Kissing Suzy Kolber

Last updated
Kissing Suzy Kolber
Type of site
Blog
Available inEnglish
OwnerUproxx.com
Created byBig Daddy Drew
URL http://www.kissingsuzykolber.com/
RegistrationNo
LaunchedJune 28, 2006
Current statusInactive

Kissing Suzy Kolber was an NFL-related humor blog run by a group of unsanctioned sports bloggers. The site began in June 2006 when the founders came together as like-minded commenters from the sports blog Deadspin. In 2006, 2007, and 2008, the site won the Weblog Award for Best Sports Blog. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Writers

Writer NameReal Name
Big Daddy Drew (Inactive) Drew Magary
Unsilent MajorityJack Kogod
Captain CavemanMatt Ufford
Christmas ApeMichael Tunison
Monday Morning Punter (Left on July 31, 2011)Josh Zerkle
FlubbyJ. Reed (Anonymous Lawyer)
Sarah Sprague (Non-founder)Sarah Sprague
The Mighty MJD (Non-founder)Unknown
Mayor Burnsy (Non-founder)Ashley Burns
Danger Guerrero (Non-founder)Brian Grubb
Bobby Big Wheel (Non-Founder)Robert Wheel
PFT Commenter (Non-Founder)Eric Sollenberger
Footsteps Falco (Legend)Falco
RobotsFightingDinosaurs (Non-Founder)Sam Greszes
Old James (Non-Founder)Unknown
David Rappoccio (Non-Founder)
StuScott Booyahs (Non-Founder)Unknown

KSK took its name from an incident during a December 20, 2003 game broadcast between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots, in which former Jets quarterback Joe Namath drunkenly made advances on ESPN sideline reporter Suzy Kolber. [4]

The site gained some notoriety soon after its founding when pictures of the daughter of Sports Illustrated columnist Peter King appeared on the site after the writers mock-threatened King with posting them unless King stopped tirelessly discussing his family in his columns. [5] After some criticism, the pictures were soon taken down. The episode was recounted in Will Leitch's book, God Save The Fan. The site runs a weekly analysis of King's column in a style similar to Fire Joe Morgan. [6]

The content can be considered high-minded vulgarity. Obscure cultural references are often mixed with imagined obscene scenarios and dialog. The posts on the site, though connected to current events in the league, often satirize the events, fans or the media.

Characters

Various NFL players or personalities appear on the site as recurring fictionalized characters. On April 14, 2008, Michael Tunison revealed his identity as a writer for The Washington Post on the blog. He was then fired by the Post for, in Tunison's words, "bringing discredit to the paper." [7] [8]

Closure

On July 31, 2015, Tunison, by then KSK's editor-in-chief, published the final piece he would write for the website, entitled "Smell Ya Later Forever, KSK". [9] In this op-ed, he lamented that he was "burned out" from being the site's only full-time employee, having to compete with much larger sports news websites, and from the lack of editorial control he felt from Uproxx, the company which bought the website in 2011. He remarked, most notably, about a post from May 2015 that made fun of Budweiser's "#UpForWhatever" marketing campaign, which he was ordered to remove by senior management due to the potential of upsetting one of the website's sponsors. [9] Despite this, however, they allowed another post on the site to remain active, which saw British comedian John Oliver making fun of exactly the same campaign. Most of the website's other writers chose to leave with Tunison, though David Rappoccio remained behind to continue his popular drawings of modified NFL logos. [10] All sports content from August 2015 forward is now published under the umbrella of Uproxx Sports as a whole. [10]

Door Flies Open

Since August 2015, Kissing Suzy Kolber has seen its mandate succeeded by Door Flies Open, a website launched by many of the former commenters of KSK articles. [DFO] has continued on the tradition of liveblogging football games during the season, storytelling using a mix of real-life and fantasy characters, food, puzzles, and more high-minded vulgarity. The site takes its name from a common stage cue used in KSK writer Drew Magary's posts involving Rex Ryan and the 2009-2012 New York Jets, typically when the coach bursts into the locker room with news & the line "How the fuck you doin', boys?". [11]

Related Research Articles

KSK may refer to:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Suzy Kolber</span> American football sideline reporter, co-producer, and sportscaster

Suzy Kolber (; born 1963 or 1964 is an American football sideline reporter, co-producer, and a former ESPN sports anchor and reporter. She was one of the original anchors of ESPN2 when it launched in 1993. Three years later, she left ESPN2 to join Fox Sports, but returned to ESPN in late 1999. In 2023, she and several other ESPN employees were terminated by the network in what was described as a cost-cutting measure.

ESPN Sunday Night Football was the ESPN cable network's weekly television broadcasts of Sunday evening National Football League (NFL) games. The first ESPN Sunday night broadcast occurred on November 8, 1987, while the last one aired on January 1, 2006.

<i>Joystiq</i> Video gaming blog

Joystiq was a video gaming blog founded in June 2004 as part of the Weblogs, Inc. family of weblogs, now owned by AOL. It was AOL's primary video game blog, with sister blogs dealing with MMORPG gaming in general and the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft in particular.

Weblogs, Inc. was a blog network that published content on a variety of subjects, including tech news, video games, automobiles, and pop culture. At one point, the network had as many as 90 blogs, although the vast majority of its traffic could be attributed to a smaller number of breakout titles, as was typical of most large-scale successful blog networks of the mid-2000s. Popular blogs included Engadget, Autoblog, TUAW, Joystiq, Luxist, Slashfood, Cinematical, TV Squad, Download Squad, Blogging Baby, Gadling, AdJab, and Blogging Stocks.

Small Dead Animals (SDA) is a Canadian blog, focusing largely on politics from a conservative perspective. Saskatchewan-based blogger Kate McMillan founded the blog and is the primary contributor.

<i>ESPN NFL 2K5</i> 2004 video game

ESPN NFL 2K5 is an American football video game developed by Visual Concepts for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox consoles. Co-Published by Global Star Software and Sega, it is the sixth installment of the NFL 2K series and the last to use official NFL licensing. Gameplay is presented as a live ESPN television broadcast and features the voices and digital likenesses of multiple ESPN on-air personalities.

<i>Monday Night Countdown</i> American TV series or program

Monday Night Countdown is an American pregame television program that is broadcast on ESPN, preceding its coverage of Monday Night Football. For the network's non-Monday broadcasts, the pregame show is simply titled NFL Countdown. When it debuted in 1993 as NFL Prime Monday, and Monday Night Football was airing on ABC, the pregame show was one of the first cross-pollinations between ESPN and ABC Sports, each of which operated largely under separate management at the time. The show was renamed Monday Night Countdown in 1998 to match its sister show Sunday NFL Countdown, and Monday Night Football moved from ABC to ESPN in 2006. When ABC began airing selected Monday Night Football games in 2016, the network's broadcasts were preceded by simulcasts of Monday Night Countdown. The current sponsor is Panera, starting with the 2023 season. Previous sponsors of the show include UPS, Applebee's, Call of Duty, Courtyard by Marriott and Subway.

NFL Matchup is a National Football League (NFL) preview show that airs every week during the regular season and playoffs. At various times, the official name was based on the current sponsor in the format [Sponsor Name] NFL Matchup. Since 2017 it is known simply as the ESPN NFL Matchup, and it is produced utilizing commentary and footage from NFL Films.

Deadspin is a sports blog founded by Will Leitch in 2005 and based in Chicago. Previously owned by Gawker Media and Univision Communications, it was sold to Lineup Publishing in March 2024.

William F. Leitch is an American writer and the founding editor of the Gawker Media former sports blog Deadspin. Leitch is a national correspondent for MLB.com, a contributing editor at New York, critic at Grierson & Leitch, contributor to The New York Times, GQ, The Washington Post and NBC News and has published six books, including Catch, a novel, Life as a Loser, a memoir, God Save the Fan, a book of sports essays and Are We Winning?, a book about fatherhood and baseball.

Harry's Place is a British conservative pro Zionist, pro Israel political blog concerned with monitoring Pro-Palestinian activists in England, and what the website writers perceive as extremism of the right and left, as well as anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

The Soxaholix is a comic-based blog published by pseudonymous Hart Brachen for Boston Red Sox fans to discuss the team and other sports-related news. Occasionally during the television season the blog also discusses the television drama Lost. The site began just prior to the 2004 baseball season. The author references many different sources of classic literature, modern literature, television shows, popular culture, and internet culture through the characters' dialogue. The setting for the comic revolves around a group of office co-workers in Boston and each daily strip focuses on the conversation of two of the characters in a back-and-forth manner similar to the comic Get your war on.

<i>EconTalk</i> Podcast

EconTalk is a weekly economics podcast hosted by Russ Roberts. Roberts, formerly an economics professor at George Mason University, is a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. On the podcast, Roberts typically interviews a single guest—often professional economists—on topics in economics. The podcast is hosted by the Library of Economics and Liberty, an online library sponsored by Liberty Fund. On EconTalk Roberts has interviewed more than a dozen Nobel Prize laureates including Nobel Prize in Economics recipients Ronald Coase, Milton Friedman, Gary Becker, and Joseph Stiglitz as well as Nobel Prize in Physics recipient Robert Laughlin.

Fire Joe Morgan was a sports journalism criticism blog which focused primarily on baseball. It was updated regularly from 2005 through 2008. Although the late sports commentator Joe Morgan was often criticized, the site did not target him exclusively, but rather criticized anything the writers considered to be ignorant journalism as a whole. The blog's slogan was "Where Bad Sports Journalism Comes to Die." The blog usually used a format known as fisking.

Cake Wrecks is an entertainment website featuring user-submitted photographs of professionally made cakes that are unintentionally humorous or strange in appearance. Founded in May 2008, inspiration for the confectionery-themed photoblog began when site-master Jen Yates received an e-mail that included a photo of a sheet cake, decorated with a customer's verbatim request: "best wishes suzanne, under neat that, we will miss you".

Namath: From Beaver Falls to Broadway is a 2012 documentary film focusing on Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Namath. Namath had stated that he was reluctant in joining the project, but subsequently stated his pleasure in doing so. The film was produced by NFL Films and HBO, and aired on the latter on January 28, 2012. The film documents Namath's early life in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, followed by his college football career at Alabama and career under Bear Bryant. The rest of the documentary focuses on Namath's career with the New York Jets, highlighted by his Super Bowl III win over the Baltimore Colts. The film also documents Namath's struggles with his alcoholism, which ended up leading to him going to drug rehabilitation. In the end, Namath discusses the possibility of returning to Beaver Falls to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his high school's state championship. Among those interviewed for the documentary include Namath's sister Rita Sims, brother Frank, daughter Jessica, former Jets Matt Snell, Don Maynard, John Schmitt, Richard Caster, Emerson Boozer and John Riggins, along with ESPN analyst Suzy Kolber, who was involved in an incident in 2003, in which a drunk Namath asked her to kiss him.

Andrew Schuyler Magary is an American journalist, humor columnist, podcast host, and novelist. He was a correspondent for GQ, has written three novels, and formerly was a long-time columnist for Deadspin. He currently writes for Defector Media and SFGate and is the author of The Night the Lights Went Out: A Memoir of Life with Brain Damage, a memoir chronicling his brain injury and subsequent recovery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">PFT Commenter</span> American sportswriter and podcaster

PFT Commenter is a sports media personality portrayed by Eric Sollenberger. Sollenberger, in the persona of PFT Commenter, is a sportswriter who covers the National Football League and US politics for online publication Barstool Sports. He has previously been published on other sports sites including Kissing Suzy Kolber, SBNation, Football Savages, as well as his own site, StrongTakes.com. PFT Commenter, whose name references Profootballtalk.com, is currently the co-host of the Barstool Sports podcast Pardon My Take. He also hosts the podcast, Macrodosing, with former NFL player Arian Foster.

References

  1. weblogawards.org (2006-12-18). "The 2006 Weblog Award Winners". weblogawards.org. Archived from the original on 2008-05-09. Retrieved 2008-04-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  2. Kevin Aylward (2007-11-09). "The 2007 Weblog Award Winners". weblogawards.org. Archived from the original on October 2, 2007. Retrieved 2008-04-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  3. weblogawards.org (2009-01-15). "The 2008 Weblog Awards Winners". weblogawards.org. Archived from the original on 2010-08-08. Retrieved 2009-03-16.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  4. Joe Rhodes (2006-08-30). "Suzy Kolber Has a Monday Night Date". tvguide.com. Retrieved 2009-03-16.
  5. deadspin.com (2006-07-28). "The Peter King-KSK Standoff". deadspin.com. Retrieved 2008-04-24.
  6. Ape, Christmas. "Fun With Peter King" . Retrieved 29 October 2012.
  7. Tobin Harshaw (2008-04-18). "Blog at Your Own Risk". The New York Times . Retrieved 2008-04-24.
  8. Joe Strupp (2008-04-17). "'Washington Post' Staffer Fired for Profane Sports Blogging". editorandpublisher.com. Archived from the original on 2008-04-20. Retrieved 2008-04-18.
  9. 1 2 "Smell Ya Later Forever, KSK". UPROXX. 2015-07-31. Retrieved 2016-05-10.
  10. 1 2 "So, What Now? The Future Of Kissing Suzy Kolber". UPROXX. 2015-08-07. Retrieved 2016-05-10.
  11. "There's A New Rex In Town". UPROXX. 2009-09-17. Retrieved 2016-05-10.