone else), but given our limited resources — in manpower, experience, funding, distribution, and total content output — our traffic and engagement dwarfed the competition’s.

And it wasn’t just athlete-direct content, either. We published stories that received industry-wide recognition and acclaim.

Like Julie DiCaro’s chilling and personal account of online harassment, a trend that has only gotten worse for many (female and male) journalists since her piece was published.

Or Colleen Curry’s incredible story about what it was like covering the Jerry Sandusky trial for ABC News for a year.

Or Claire McNear’s amazing journey into the NFL heart of darkness, or, as everyone else knows it: The Oakland Raiders’ Black Hole.

Or this crazy Trevor Kraus story about sneaking into the Super Bowl, the World Series, and just about every other major sporting event.

And so many more.

And we created quite a few videos that received millions of views, too:

Eventually, our ceaseless labor paid dividends, and by late 2015 we’d secured a distribution relationship with Time Inc.’s Sports Illustrated. And while SI.com had long since been eclipsed in the digital sports media landscape by ESPN, Bleacher Report and Yahoo!, Andy and I felt validated by the arrangement — buoyed, really, by the credibility such an affiliation granted The Cauldron.

SI.com, by all accounts, should’ve been a perfect partner for us. We were excited to access their significant distribution to raise our brand’s profile, and in turn, they got to run a variety of groundbreaking content that would, in theory, be easily monetizable, and attract a younger audience — something the suits at Time were keen to do.

For a variety of reasons, though — Time’s internal restructuring, changing editorial directions, management turnover, a lack of vision, crippling corporate bureaucracy — the relationship never created a sustainable revenue stream for either side. That’s not to say the parties didn’t operate with the best of intentions, at least initially, but large organizations like Time are ocean liners: They don’t turn on a dime. In this case, it didn’t turn at all.

Ultimately, despite Sports Illustrated’s clear interest in and excitement about The Cauldron’s potential, an outside publication not wholly owned by Time was simply never going to garner the necessary internal support — the sales team’s buy-in, specifically — to fund and grow the business.

And I knew that from the beginning. Each side was getting something out of the arrangement, and I was content with what it was.

As far as I was concerned, The Cauldron had arrived.

Hang around social media long enough — especially as a member of the weird and wonderful world of sports media — and you’re bound to suffer, eventually, the slings and arrows of the trolls. (This is where our story gets a little sidetracked, but I feel it’s important, for the sake of context, to tell the entire story of The Cauldron.)

Google my name, and you’re sure to find — rather prominently — search results painting me as a key figure in a lightly-reported (and even less interesting) 2015 online “feud” with something called Barstool Sports.

Not familiar with Barstool, you say? As far as target demographics go, the site falls somewhere on the scale between “offensive, crass, and occasionally funny” and “OMG, please pour bleach directly into my eyeballs!”

Robert Silverman wrote a damning story for The Daily Beast about the culture at Barstool.

Deadspin Founder Will Leitch explored for New York Magazine what, exactly, Barstool is, and attempted to understand how something so awful can thrive.

Put a bit more diplomatically, Barstool has established itself as a player in today’s digital sports media world by cultivating a significant and loyal audience. And though their content isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, there is no denying that the company’s model has proven durable and lucrative. In fact, there was a time — before the Age of Trump — when I considered Barstool’s popularity to be a good thing for sports media as a whole.

Unfortunately, however, the people who run Barstool — and the readership they incite — don’t take very kindly to criticism, no matter how valid it may be.

On January 7, 2016, I greenlit a piece by Nick Stellini titled, “How Barstool Sports Uses Social Media As A Weapon.”

Some people liked it. Others thought it was a hatchet job. A public, rambling, incoherent airing of private direct messages soon followed. As did physical threats made in video form and copious amounts of manhood-measuring — all of which fomented a perception by some that #BarstoolVsCauldron was a “thing.”

Actually, here … see for yourself:

Amazingly, on the same day the Stellini piece went live, Barstool announced it had been sold to the Chernin Group, supposedly for multiple millions of dollars. And the man behind Barstool, something called Dave Portnoy, felt it necessary to take time out of what should’ve been the best day of his life to inform me of his fiscal well being.

David Portnoy on Twitter

Hey @JamieOGrady I'm not sure if you heard or not but I made millions today.

Back then, Portnoy was already well known for being the attention-seeking egomaniac who once posted photos of Tom Brady’s naked two-year-old son online, but his infamy had only grown.

You see, a story at The Cauldron that questioned Dave’s self-anointed greatness — on his day of Internet triumph, no less — meant nothing less than an act of war. An act that could only be responded to in kind: By unleashing his Twitter army to deliver a seemingly never-ending torrent of invective on social media directed at the author of the piece, at my staff, and at me, my wife, and my children.

The irony of Portnoy, his staff/minions, and social media sycophants launching into a full-on assault of online harassment was thick, to say the least. Particularly in light of the topics that had been credibly addressed by Stellini’s story hours earlier.

Still, I tried not to take the defacement of my Twitter mentions personally. These were the juvenile musings of the so-called “Stoolies,” a predominantly white, 20-something, Boston-centric digital army of Bros who were and remain desperate for some sense of digital validation by Barstool’s founder.

While Barstool’s staff launched an endless barrage of @s and subtweets intended to put me and The Cauldron in our place (I guess), Portnoy saw fit to flex his one-upmanship muscles.

Naturally, only a Ford Bronco would do.

David Portnoy on Twitter

My new Nantucket car arrived today. Hey @JamieOGrady you like it? pic.twitter.com/jOk58yeTBM

This was Dave’s car just for when he goes to Nantucket. Where people with money go. Because he had money. Nantucket money. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Not surprisingly, Portnoy and his cohorts habitually disclaimed (and still do) their cabal of loyalists while simultaneously blaming the rest of us for “not getting” what Barstool does, as evidenced by a revealing interview Portnoy gave to Entrepreneur back in 2013:

“We don’t back down from controversy — we fan the fires. People think we go out of our way to create it, but we don’t. We’re not trying to gain new readers by being crazy-outrageous. Our readers get what we do, and I don’t think about what it’s going to look like to the outside world. I don’t really care.”

We fan the fires. His words, not mine.

But Barstool’s success isn’t the story of some well-meaning web dreamers whose creation took on a life of its own. They’re proud of who they are and what they’ve become. As Portnoy himself admits, it’s as much about the community — Donald Trump’s “so goddamn sick & tired of all this liberal PC bullshit” community — as it is the clickbait that fosters it.

In reality, Portnoy’s mission has never been to carry the flag of the anti-PC, fun-loving millennial crowd with valorous altruism. His primary goal — beyond achieving some degree of celebrity, if you can call it that — is to publish stuff and try to profit off of it. Which, in and of itself, is totally fine. This is the exact same thing any other media company does — except most of them don’t end up fueling loud, misogynist hate-armies on Twitter.

You know, by publishing things like this:

Barstool Radio on Twitter

Yo @JamieOGrady, we know you're already dead but now you're dead again https://t.co/KYNhUG9SAW

Now, years later, it remains undeniable that the underlying point of Stellini’s piece has been validated a thousand times over. I didn’t err by approving the story, I was wrong to extend what I thought was a modicum of professional courtesy by giving Barstool a head’s up about the story in advance.

I owed no such courtesy.

Someday, karma will bite Portnoy in the ass. It’s inevitable. You simply cannot be that awful a human being and not have it catch up with you eventually. And when it happens, I hope someone lets me know.

On February 22, 2016, I received some rather dispiriting news. While The Cauldron’s partnership with Sports Illustrated remained intact, word leaked that Medium had landed a very big fish to add it its portfolio. Bill Simmons was coming to Ev Williams’ shiny publishing platform, and a large contingent of the former’s ESPN/Grantland staff was presumably coming with him.

The Ringer, it was going to be called.

“I’m really sorry we couldn’t let you know in advance,” mid-level Medium staffer Saul Carlin reassured me on a hastily-arranged call. “This was negotiated at the senior-most levels of the company, and we had to keep it under wraps. We wanted to tell you before the official announcement, but trust me, this will be a good thing for The Cauldron. The more people that come to Medium for sports content,” he said, “the easier it will be for you to grow your audience.”

I was not at all reassured.

How in the hell was I supposed to compete with Bill Freaking Simmons, his audience, and his deep pockets? Would there even be room for two sports publications on the Medium platform? Wouldn’t Medium be motivated to get some return on its investment in him, making sure his content received preferential placement and social promotion? (As it turned out, the answer to that last question was an unequivocal yes.)

In fairness, I understood completely that Simmons represented a major coup for Williams and his top lieutenant, Edward Lichty. I knew that neither had any obligation to inform me of Medium’s plans in advance. Still, the news stung. Not only had I brought dozens of professional athletes to a Medium platform that wasn’t yet mainstream — you try explaining to DeAndre Jordan, Derek Fisher, or Dick Vitale what Medium was! — I’d also successfully deployed one of the first external-publisher URLs (thecauldron.si.com) in the Medium environment, a model that the company had hoped would exponentially grow the platform’s reach and utility.

And yet, no head’s up. No introduction to Simmons. No consideration given, it seemed, to the idea of marrying his content plan with my own to form a product that could upend the existing sports content marketplace.

Impossible? Overly optimistic? Unrealistic?

Perhaps, but I certainly felt like The Cauldron’s traffic and brand awareness at least warranted a discussion about the potential synergies.

(Not surprisingly, the marriage between Medium and Simmons ended up flaming out in short order.)

Even worse, on a personal level, working 19-hour days in two full-time positions was taking its toll — physically, mentally, emotionally, and on my ability to be present for my family. I was having trouble sleeping, my mind ceaselessly racing about what I could do to grow the business; about what keys I was missing to ensure that The Cauldron would “make it.”

Like many inexperienced startup founders, I was incapable of appreciating what I’d already accomplished because I was too busy worrying about what came next.

And when the reality of the business failed to fit within the neat little paradigm of expectations I’d set for myself, I began to lose confidence.

What I didn’t understand — what I didn’t fully understand — was that nothing in this life is handed to you. You have to go out there and bend the world to your will. Early success does not portend scalability, profitability, or sustainability. No one owed me anything; not Medium; not SI; certainly not Simmons; no one. I simply needed to regroup and turn what felt like a missed opportunity into something positive.

Lo and behold, four days later, opportunity came knocking.

There are certain days in your life that stand out from all the others. Your college graduation. Your wedding day. The days your children are born. The day you find out you’re going to be a millionaire.

I literally almost fell out of my chair when the email hit my inbox.

Here I was, having worked myself to the brink of exhaustion for over 18 months, having missed the vast majority of my two-year-old girl’s life, and everything was about to come up Milhouse. This wasn’t just any $2.5M offer, either. The Cauldron would be acquired by — and I would work for — one of the industry’s most respected companies, a firm with a massive foothold in sports, entertainment, media, advertising, and content creation.

Still, while I was obviously excited at the prospect of landing a deal of that magnitude, I did my best to temper expectations. Until a deal is closed, it isn’t.

Sadly, the next 60 days would see a slow and steady withering of the deal parameters; the goal posts consistently being moved from one day to the next by the acquiring party. Due diligence requests were expediently fulfilled, only to be met with ambiguous and illogical assertions that The Cauldron’s performance did not meet the acquirer’s arbitrary performance benchmarks. There were conflicting accounts of not wanting to use The Cauldron’s assets for anything more than marketing, and that the company mostly just wanted me.

Naturally, it struck me as odd that the party offering to buy my company was on one hand effusively praising what Andy and I had built, and on the other invalidating its worth. My incredulity eventually morphed into discontent as the negotiations slid further and further into oblivion.

Despite initial assurances that key staff members would be able to join me at the new enterprise — Andy and SportsPickle’s DJ Gallo, specifically — backtracking ensued, and a decidedly confrontational tone was conveyed by the acquiring party’s lead negotiator, ostensibly over why I needed to remain loyal to those who had help me build The Cauldron.

Discussions broke down entirely when I was presented with an untenable revised offer — for around 10% of the original deal. This, after I’d shared my existing business plan and a variety of new content creation concepts, some of which were subsequently deployed by the acquiring party.

It was a fairly devastating experience, not only for me, but for Andy, too. Despite the platitudes, the acquirer had only considered us vessels to advance their own interests. There was no legitimate respect paid, nor was there a shared interest in building something great.

But that didn’t mean there weren’t other whales out there to chase.

Anyone who’s ever tried their luck at fundraising knows it takes an incredible amount of time, effort, and patience to convince investors to part with their money. And meetings. Lots of meetings. Endless Powerpoint-tinkering with investor decks leads to conference calls and in-person pitches, most of which conclude with outright no’s or lukewarm maybes. In short, securing funding for your startup is not for the faint of heart. (Or those who don’t handle rejection well.)

I had one such meeting in mid-2016 with Vasu Kulkarni of CourtsideVC, a venture capital firm that “invests in early-stage founders that are transforming the intersection of sports, technology and media.” Kulkarni, as it turns out, had been an admirer and supporter of The Cauldron from the beginning, a revelation that initially made me optimistic that Courtside would invest.

Sadly, that wasn’t in the cards.

The problem, Kulkarni told me, wasn’t that The Cauldron wasn’t an excellent media publication; it was that we couldn’t provide the 20–30x return on investment his fund needed to justify taking an equity position. He conceded that I’d built something unique with very little resources and was impressed that I had done it while working another full-time job as a lawyer, but he didn’t sugarcoat things, either.

He went on to explain that I was likely to be met with the same resistance from other venture capitalists and/or angel investors, too. The Cauldron, though having undeniably carved out a fine niche in the sports media world, was really just a content creation experiment — largely dependent upon my ability to get athletes and influencers to contribute.

Sure, we had a robust social media presence and had produced a bunch of viral videos, but at the end of the day, there was no there, there. No technology. No standalone, proprietary platform. No way to reach critical mass on the distribution side without Sports Illustrated or another large partner.

His assessment was bleak, but all was apparently not lost.

Kulkarni offered to introduce me to someone with his own sports media company — let’s call him James Yoder — who was also trying to fundraise. According to Kulkarni, Yoder had purportedly built up a decent-sized user base for Chat Sports, his mobile phone app company. (The app was a relatively unsophisticated and nondescript knockoff of Bleacher Report’s Team Stream aggregation application.)

Actually, Yoder’s numbers were more than “decent sized,” if you take his word for it. 🤔

100 million monthly users?! That’s, like, Bleacher Report, ESPN, and Yahoo! traffic territory. And no, I had never heard of Chat Sports, either.

Anyway, according to Kulkarni, Yoder’s biggest problem wasn’t average monthly users or site traffic, but credibility in the sports media marketplace. That, and an inability to create the kinds of compelling in-house content that appeals to brands and advertisers.

If we could figure out a way to combine forces — combining Yoder’s existing technology and supposedly endless connections with investors with my existing brand equity and athlete relationships — Kulkarni surmised we just might just be able to kill two birds with one stone to create an attractive, turnkey investment opportunity.

It seemed like a workable theory: Athlete-Direct Content + Existing Technology = A sports-loving venture capitalist’s wet dream, basically.

Only, you know, best-laid plans and such.

After the initial introductions were made by Kulkarni, Yoder and I discussed high-level parameters for a deal by phone, text, and Slack almost immediately. He was extremely enthused about the possibility of joining forces — almost overly so — so it seemed perfectly reasonable when he suggested flying to North Carolina to meet in person.

When I picked him up the airport, Yoder seemed normal enough. Clean-cut, nondescript white dude, early 30’s with a just barely-still-there midwest accent. He fashioned himself a tech insider, habitually name-dropping the “heavy hitters” he knew or had access to. He spoke at length about organizing seminars with the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, billionaire Dan Gilbert. He said he had a personal relationship with Jim Harbaugh, coach of the Michigan Wolverines.

His Facebook pictures seemed to back it all up.

None of this is to say I picked up a bad vibe from Yoder, exactly, but it was immediately clear that he was not cut from the same cloth as me, and at no time during the hours we spent together — or anytime thereafter — did I get the sense that he knew much about creating good content.

And that was fine by me; we were joining forces to fill out the pieces of a greater puzzle. He didn’t need to be a “creative” — I had that side of things covered.

And, admittedly, my fundraising abilities had thus far proven, well … unproven.

By the end of Yoder’s N.C. visit — after walking through our company’s respective business plans and performance metrics, and fleshing out how a union might look — we loosely agreed upon the terms of Chat Sports’ acquisition of The Cauldron:

• Sale of The Cauldron and all of its assets for $XM (in cash and equity in the new post-merger company that would be formed).
• I was to be installed as Chief Content Officer of the new company with a generous compensation package, including salary and bonus structure.
• The new company would open a North Carolina office and make five to seven initial hires — primarily focusing on athlete-direct video, podcast, viral and written content. The goal was to leverage massive player distribution over social media to entice brands to spend with us, essentially executing The Cauldron’s business plan that was disseminated to investors in early 2015.
• The new company’s first two hires would be DJ Gallo and Jim Cavan, each of whom were original staff members of The Cauldron, and individuals I considered indispensable to any resultant enterprise. Andy’s role was TBD; not because I didn’t want him with us, but because relocating from Denver was not a plausible scenario for him.
• The deal would be wholly dependent upon Yoder’s ability to close a ($YM) Series-A fundraising round for the new company — an entirely reasonable condition, given the need to secure funding in order to execute any of the planned content expansion initiatives.

Yay, we did it! 🤔

Only, nothing went according to plan. Unless the plan was supposed to include convoluted lies, forged term sheets, fake lawyer emails, defamation, and tortious interference.

In that case, #AchievementUnlocked!

In late February, Daniel Roberts of Yahoo! wrote an exhaustive investigative piece on everything that happened after the initial deal was signed. It remains a well-reported piece, and it’s worth your time.

Yoder’s side of the story used to exist here, but it has long since been deleted:

Chat Sports has actually been in the news before (via Awful Announcing):

This isn’t the first controversy for Chat Sports. They took a lot of fire back in December 2015 for a story about Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer being offered the “largest contract in NFL history” to coach the Cleveland Browns, something that was picked up by major media outlets, including ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption. That story came from “Mack Ferguson,” who had one tweet and 10 followers, so he seems like a good candidate to be one of those fake writers Yoder talked about. They’ve also been criticized for plagiarism and fabrication.

And last week, the University of Michigan’s Athletic Department took the virtually unprecedented step of publicly warning its student-athletes to stay away from Yoder:

As you probably guessed by now, the deal ultimately fell apart. It would probably be fairer to say that there never was a deal; that Yoder was essentially spinning yarn on the hope that he could land funding before I found out what he was up to.

Nevertheless, I wish that I had been a better judge of his character. I wish Kulkarni had instead recommended me to the founders of The Athletic, a company he had actually invested in that would have been a much better fit for a partnership with The Cauldron. And I wish that the Sports Illustrated executives I had treated with respect and professionalism saw fit to reciprocate by letting me know that Yoder was defaming me in written communications to Time Inc.’s senior management.

Unfortunately, when you’re running a startup, 20/20 hindsight doesn’t mitigate your prior miscalculations. All you can do is learn from those experiences and apply the lessons to challenges you will face down the line.

In the end, it doesn’t much matter who believes who in the sordid mess that was The Cauldron’s final days. I know who I am, I know what I stand for, and I know how I comported myself.

So what happens next?

I’m certainly not the first to say it, but the digital media business finds itself in an extremely tenuous position. Unless you’ve got deep pockets, built-in distribution, and a way to generate revenue without relying upon clicks, it’s a cold, dark world out there for startup publishers.

Andy and I assumed that good content would win in the end. Maybe we will be proven right someday. Maybe The Athletic’s subscription model will be the answer. Maybe ESPN and Bleacher Report will be the last men standing. Honestly, I haven’t the slightest clue how the industry will evolve.

Running The Cauldron for three-plus years was a dizzying, wild, validating, rewarding, frustrating, disappointing, challenging, and mettle-testing experience. I gained invaluable experience as a publisher, editor, and manager of a large staff. I met and worked with world-famous athletes, their agents, and professional sports team owners. I navigated the topsy-turvy world of digital media, and eventually figured out what to do (and not to do!) when you’re trying to land funding.

And despite the failure of The Cauldron, I remain extremely proud of what we built. I am hopeful that Andy Glockner, DJ Gallo, and Jim Cavan are proud, too; I could not have done this without them.

I also hope that everyone — there are far too many to list individually — who was involved with The Cauldron at any level came away with a positive experience. I did the best I could with what I had to be responsive to our content creators and to help them hone their craft.

As for our loyal and amazing audience, I remain grateful for the support. I hope that you found The Cauldron to be engaging, thought-provoking and unique; just like we set out to do at launch.

✌Jamie

So, What Really Happened To The Cauldron? was originally published in The Cauldron on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’m seeing a lot of sadness, fear, and despair in my social media feeds right now, and while I, too, find myself incredibly disappointed in the results of the 2016 Election, I think it’s important to set the record straight about a few things.

1. Third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein did not “cost” Democrats the election; an unfathomably poor Democratic turnout cost the Democrats the election. You simply cannot have 6M+ Obama voters from the 2012 election not show up, and then blame Johnson/Stein.
2. By some estimates, over 100M eligible voters chose — once again — not to exercise their Constitutional right to vote. While mandatory voting is unrealistic — what are we, Australia?! Have you seen the spiders in Australia?! — the fact that half of the electorate is too busy, too apathetic, or too disenfranchised to participate in the determination of their futures says everything you need to know about how “great” this nation really is. And while this Newsroom clip has been equally lauded and panned on opposite sides of the political spectrum, it’s worth considering.
3. The results of this election WILL NOT diminish the importance or legacy of the Obama Presidency. Our political process exists so that the will of the people is carried out, but no retroactive rollback of Barack Obama’s signature achievements can erase their magnitude from the history books, and I am certain that he will go down as one of the finest people to ever hold the office — especially when one considers the unimaginable headwinds he faced upon his inauguration. He and Michelle are profound examples of the kinds of Americans we all should aspire to be: Gracious, resolute, intelligent, compassionate, civil, honorable, and kind.
4. It is entirely correct to call Hillary Clinton a smart, patriotic, and qualified public servant who stepped unfortunately into a vortex of once-in-a-lifetime factors (read: sh*tstorm) that ultimately rendered her Presidential aspirations fatal. It is ALSO correct to call Hillary Clinton a bad Presidential candidate (twice, in fact); the wrong woman at the right time, whose well-known baggage and self-inflicted (and completely avoidable) wounds will be cited by political science professors until the end of time.
5. It is undeniable that Donald Trump is patently unfit and unqualified for the office of the Presidency, but the specter of his impending term is not what should keep concerned citizens awake at night. Instead, all of us who worry about the future of our nation — Republicans, Democrats, and Independent alike — need to admit the truth: We are a nation of idiots (on both sides); a nation whose citizens care more about being RIGHT than we do about being BETTER. Our shared sense of responsibility to ensure that our children inherit a better America than the one we inherited has vanished. I remain cautiously optimistic that (in time) we can learn from our mistakes as a country, but it’s going to take all of us — and I am guilty as any other “elite” for looking down upon and condescending to anyone wearing a red hat.

It is true; there will be dark days ahead.

Yes, we are absolutely going to see profound changes in policy on women’s rights, immigration, health care, the environment, taxes, our courts and myriad other pressing issues, BUT none of those changes need be permanent. The 2018 midterms will be here before you know it. And they will be more important than ever before.

Remember, liberals, some 50M+ of your fellow citizens joined you on the blue side of the ballot this year — enough to win the popular vote (again) — and it’s only a matter of time before changing demographics inexorably alter the course of future elections.

Thing is, however, YOU need to make yourself heard, now and in advance of the 2018 midterm elections. YOU need to participate in the political process. YOU need to get off your ass, quit whining about what ails us, and do your part to contribute to the America you want to live in.

/rant

In light of the overwhelming response to The Cauldron, here is a guide to ensure that your work is seen by our editors.

STEP ONE: Create your account at Medium.com by logging in with your Twitter or Facebook credentials:

STEP TWO: All potential contributors must be added to The Cauldron in advance of submitting drafts to The Cauldron. This can only be accomplished by contacting us at mediumcauldron@gmail.com:

STEP THREE: After you have been conditionally added, you will receive a notification by email, and you may then begin drafting your stories on the Medium platform under your own username.

STEP FOUR: Draft your story!

Yes, the writing experience at Medium is as good or better than advertised. Once you use the platform, you will not want to write anywhere else. (Don’t worry about formatting or adding images, we will handle all of that.) Upon completion of your draft, you will be able to submit your pieces directly to The Cauldron for consideration.

When you’re done, simply click “Add to publication” from the drop-down menu shown below (DO NOT self-publish, just send us your draft):

STEP FIVE: You are (almost) now a writer! Sit back, relax and enjoy the fame and fortune surely (maybe?) headed your way.

If your work meets our standards, you will be published! If not, we will work with you to improve your submission, or, in the alternative, encourage you to try again in the future. The Cauldron is committed to developing talent, and we can’t wait to read your stories.

WRITE ON!

How Do I Write For The Cauldron? was originally published in The Cauldron on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This morning, I put down Leia, my 13-year-old Black Labrador Retriever. By my side through thick and thin, she saw me become a man.

As people, we tend to compartmentalize things. Our lives are made up of a series of associations from which we group together memories in the never-ending quest to form a narrative for ourselves; to divine some “meaning of it all.”

Dogs, however, bear no such heavy burden. Their job is to love, and to love unconditionally. In exchange, we give them food and shelter, and we tell our friends with children that our “kid” is just as much a responsibility as theirs is. We put up with gnawed-on car headrests and soiled (so-called) STAINMASTER® carpets and obscenely high veterinarian bills, all because canine love — the kind of love that can only come from a species reliant upon the barter system to survive — is so pure, we have no choice but to uphold our end of the bargain.

I turned 26 on the day Leia came into my life 13 years ago. Looking back on it, I was more infatuated with the “idea” of having a dog than I was cognizant of what making a commitment of such magnitude really meant. It meant that I would no longer be able to just do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I meant that I wasn’t just fending for myself, anymore, but another life, as well. It meant responsibility. It meant an acknowledgement of something called “cost of ownership,” and it meant, on some level, putting the needs of someone or something else ahead of my own — a concept that I have only recently come to fully understand and embrace.

None of this is to say that the third of my life spent with Leia was all about coming of age and life lessons. Her warm personality, her incredible athleticism, and her calendar-worthy good looks managed to win people over from coast to coast — even those who swore they weren’t “dog people,” and especially the ones who ended up admitting, “Great dog, but the owner is kind of a jerk.”

And that’s the thing about dogs: they don’t point out your flaws, they don’t criticize your decisions, and they never judge you. Instead, they sit shotgun when you drive cross-country to move back in with your parents after a failed attempt to “make it” in California. They don’t care that you’ve only got $300 to your name, or that you’re driving 3,000 miles with an expired vehicle registration and insurance. Nope, their only concern is over you stopping every couple of hours or so to toss some frisbee along the interstate as truck drivers whiz by incredulously. Oh, and that you make good on your promise to add them to the list of elite dogs lucky enough to swim in both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

Although Leia’s love for and loyalty to me never wained, life stops for no puppy, and over time, she became less of my priority. First, there was that beautiful, smart and amazing woman who eventually became my wife. Later, there was our baby boy, who managed at once to give Leia a best friend and knock her down to the low peg on the family totem pole. Finally, there was a second child, a little girl whose infatuation for Leia was clear from the onset.

Through it all, there were job losses, multiple miscarriages, moves, and a series of unfortunate events caused by my own recurring self-destructive tendencies that at times stretched our family to its absolute breaking point. But somehow, despite her inability to comprehend the root causes of the anxieties and fears that enveloped us along the way, Leia always had an ace up her sleeve — one she played again and again when she felt it necessary. It was her love. Her love for me and my wife. Her love for our children. Her love for life. (And steak. And bacon. And cheese. And peanut butter. And the frisbee. And the beach. And tennis balls. And running like the fucking wind.)

It’s only been a few hours since Leia’s body went limp in my arms, and I felt her soul slip away. I feel numb right now, but relieved. It was her time, and it would have been selfish of me to have caused her any degree of suffering on account of my own emotional needs and inability to let her go. Still, though … sitting here next to her bed, her scent very much all around me, it feels as if she is going to turn the corner and come lie next to me any moment. I know that won’t happen, but I don’t think my senses have caught up with the painful realization.

Leia was an amazing animal, a loyal companion, and a giver in every sense of the word. Though it’s impossible to know if she felt “satisfied” with her life, I hope that she was. I hope that I was able to bring her a fraction of the joy and purpose she gave me. I hope that she knew how much I loved her.

Anyway, you were promised her life in pictures, so behold, PICTURES!

“Wait, wait, hold up. Did someone say BEACH? I know you didn’t just say beach without grabbing my leash. It’s pretty much been written into the Town Ordinance, Guys. NO BEACH WITHOUT LEIA. Yeah, it’s like the law.”

Of course, Leia didn’t just like the beach. She LOVED the snow, too.

Despite her busy schedule, Leia also managed to fall in love. Her beau Stewart back in NY doesn’t know she passed away, but I hope he dreams about her often.

And then there were two …

And then there were THREE!

In 2014, Leia almost died unexpectedly when she suffered paralysis of her larynx. It is a common condition in labs, but when it happens, many dogs die before they can even get to the operating table because they simply can’t get any air. Leia was fortunate, and despite certain precautions and medications, we were able to enjoy another six wonderful (and fairly normal) months with her. At the time, though, things certainly seemed bleak.

In recent weeks, there were signs that the end was near. Leia’s hearing was shot, her balance was off, and she started suffering violent seizures on successive days. Her lethargy hid something else, too; a melancholy, an almost imperceptible acknowledgment of her own realization that she didn’t have much time left.

I got the diagnosis yesterday afternoon: liver tumor, it won’t be long now, here are your (lack of) options.

I steeled myself, and brought her home to explain things to my family. My son, not yet five years old, took the news like he’d been expecting it, reminding me that “if we get a new dog, we can always look at pictures to remember Leia.”

The four of us spent what was left of the day and evening with her, running outside, playing, snuggling, and feeding her foods she would normally have no business eating. We laughed, we cried, and we rejoiced for having had so many wonderful years with such a wonderful animal.

I didn’t sleep much last night, partly do to an incredible thunderstorm that barreled through the neighborhood around 3 a.m., but also because I was on the floor next to Leia as she struggled to breathe and find a comfortable position to rest. As I stroked her head and sobbed, I thought about how her passing would be a marker for me in a series of markers that just so happen to be unfolding in my life right now. My marriage, my career, who I am as a person, as a man; each has been called into question of late.

But regardless of where life takes me now, I will never forget Leia. When others gave up on me, she never did. She showed me that it’s possible to give selflessly, to love without qualification, and that dogs can, in fact, poop sand.

While she won’t be here when I get home each night, and we won’t be able to toss the ‘bee or crash into the ocean waves again, her memory will live on.

“Good girl, Leia. Rest in peace.”

April 1, 2002 — April 9, 2015

Heartbreaking news from Jim Cavan, inaugural member of The Cauldron family. Words cannot express our sympathy for Jim and Deana, and their entire families. Our only consolation is that Rett’s painful suffering has finally ended.

For those who know Jim, not only is he is one of the most talented sports and humor writers around, but he is also a man of endless love, warmth and genuineness — and he possesses an innate ability to brighten the worlds of those around him. Any measure of success achieved by The Cauldron would not have been possible without his contributions from day one, and on behalf of everyone at this publication, we send our deepest condolences to the Cavan and Aulisio families.

In Jim’s own words:

With one last, perfect and peaceful breath, our baby boy finally set his spirit free at sunset last night. He departed as he arrived: on a Sunday, as stubborn as they come, but with an ultimate calm that spoke to the abiding grace and wisdom within him.

Buoyed by kisses of loved ones and blessings from countless people the world over, Everett’s soul is now one with the boundless beyond. And while the pain of heart and mind will never fully subside, Deana and I can breathe a little easier knowing his memory — afflicted by that evil disease though so many moments were — will be one forever defined by our little owl’s eyes and smiles. For every lesson he taught us during his too-short life on earth, there will be millions more for us all to glean as the days and years roll on, and his lasting legacy reveals itself in full.

To that end, we’re asking that, in lieu of flowers and gifts, donations be made instead to Rett’s medical relief fund, which Deana and I will soon parlay into a fund for Rhabdoid tumor research and helping families dealing with pediatric cancer. The lives our little man touched in life — manifold though they were — speak to a legacy whose reach will only deepen. Just as it will help heal the wounds wrought by this loss, so too will time define the everlasting impact of a life deferred. Deferred in flesh and blood, perhaps, but never, ever defeated.

In the meantime, we will look forward to seeing many of you at Rett’s memorial service, to be held within the coming few weeks. Mournful though it may be, let us see to it this occasion marks in equal part the full faith and credit of community, and the unconditional love Rett’s fight and spirit have sowed.

We love you to the most distant moon and back, son.

And death shall have no dominion.
No more may gulls cry at their ears
Or waves break loud on the seashores;
Where blew a flower may a flower no more
Lift its head to the blows of the rain;
Though they be mad and dead as nails,
Heads of the characters hammer through daisies;
Break in the sun till the sun breaks down,
And death shall have no dominion.

— Dylan Thomas

Rest In Peace: Everett Thomas Cavan (2014–15) was originally published in The Cauldron on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You may not have noticed — what with the demands of your summer BBQ and beach schedule, and all — but it’s three months to the day since the launch of The Cauldron.

In that time, this publication has established itself as a leading source of thoughtful sportswriting that stands out in the ever-growing sea of clickbait and #hotsportstakes, and the folks at Medium have taken notice, too. Like proud parents, they’ve been cheering us on from the sidelines as we’ve grown into a stylized and unique sports outlet, and now, together, we are taking things to the next level.

So, today marks the official relaunch of The Cauldron. We will continue to bring you the intelligent and insightful work you’ve grown accustomed to, only more of it — and with a few surprises along the way. We’ve significantly expanded our stable of incredibly talented Contributors — adding some of the best and brightest in the business (who have written for Sports Illustrated, the New York Times, ESPN, Deadspin, and countless other outlets). And, of course, we will continue our commitment to attract and develop aspiring sportswriters.

If you’ve been here all along, thank you for your amazing support and feedback. If this is your first time visiting, we invite you to stick around — we are just getting started.

The Cauldron, a Medium publication

Editor-in-Chief, Founder: Jamie O’Grady

Executive Editor: Andy Glockner

Editor, Writer: Tim Ryan

Writers: DJ Gallo, Robert Silverman, Howard Megdal, Jim Cavan, Greg Hanlon, Jared Dubin, Andy Kamenetzky, Brian Kamenetzky, Jesse Newell, Kevin McElroy, T.D. Williams, Blake Thomsen, Joseph Flynn, Steve McPherson

Contributors: Jeff Pearlman, Dirk Hayhurst, Robin Lundberg, Jon Bernhardt, Wendy Thurm, John Schmeelk, Neil deMause, Susan Fornoff, Brian Geltzeiler, Lauren Brownlow

Cartoonist: Rob Tornoe

The Cauldron Is Expanding was originally published in The Cauldron on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Welcome To The Cauldron!

A place for your intelligent sports stories. Shared.

Cauldron (caul·dron) noun \ˈkȯl-drən\ — 1) A large pot or kettle; 2) something that resembles a boiling cauldron in intensity or degree of agitation.

Patronizing organized sports is a fickle endeavor, at best. The games and players we watch captivate and mesmerize us; demanding our attention, but offering little promise of reward, and no exemption from disappointment. We watch because we are compelled to. We recapture youth lost, bestow diehard-ed-ness to impressionable sons and daughters, and, perhaps most universally, enjoy the briefest of respites from our own realities.

But the things we see at the ballparks, stadiums and arenas, or through GIF-tastic tweets also act as metaphors for our own triumphs and struggles. We don’t just watch the last-second shots, close-and-late situations, and nail-biting finishes. The successes and failures of “our guys” become our own.

Therein lies the motivation behind The Cauldron.

As a staff, this is our opportunity to succeed; a digital embodiment of what The Great One knew: “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take.”

So it is with great pleasure, a healthy dose of trepidation, and immeasurable optimism that Andy Glockner, my Executive Editor Extraordinaire, and I welcome you. Here — assuming everything goes as planned — you will find the worthwhile sports stories, shared by a diverse and talented group of contributors with experience across the entire sports landscape.

The Heritage Bar and Restaurant sits a few hundred feet from the Bronx border in a mostly commercial section of Yonkers, New York. The bar itself is a nondescript, one-story building that serves up libations to the nearby blue-collar, predominantly Irish-American neighborhood known as Woodlawn. Inside you’ll find about what you’d expect: dark-stained mahogany wainscoting, endless brass taps, deep booths with seatbacks designed for impossibly tall patrons, and freckle-laden barkeeps that know well enough to keep the Maker’s coming.

I first stepped foot into Heritage on a Wednesday evening in June of 1994. It was actually the first time I had stepped foot in any bar, but it was certainly not the last birthday I celebrated in such fashion. That night’s raucous crowd, however, was not in attendance to celebrate another year of my earthly existence. It was the first full day of summer and the day on which Game 7 of the NBA Finals between the Houston Rockets and the New York Knicks was played.

The mood at tip-off was uneasy. New York had just days before held a 3-2 series lead against Houston, but then those oh-so-clutch Hakeem Olajuwon fingertips just barely altered John Starks’ last-second, Championship-clinching three-point attempt in the waning seconds of Game 6. Few recall that Starks had dropped 27 points in that penultimate game, or that to that point in the Finals, the guard was averaging 19.3 points-per-game.

(For the record, Patrick Ewing was and remains my favorite player of all time, but on the night in question, I proudly wore a #3 jersey. Starks was the newest and unlikeliest Knick to don the “missing piece” cap, that elusive second star who would help Ewing finally deliver on the promise of his ‘85 Draft status. No one expected anything of Starks, of course, while unfilled expectations eventually became the sad tagline to Ewing’s undeniably brilliant Hall of Fame career. Starks could have been any of us, it seemed; a living, breathing example of what our NBA miracle stories might’ve been.)

We all know how things turned out.

New York lost Game 7 to Houston, 90-84. Ewing, though he scored 17 points and grabbed 10 rebounds, was outplayed by his longtime nemesis Olajuwon (25 points, 10 rebounds, 7 assists, 3 blocks). Starks — he of the most unlikely grocery-bagger-to-starting-NBA-two-guard rags-to-riches story — infamously went 2-for-18 from the field (0-for-11 from beyond the arc), forever smudging his legacy and single-handedly crushing New York’s destiny.

Nearly 17 years later, sportswriting afforded me the opportunity to sit down with Starks and talk to him about his career. I expected him to lament the game that, for seemingly everyone else, still defines him. I expected my questions to send him into a bout of depression or, at a minimum, a seizure or two, but his reaction was quite the opposite.

“That was the most difficult game I ever played in, and it carried over through the summer and into next season. It wasn’t until I watched the game on tape in October [1994] that I was able to stop running from the experience and get it out of my system, once and for all.”

If Starks was tired of answering questions about his performance, you would never know it by talking to the man. He was at peace with who he was and what he’d done. And he would play things the same way if he’d had another shot at it.

Interviewing Starks surprised me in another way, too. I realized that Game 7 was actually the first sporting event to leave me with a deep sense of personal loss. I was too young and too inexperienced to recognize the moment for what it was, but that loss initiated a series of sports-centric catalysts to leave their indelible marks. Eventually, I came to realize that I wasn’t just a fan; I wanted to share my opinions about sports. More importantly, I wanted to help others do the same.

Enter Medium.

Obviously, if you are reading this, then you are at least to some degree familiar with Medium. In short, as a writing platform, it is unrivaled in its execution, accessibility and user-friendliness. As a content provider, Medium delivers a clean, elegant, and intuitive reading experience that simply cannot be found elsewhere. And if this place does, in fact, become the world’s digital hub for writing and sharing, there will be nowhere better for The Cauldron to showcase itself.

Then again, what good is having the keys if the Ferrari is always out of gas?

Ultimately, it’s all about the content. I want The Cauldron’s readership to feel like the time it spends here is time well spent. If we leave our audience wanting more, all the better. This is not about #HotSportsTakes, aggregated third-party content, or click-bait — even though those have a place in today’s increasingly competitive digital marketplace — it’s about providing compelling and thought-provoking stories that encourage discussion and facilitate debate.

When you visit The Cauldron — and really, kick off your shoes and stay a while, won’t you? — you will find the droids you’re looking for. We will cover the things you would expect and some things you’ll never see coming. Our roster of contributors is as deep as it is talented, and it will come at you with a vast array of professional and creative experience. Some of our writers hail from traditional print outfits, others have written for well-known blog networks, and still others currently freelance for major national sports publications.

It is no less important to me that The Cauldron acts as a talent incubator, a place where established journalists and authors can write and share their work side-by-side with up-and-comers trying to break into the industry. Here, contributors will have an opportunity to write for a national audience and receive editorial guidance in the process. I encourage anyone who wishes to contribute to The Cauldron to submit their work for review. If it meets our quality standards, it’ll be published.

Nowadays, I am less invested in the Knicks (or any other team), even if I can’t help but keep tabs on the ever-smoldering MSG dumpster fire. 2014 marks 20 years since the Knicks came up short in Houston, and on this birthday, like every birthday, my thoughts will drift to John Starks. Though he will never be confused with Gretzky for his greatness or his iconic sports quotes, Starks’ final epitaph on Game 7 remains inspirational, to say the least.

“Listen, shooters shoot, Man.”

Well, here’s my shot.

Welcome to The Cauldron! was originally published in The Cauldron on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.