Back Porch Fanhouse Interview

Although the popular sports blog Deadspin has grown into much more than a one-man show over the last three years, it has always been viewed, first and foremost, as Will Leitch's site.

Until today. Leitch is leaving to become a contributing editor at New York magazine, and Gawker Media has announced that A.J. Daulerio, who had served as the site's senior writer, is taking over the top spot.

It's a busy day for Daulerio, but he took a few minutes to talk to me about how he felt when he got the job, where Deadspin is going, and why he thinks Stuart Scott has every right to hate him.

In a column that was intended to explain why a Detroit Pistons fan couldn't root for the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals, ESPN's Jemele Hill wrote that cheering "for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim."

Those words were quickly removed from her ESPN.com column, but the damage had been done: Hill was harshly criticized in the blogosphere and on Boston sports radio, and ESPN suspended her.

Now off suspension, Hill spoke to me by phone today. The interview is below.

Will Leitch has spent the last three years as the web's most influential sports blogger, and now he's joining the dreaded mainstream media.

New York Magazine is about to become his home, but before he leaves sports blogs behind, he agreed to talk to me for an interview in which we didn't discuss Buzz Bissinger (other than him assuring me that he had been talking to New York before the Bissinger blowup -- "it's not like they thought, Oh, that guy was on a TV show, let's get him'") but did discuss Deadspin's past and its future.

What will Deadspin look like post-Leitch? He told me, "I guarantee you, Deadspin is going to be considerably larger in a year than it is now." A full Q&A is below.

EliteXC brought mixed martial arts to the masses by televising five fights on CBS Saturday night. But while the show was a ratings success, many MMA fans have criticized it.

Some fans say the fights were stopped too early. Some fans say the main event between Kimbo Slice and James Thompson was more freak show than fight. Some fans say the quality of the action was inferior to the quality of fights that UFC puts out.

So was the EliteXC show good for the sport? I interviewed EliteXC Live Events President Gary Shaw on Monday, and that was my first question.

On Thursday I wrote that I thought Bob Costas booked Friday Night Lights author Buzz Bissinger on his HBO show alongside Deadspin blogger Will Leitch because he wanted precisely the explosive, Jerry Springer-style confrontation that their panel discussion turned out to be.

On Friday Costas called me to, in his words, "Correct your entirely incorrect assertion."

"Did I knowingly set up this kind of dynamic? Not only did I not do it but I would argue that it would not have been in my best interest to do it," Costas said. "I don't like Jerry Springer-type scenes. I prefer light over heat."

In fact, Costas said he expected Bissinger, a gifted writer and Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter, to show the same kind of thoughtful approach in his comments on the panel that he shows in his writing.

"I feel bad for Buzz," Costas said. "When you have a body of work like he has, when you have the talent and intellect that he has -- you know, even the greats can have a bad day. He's a Hall of Famer who had a bad game."