Sunday Morning Sidewalk: Thanksgiving edition

 

Apples, Trees, and the Things We Carry

I know it's not Sunday, but these are thoughts more in line with a typical Sunday Morning Sidewalk. 

With the Thanksgiving holiday, I had a chance to reflect back on the last 12 months and the massive changes that have come upon the recruiting-coverage landscape. Last season, I was near the end of my first first year as publisher of Duck Sports Authority and looking forward to some changes I had planned for the site that would be able to continue the growth we had initially created.

I was also starting the most stressful period of my professional life — that stress on top of thirty-plus articles per week took a big toll. But I kept fighting through. The day-job stress started to ease sometime during spring — though not entirely. I still had to spend every afternoon — seven days a week — verifying proper coverage to ensure smoother relations with our customer.

It seemed there was never a day where relaxing was an option.

And then the news hit when On3 acquired Rivals. It was not my primary gig, and yet I still felt like I had not done enough. It felt very personal to me to see the site fail; to be subsumed by On3. Plus, a side gig bringing an extra 20k per year was not all that bad. I know I have talked frequently about the opportunities I had to stay, but as I walked Fiji on a long afternoon walk (5 miles), I had a chance to reflect on whether or not that was a good choice.

I have been thinking about that a lot lately because the day-job stress starts to ease in about two weeks when we get back to our more normal level of work and staffing is no longer a constant concern. The first thing that stands out — I would not have felt like I could have done this type of article. This is personal. About me (and Fiji) and has nothing to do with Oregon football, basketball, or recruiting.

And in some ways that is the lesson — I am thankful for the chance to return to my roots; to write about what compels me to write; to cover Oregon athletics on my own terms. There is no pressure to “grow” my site to prove my worth to Rivals or anyone else. I am not competing with anyone right now other than myself. I compete to write the best articles possible covering Oregon athletics.

Interestingly, my articles get more reads now than they did at Duck Sports Authority.

I miss the community we had — it has become much smaller and has fewer inputs each day. But I am thankful I spent so many years chatting with so many incredible people talking about Oregon football. I am hopeful that our quiet, reserved message board will have many of those old members drop by a little more frequently — that we can continue the relationship that meant so much for so long.

I am thankful this year for a family that supports my whims, my passions, my time commitment to something that no longer even brings an income.

And that’s where the sidewalk part comes in.

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The Miles We Walk

There’s something about long walks — real long walks — that reorder the mental furniture. Fiji doesn’t care about Rivals or On3 or CPMs or subscription churn, but she does understand rhythm. She knows the pace of a man thinking. She knows the difference between the quiet that comes from calm and the quiet that comes from exhaustion.

And in those miles — sometimes five, sometimes more — I realized how much of the past year I’d spent sprinting. Saying yes when I was drained. Producing because I was expected to produce. Measuring my value by output instead of joy. Measuring my worth by the scoreboard of a website that didn’t exist anymore by the time the leaves started falling.

Oregon football has always been the constant. The writing has always been the constant. The games, the stats, the film, the interviews — that’s the part that has always made sense. But the machinery behind it? That changed. And sometimes change feels like failure even when it isn’t.

Sometimes change is just change.

What surprised me most this fall wasn’t the numbers — though they’ve been good — but the freedom. The space. The fact that stepping away from the corporate machinery of recruiting coverage didn’t take my voice with it.

It gave it back.

I can write 3-2-1 pieces, deep dives, Flock Talks, Sunday Morning Sidewalks — all without looking over my shoulder, without wondering if the tone fits the brand, without checking whether a headline aligns with a site-wide SEO strategy. The only bar now is the one I set for myself.

And the truth is:
I’ve written better this year than I’ve written in a long time.

Maybe because the pressure is gone.
Maybe because the joy is back.
Maybe because the work feels like mine again — personal, handcrafted, uncommodified.

Maybe because this is what happens when you stop chasing the thing you already have.

I’m grateful — truly — for everyone who has kept reading. For the people who followed me from Rivals to Duck Sports Central. For the ones who lurk in the shadows of the message board. For the ones who send notes, retweets, questions, and encouragement.

And I’m grateful for Oregon football, because without it, I’m not sure I would have ever found this version of writing or this version of myself.

This past year wasn’t easy. But it was clarifying.

And as we head into rivalry week, into December, into the chaos that comes next, I’m walking into it with more peace than I’ve had in a long time.

Maybe that’s the lesson Fiji is trying to teach me, mile by mile.

Sometimes the sidewalk isn’t where you go to escape.
It’s where you go to return.