Making Noises At Jim Nantz, With Aaron Schatz

It's a tough situation for Drew. While he has dialed up his football fandom to super-sicko levels (complimentary) in recent years, my interest in the sport has remained stubbornly around average. When we discussed having an NFL Draft-focused episode of The Distraction , we were politely avoiding talking about the fact that I can't go nearly as deep on the subject of sleeper mid-round edge rusher values. Thankfully, we hit upon a compromise that worked for all of us: having the legendary Aaron Schatz, now of the sports analytics site FTN and the founder of Football Outsiders, as a guest, then spending half the episode talking about how awful online media is. Something for everyone!

Aaron had a lot to say about his (highly negative) experience with the venture capitalists who bought and ultimately killed Football Outsiders, which Mike Tanier wrote about for us a couple years ago, and which finally wound down once those owners just straight-up stopped paying anyone. That URL, which once contained nearly decades of football analysis, from writers who became stars in their field and also in pro teams' front offices, is now a dead link.