I'm ready to give everything this season

Seaside Joe origin story? Seaside Joe 1650

I started blogging in 2003, so that means I’ve now spent half of my life writing about sports, but I didn’t start getting paid for it until 2011 when I was offered $25 per month. That came out to less than a dollar per post at the rate I was going, but the amount wasn’t meaningful because just receiving a check in return for producing words about my favorite team was as inspirational of a moment as any experience in my life.

To go back in time a little bit and reset the scene: Imagine being 29, working an office job in which your complete lack of skills at the position you hold is equally matched by your desire to not improve or advance, and not only have you never been paid to write but you’re not even attempting to have a career like that because it seems too unrealistic for someone who didn’t even go to school for journalism.

(I got a broadcast production degree at Washington State because I wanted to work behind the scenes at ESPN, which half-sounds like it would be applicable to writing about sports but that would be like saying you’re a psychologist because you watched Good Will Hunting in college.)

Kenny (thinks he) Knows Sports

So I was almost 30, had no use for my college degree, no future at the job that I was barely holding onto (and didn’t want to keep anyway), and no reason to think that I was about to embark on anything that felt like a purpose or a career that suited the interests that I had, of which there were few. One thing that did keep me motivated was writing “things” about sports online, whether it be comments at Lookout Landing and Field Gulls or blog posts that could be ready by a few dozen or a few hundred people.

It takes quite a bit of ego to think that strangers will care about what you have to say about a given topic, but blind confidence certainly wasn’t something I lacked at 29; oldheads will remind you that I once had the screenname, ‘Kenny Knows Sports’.

Still, I owe everything to the delusions that helped me to keep telling myself that I should continue writing despite not being good at it and usually only reaching about eight people, including my mom. This isn’t me being humble—obviously Seaside Joe is a legend now—Why should anyone expect to be a “good writer” during the first 10 years of their on-again, off-again blogging days? I was told many times by commenters at LL and FG about how bad I was at the one thing I enjoyed doing, so I am forever grateful to my ego because I should have quit a thousand times.

Not just because I was told that I sucked. I know that I sucked. Learning the ropes on the Internet makes for a very public and painful sucking experience.

In the spring of 2011, the managing editor of a fantasy website posted a job opening for a blogger and the only thing inspired me to apply was that it would give me an excuse to continue writing about sports and to finally have a consistent audience of at least 100 people. The $25 monthly stipend was unexpected and unrelated to my motivation to apply, but from then on out I just kept wanting more.

I made two promises to myself in the pursuit of a full-time writing career:

1 - Write a lot. The more you produce, the greater the chances that one of your pieces will reach someone who will give you another opportunity to write.

2 - Be unique. My goal was to write in such a way that the reader would have to stop themselves halfway down the page to scroll back to the top to find out who wrote the article they were currently reading.

These two commitments have always been a double-edged sword. I have written a lot of articles—I think that I’ve written the most NFL articles of any person over the last 12 years and I’d be interested to know who you think could be a worthy challenger—which also means that I’ve written a lot of bad articles. It’s like the person who has the most career touchdowns and the most career interceptions.

Then there’s my style, which was especially rough and untamed in the beginning. I would definitely reach some people who thought, “Oh I’ve never read a football article like this before, I kind of like it”, but also many who said, “I’ve never read a football like this before, I never wanted to, and I will make you feel the pain that I feel right now”.

And I don’t blame anyone in the latter category for feeling that way—It would be unfair of me to be intentionally different and to also expect everyone to like me. That doesn’t make sense. But I do think that my two commitments have worked in my favor.

After several months of writing about fantasy sports, I was offered an opportunity to write about the Seahawks without having to apply first. I think my greatest asset was simply that I was cheap and available. Being cheap and available is still my greatest asset.

Hint Hint:

I kept with those two commitments for the next three years and eventually they paid off again: One day I told myself that I was going to save $10,000 and quit my job so that I could finally pursue writing full-time. I don’t know if $10,000 was a silly-low amount to choose, but I never had to find out. A few weeks after that promise to myself, I received an email from the new sports editor at Rolling Stone (dot com) asking me if I wanted to be their first-ever NFL writer…He had come across my Seahawks work and felt that my pop culture references fit the Rolling Stone brand.

Write a lot and be yourself. That’s the only way I can explain how I went from 29 and not a writer to 31 and quitting my job to bet on myself because of a $150 per article offer from Rolling Stone (dot com).

I didn’t have the $10,000 saved. I wasn’t going to make enough money to live off of, but I just had a feeling that if I let go of the past that I didn’t want that I would be able to cling to the future that I did. I told myself that if I could just survive one year as a writer that at least I would be able to tell my kids one day that I “used to be a writer”. One year felt like enough time for that to be true.

The will to never stop being a writer, picking up freelance gigs wherever they appeared, has kept me afloat for the last 10 years without any other jobs.

Onto and Out of Ego

Over the years, I learned that it’s easier to do this job without as much ego by relying on facts and verifiable information instead of your opinions and gut feelings. I learned that from Jeff Sullivan, the former managing editor at Lookout Landing, as he never made any statements that he couldn’t actually prove were true. Instead of opinions, Jeff would write something like, “Based on the evidence and history of this situation, the most likely outcome is probably X.”

He never backed himself into a corner, which is a mistake that I think most writers make. If the outcome is Y instead of X, Jeff could simply say, “I didn’t say it would be X, only that history supported X as the most likely outcome. In this case, it turned out to be Y.”

I hope that it comes across that Seaside Joe is not really intended to be about my opinions about the Seattle Seahawks. I think of Seaside Joe as more of an information conduit: I do research about the Seahawks, then I share the findings with you. It is only because I’ve been doing this for so long that I try to use my past experiences—history often repeats itself—to reach reasonable conclusions of what could happen and what could be true.

Use DK Metcalf’s contract as an example: Last offseason, I consistently sent the message that fans should ignore rumors and “news” about the contract negotiations because history strongly suggested that the Seahawks would extend Metcalf before the season. I then used historical evidence to project that Metcalf was most likely to sign a three-year, $72 million contract.

Then he signed a three-year, $72 million contract before the season.

Not a prediction, not an opinion. A projection based on facts.

Another one is Devon Witherspoon. Quite a few of you have told me that you subscribed to Seaside Joe this year because I “predicted” that Seattle would choose with him the fifth overall pick. But calling it a prediction isn’t as accurate as saying that I've just closely followed Pete and John’s draft history, I deduced that there were probably only three or four prospects who would be available at 5 who also fit into that draft history, I used Witherspoon’s own comments raving about his visit to Seattle, and I saw that he added the most of what the Seahawks had the least of: Violence, swagger, confidence, physicality, intimidation, tackling, and run defense.

Predicting Witherspoon wasn’t meant to be an opinion, but instead was the end result of a lot of research.

And all it would have taken for me to be wrong would be for Witherspoon to be off the board already or for the Seahawks to have secretly cleared someone like Jalen Carter or Tyree Wilson as medically or mentally ready for the NFL. So it was also a big ass assumption with a lot of luck that allows me to be right sometimes.

Giving it all as a fan this season

The hard part about being so objective about the Seattle Seahawks is that objectivity doesn’t balance well with being irrational and passionate about the Seattle Seahawks. It’s great for writing about the Seahawks in a way that is the most truthful and realistic—which I think is what you should want from people who cover the team or anything that you like to read about, it doesn’t have to be sports—but it makes it difficult to enjoy the highs and to stew in the lows.

There’s just something about this team, this year, and this time that tells me that we should spend more time together as a Seaside Joe community in 2023 experiencing Seattle’s season as if every game is the Super Bowl.

That feels like the most Pete Carroll-way to follow the Seahawks, so I am going to commit to bringing that kind of energy every week, before and after every game, starting with Sunday’s opener against the Los Angeles Rams.

Because it’s easy for me to spend hours writing about the last 20 years, as if I’ve been promised another 20 years and that I’ll have endless opportunities to experience the left turns of life. That’s not true. This could be the season that I need to take in as if it’s the last. Each game should be the one that hits you the hardest. Sure, we could debate how Seattle needs to do X, Y, and Z to reach the Super Bowl.

Why wait? Let X be the Super Bowl every week.

Only three more days until the Seahawks first Super Bowl of the season.