Photograph by Frank Di Piazza
If there’s one thing sports fans might claim as America’s pastime besides baseball, it has to be America’s other great pastime: obsessing over sports. In a nation with 24/7 sports coverage and endless fantasy leagues, it seems only natural that a website would take a lighter look at sports’ eccentricities. Enter JoeSportsFan.com.
St. Louisans Josh Bacott, Patrick Imig, and Matt Sebek started the sports blog in 2005 with one purpose: to have fun. The site does just that, mocking everything from worthless ’80s baseball cards to mainstream sportscasters’ “Oh” faces—and accruing 400,000 hits per month along the way.
Sebek says most of the traffic comes from the coasts, but locals are catching on. “It’s only been recently—probably about the last six months—that people in St. Louis who had heard of us in the past realized we were from St. Louis,” Sebek says.
The trio hosts its own radio program, The JoeSportsFan Show, on 590 KFNS-AM from 8 to 10 p.m. Thursdays. They also do entertaining weekly podcasts that have garnered more than 4,000 subscribers. Yet no matter what level of success they achieve, Sebek says the site will hold to its wisecracking roots: “People take sports way too seriously, from athletes to the media in general, so we like to take the light side and enjoy it for what it is, which is entertainment.”
