The Blogfather: Jeff Clark on the past, present, and future of CelticsBlog

BS: First of all, congratulations on the 20th anniversary of CelticsBlog. In short, this is a big deal.

JC: There’s a scene in Almost Famous where Lester Bangs leans in and delivers this line with the utmost conspiratorial sincerity. “The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you’re uncool.” That has always resonated with me because I haven’t just accepted the fact that I’m uncool, I’m actively striving to be less and less cool. I joke with people that I was born a dad, it just took me 33 years to become a father.

BS: Ironically, that’s actually how I found CB. When my son was born in 2014, I became a stay-at-home dad and was looking for a writing outlet. I had been a reader and fan of the site since the 2010 Finals run and I was lucky enough to catch you when you were looking for contributors. It’s just so funny how all this evolves, right? I still remember playing ball in my driveway and pretending to be Larry Bird and now I’m writing about Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown and making a championship run. There are so few things that I loved as a kid that I still love today. The Celtics is one of them.

JC: I don’t know where my sports obsession came from really. I’m pretty tall, so basketball was always a natural sport to gravitate towards. But everyone in my family is tall and none of them care at all about sports. I think to this day if I told my brother about the 20th anniversary of the blog he would say something like “oh, are you still doing that?” And frankly I’m more than fine with that.

The other major thing that shaped me was coming to Christ in college and learning that a life spent focused on loving others with all your time, talents, and treasures has an ironic way of making you feel filled and loved as well.

Put that all together and you can start to understand why a lonely recent college graduate who just settled down in Virginia (thousands of miles away from my hometown of Plymouth, MA) would reach out to the internet to find a community of people as obsessed with the Celtics as I was.

BS: It’s not exactly Lester Bangs, but that makes me think about that line from Fever Pitch when the kid asks Jimmy Fallon, “you love the [Red] Sox, but have they ever loved you back?” And maybe the Celtics haven’t exactly “loved us back,” but like you said, the team helped you find your people. So where do you go from there?

JC: I’ve told this story a number of times, but at the time I was sending 5 paragraph emails about the Celtics to my friends from college and was getting back one liner emails about how much they don’t care about the Celtics. That led me to message boards where I was pretty good at starting topics and creating conversation threads. I was also fascinated with the internet and dabbled with creating websites. I even created a website called SportsRant.net with my college friends. A spinoff from that site was CelticsRant though it didn’t really take off.

A few years later, blogs became a thing and I finally felt like there was a good platform for me to start sharing my thoughts, feelings, and opinions about the Celtics. For point of reference, this was a few months after a little website called Facebook was launched. Blogs just made sense to me. I suppose it was the online, written version of an emo singer pouring out his heart word by aching word. I was just putting my thoughts out to the world and hoping someone out there would feel the same and connect on some level.

What really made it take off was community. I never wanted to be a boring professor that lectures from a podium. I wanted to be the graduate student assistant that sits on the edge of a desk and asks, “what do you guys think about this?” So of course I started with my message board friends. One of which helped me start the blog as co-leaders. An awesome guy named Joe who went by the screen name “hagrid.” Life took him in a different direction from the blog eventually, but I’ll always appreciate the fact that he helped me get this thing started.

Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

BS: I guess that makes you Harry Potter, Jeff. And I absolutely get that need for community. Like I said before, when I first joined CelticsBlog, I had just become a dad and as many primary caregivers know, it can be a very lonely time. Eventually, I joined a few mom groups and built a family of families. When my mom was sick with breast cancer a few years ago, I found support systems at the hospital to help me through.

So how did CelticsBlog grow from message boards to where it is now?

JC: The big break for the blog was when the Boston Globe shut down their chat room. I saw a need and scrambled to find a way to fill it. With a little bit of research I was able to find a way to post a chat room on the blog and I invited those folks to come over to the blog. It quadrupled the number of people that frequented the site and really created the momentum that our community needed to get started.

Once other people got involved, it became less about me and more about we. So many wonderful people have come along and added their own individual time and talents to the site and made it exponentially better.

BS: Yes! Finding new writers and voices has been one of my favorite things about being a part of CB. I really pride ourselves in being a platform that’s home to traditional journalist-type writers and more unique and niche perspectives, too.

JC: It has been amazing to watch really. Even beyond the writers, there are so many talented people that have contributed over the years. The late Bob Day was instrumental in transitioning the blog from a tiny platform that would crumble when traffic spiked (on draft night!) to a full fledged big-boy blog that could handle all the traffic and then some. Jeremiah Haley was my message board CEO while that was still a part of the blog (message boards were always my first love). Getting bought by SBNation was huge because they really understood blogging and have supported us ever since. We have people like Simon Pollock who have volunteered as editors in their free time. That’s just a handful of folks, and I know that I’m leaving out a ton (please forgive me, you are all loved and appreciated!).

Which brings me back to you, Bill. For those that haven’t worked for the blog, let me clue you in. Bill Sy is the soul of CelticsBlog. He’s a connector, a selfless and tireless giver, and flat out one of my favorite people on the planet. I’m so thankful for you my friend and I need to turn this around on you and ask you some questions.

How do you connect with people so well? What in your background led you to be such a good communicator and administrator?

BS: You’re too kind, Jeff. Thank you. Whether it’s my personal or professional life, my main focus has always been about seeing and seeking the best in people. Maybe we don’t get a chance to show that and be that all the time, but if you give your family, your friends, your co-workers, or even a stranger on the street the grace to be the best versions of themselves, you’d be surprised how often it happens. And we’ve just been really lucky here at CelticsBlog. My first priority has always been to find writers who love the team and second, have a unique way of expressing it.

JC: The cool thing about the evolution of the blog is that there have always been new voices with their own special talents. I know my own talents and shortcomings. I can thread a good narrative and capture the pulse of the fanbase pretty well when I’m locked in. But don’t ask me to break down game film or build some complex statistical basis for an argument. Luckily we have seen lots of writers for the blog that excel in those areas.

Kevin O’Connor put in countless hours of work to make himself a draft expert. That was an amazing asset for the blog and led directly to his big break with The Ringer. Jared Weiss has a knack for weaving together feature style profiles and deep dives. Again, it led to him finding a full time gig at The Athletic. Keith Smith is a cap genius and has made connections everywhere around the sport. That is how he landed a full time spot on Spotrac. Adam Spinella (Coach Spins) took his ability to break down film and landed himself a job as a scout for the Sixers. All we did on CelticsBlog was provide artists with a canvas to paint on. What they came up with has always been a testament to their creativity and hard work.

BS: After covering the Celtics for over two decades, how has that affected your fandom?

JC: It has certainly shaped me. You hear some people in the industry swear that you can’t be a fan anymore at a certain point. The thinking is that you start rooting for the stories not the teams. You start to care more about the people than the laundry. I get that, but it hasn’t ever happened to me. Maybe because I’m a step removed from the action (I seldom use a press pass) and I’m doing most of this from the couch.

I will say that it has focused me a great deal. I used to be a huge fan of all the Boston sports teams (and of college basketball as well). Not so much anymore. Getting married, having kids, progressing in my day job career, all of that takes time. And as I’ve gone deeper into my Celtics fandom, I just don’t have the cycles to follow the Red Sox or Patriots or even March Madness anymore. I’m just a casual for those teams and sports now.

It is a little weird that I missed out on a lot of the glorious Super Bowls and World Series titles just so I could analyze the impact of trades that Danny Ainge made in tanking years or prospects developing in Brad Stevens early years as a coach. But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

BS: Ah, but would you trade it for three second round draft picks? Just kidding. But that’s the minutiae we’re talking about, right? What can start out so small — a two-day deal turning into a full contract, a late second round pick cutting his teeth in the G-League, an ankle sprain on the opening play of a Game 7 — always becomes a story. That’s been my evolution as a fan after I started writing and editing at CB.

When I was a kid, it was all spectacle and adulation. I cut out box scores and made a scrapbook out of them, hung posters up in my bedroom, and tried to copy everything Larry Bird did. And then as I got older, I’d get sucked into the sports radio’ing of basketball. What I saw on the court just become fodder to argue about. But now, I just love the stories and what’s really unique about sports is that it never ends. I’m not even sure I recognize summer, fall, winter, spring. For me, the seasons are Summer League, free agency and the draft, the regular season, and the playoffs and then they repeat themselves. But through it all, it’s all just Celtics basketball over and over again.

Over the last few cycles, we’ve dabbled in video, produced podcasts, and now, have a PlayBack livestream. Where do you think the industry goes next?

Photo by Barry Gossage/NBAE via Getty Images

JC: In the short term, the industry is already saturated with gambling and I’m not crazy about where that’s going. I get that it is regulated and therefore out of the shadows (in theory). When handled appropriately, there’s nothing wrong with it (in theory). However, in practice there’s a lot that can and will go wrong. I worry about the lives that are going to be impacted by this because the league normalizes gambling to the younger generation. I worry that some kind of scandal is going to expose the shady side of the industry. Maybe not as serious as the Black Sox, but you never know. Maybe that’s just me being an out-of-touch old man yelling at clouds, but it’s a concern of mine.

In the medium term, I think there’s going to be a bit of a shift in how we consume sports media because the proverbial check is due. Companies that invested in the idea behind sports coverage are looking for a return on that investment. So we may see more paywalls, subscription models, consolidation, layoffs, and other depressing headlines.

In the long term, I have a more rosy outlook because I know that great sports coverage will always win out. From the early days of newspapers to the heyday of Sports Illustrated to sports blogs and podcasts and whatever happens next. Quality content will stand out as click-bait gets lost in the noise. Perhaps the devices will change (VR headsets?) but content will still be king. On a similar note, there will always be a desire to be a part of a sports community, regardless of the medium.

BS: So it seems we’ve come full circle. With all the incantations that CelticsBlog has taken — from starting out with e-mails to college buddies to message boards, from failed startups to a successful blog, from finding a home at SBNation, from podcasts to live simulcasts — it’s always been about creating a community of writers and fans. You know what movie I’m going to reference now…

JC: “If you build it, they will come.” Yup, sometimes I feel like Ray Kinsella. All I did was start a website and by some blessing that is beyond my comprehension, the people came. And my life has been forever changed because of it. I’m so thankful for that blessing and for all the people (you very much included) that made it all possible. Thank you everyone. You have my undying love and affection. Here’s to another 20 years! (I promise we’ll be less sappy in future anniversaries.)