I am two chapters into Dave Portnoy’s book, Cancel Me If You Can, sitting on a plane to Los Angeles without Wi-Fi. Shoutout United Airlines. (I’m already back in Boston now though and will write about my LA trip next week).

It was a work week with the Shadow Lion squad well spent!

I’ve written about Dave several times on this blog, I’m a huge fan of his and he’s really inspired my journey in media since my own day 1 back in 2019.

Without Dave starting a newspaper/blog and building Barstool Sports, I’d never have started the Morning Blitz newsletter and go on the journey that has led me to my current position (that I am loving) at Shadow Lion.

Dave has also been very kind to me in my interactions over the years. I’ve met him in the streets a handful of times and always get a kind hello out of him when I fanboy.

Then I met him professionally last winter when he came on our very first episode of our Ann Michael Maye cooking show, Beyond Bakemas, which was a smashing hit.

I sent Dave a cold DM on Instagram about the show.

He replied quickly, bought his own private jet from Florida to Boston and did the show.

Then he let us join him for a local pizza review with Ann Michael, which went extremely viral, and I watched a small business change in real time forever for the better.

Dave then was very active chatting with me in the DMs after the shoot, sharing and boosting all of the content we had produced.

He’ll forever be one on the top of my list of guys I’d love to have dinner with or play a round of golf (even though he sucks at golf).

And I get it, Dave is a controversial guy but he’s an entertainer and a genius and I look up to that.

But enough about Dave, that’s not what this newsletter is supposed to be about.

What inspired this blog is that in the first two chapters of his book, he writes about his “Core 4” guys who grinded for his newspaper for years for free just for the love of the game.

So, I want to talk about the core guys from my Morning Blitz days who grinded for zero cash and just the experience to be involved.

What is the Morning Blitz you ask?

It’s my baby that is no longer with us, but was a SportsCenter in an email type of newsletter sent 5x a week at 5am for 5 straight years never missing a day with a solid social media presence that I was very proud about building with my boyz.

We would post job applications on college job boards called “Sports Media Intern” and get thousands of applications. We sifted through every resume, called our favorite ones and gave a “job” to pretty much all of them.

We had no joke like 75 interns that wanted to help create our daily newsletter and social media content. We just started one large GroupMe and were extremely unorganized.

Although this was a little bit on purpose.

We wanted to see who of the 75 people in the group chat would rise to the occasion and show the most hustle.

Even though the reward was literally zero dollars.

But every time a recruiter called me when these guys were applying to real full-time jobs, I told the inquiring company they pretty much ran the business and would be a no-brainer hire.

And those are the guys I want to call out today, because without them, I’m not producing shows with Drake Maye’s wife on TV with Portnoy as a guest, hosting a Patriots podcast with two former players on TV, working with Gronk, Jameis Winston, Caleb Pressley, Kamaru Usman, Henry Cejudo and many others to build their own shows or having conversations with childhood idols pitching them on new content series.

None of that is happening at Shadow Lion without my “Blitz Boyz” as we called them.

Before I get to the interns, I want to shout out Noah Cartwright. My co-founder and college lacrosse teammate at Colgate. No one was smarter and wore more hats than this guy. The only reason we could hire interns is cause he set up the systems to do so. I never would’ve figured that stuff out. Along with many other things at the Blitz.

Noah is now killing it in the sports collectibles industry living in NYC.

Also, Griffin Harris, one of my best friends and was pivotal on the operations and marketing side of the business. After a great lax career at UVA that included a national championship, he’s had a successful finance career in NYC.

Now for the fricken rockstar interns that I owe my life to and someday hope I can actually compensate them…

Chase Lee: Michigan superfan. College football diehard.

Chase handled most of our college football “reporting”. He also had a liking to the brand sales side of the business. Something I also enjoyed and now work in day-to-day.

Pretty sure we gave Chase a Blitz email and made his signature the “Head of Sales”. He is directly responsible for lining up our very first 4-figure and 5-figure deal with a company called Legends. They spent $1K on newsletter ads (I think we gave them a million editions for this price), and then a year later they spent $10,000 (still 5 figures!!!) on video, podcast and newsletter ads. I thought I was Dave Portnoy and rich AF. Shoutout Chase for setting up that meeting.

We had the pleasure of getting a drink in Boston last summer and it was a treat to catch up. I actually wrote about this and teared up – read here.

After working for the Big Ten on the sales side of the house, Chase is now operating a very successful family business back home.

Jake Malasek: You may know this name cause he’s like a D-list celebrity now, but don’t tell him that.

He works for Barstool and is most notably Jon Gruden’s right-hand man.

Jake is hilarious and saw him at a Nantucket bar this summer and we both had the best time together.

Jake was our very first videographer / editor. He would make SICK NFL edits just pulling stuff from YouTube and slapping on an unlicensed rap song that went super hard. He would also do this for pro athletes we were connected with on their personal channels.

He was directly responsible for taking Morning Blitz from a newsletter, to having an elevated presence on social media.

Clearly, I had an eye for talent 😊 because the Barstool production team hired him right out of college after he finished at UVA.

Proud of you, brother. Keep absolutely killing it.

Ian Dardani: Ian is the most skilled writer I have ever come across. I say that completely unbiased.

Seriously, I’ve read a lot of sports BS over the years from very longtime professional writers and Ian is the most entertaining one by a mile.

He was concise, witty, informative, hilarious and a grinder.

He was also a magician on social media and started posting older, forgotten sports highlights on our channels that led to millions of monthly views and boosted our IG to 70K followers. He made a couple hilarious video skits I still giggle at as well.

Again, shoutout me for having an eye for talent… we actually ended up paying Ian after we raised some money and he graduated from college. We hired him as our full-time editor of the newsletter, and he took over the entire newsletter operation for 2 years.

After the Blitz “ended”, he went on to write for the NBA and built up their daily newsletter. Now he’s working on bringing other digital content formats to life for the NBA. Yes, the National Basketball Association.

Dan Rebain: The true GOAT and engine of the Blitz

No one had more heart and hustle than this kid right here. Simply the best attitude ever.

It would be 1am ET and the Lakers game just ended on the west coast. No one was more willing to not sleep and get the recap in the newsletter than this dude right here.

He could do every sport, but he was our reliable NHL and UFC reporter.

Still have never met Rebain in-person and there's no one on planet earth I'd rather buy a beer for than this man right here.

If sports companies out there are looking for a hard-working, skilled content producer and writer, this is your guy right here. Hit him up.

He’s done great reporting over the years for the NYC Red Bull MLS team as well as Army athletics. Guy is a STUD!

Jamie Gatlin: The most well-rounded guy we had!

He could do everything for the newsletter. MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL and beyond. He was also a Boston guy.

He was so damn reliable. Every single time we were in a pinch for content and needed help, Jamie was there.

I’ve really enjoyed watching Jamie is his career post-Blitz. He’s interviewed a number of superstar athletes including Bijan Robinson, Jamaal Charles and many more.

He’s been a great producer for several different news outlets including local Fox and ABC.

Consistency is king, that’s what Jamie is… a king.

Miller Romm: The only Yankees fan I ever actually liked.

He was at NYU at the time he was working with us and was a very talented MLB writer.

He was always hustling looking for new ways to add value to the Blitz.

Again, eye for talent. Miller now works at the YES Network. But Yankees suck so F you.

Luke Moriarty: He attended the same high school as me, Governor’s in Byfield, MA (shoutout Govs!), but we never actually overlapped cause I’m old as dirt. He then went on to play lacrosse at Princeton. Guy is a STUD.

We got connected and Luke was another guy that just did everything. Writing, helped with operations, really whatever it took.

After graduating from Princeton, he took a role with the Los Angeles Lakers (ever heard of em?) in their partnerships department. He is now working with the Phoenix Suns as the Manager, Partnership Strategy & Service.

His younger brother Will was another disciple for us.

He worked with Malasek in the videography department. Will just graduated from Wisconsin where he created a ton of incredible productions for the athletic department.

Then he just announced he got hired by GOLF.com, the largest golf media company in the world.

PROUD!

Again, I hate to keep patting myself on the back but eye for talent!!

Josh Belgrad: He was a Colgate guy that was there after I graduated and reached out to me looking for a way to help with the Blitz towards the later part of the journey. He helped more on the brand partnerships side of the business.

He is now working for one of the largest talent agencies in sports at UTA.

I was put on an email chain with him for our Rob Gronkowski World Cup project and he was Rob’s point of contact, and I have never been happier to see a name randomly appear on an email chain.

Now we’re doing real life business meetings! Crazy stuff.

There are many more Blitz Boyz that I missed along the way that helped. You know who you are and I also want to thank you guys.

I am so proud of the careers all of these guys have gone on to have in the sports industry and beyond.

Although most of them never made a dollar off me, I hope they saw benefits in other ways.

Never forget the people that help you along the way.

I’m sure Portnoy after making $500M went back to this “core 4” and gave them a surprise Christmas present. The goal is to one day do the same!

These dudes are all in the Blitz Hall of Fame. Which is a real thing BTW.

I kinda want to start a passion project sports podcast with all these dudes just for fun. Get the band back together. Fellas, hit me up if you’re interested.

Okay, plane just landed in LAX. With a dream and my cardigan.

First time in Los Angeles, let’s see how this goes. We’re filming episode 1 of a massive new NFL show with a national TV publication that is going to take the football world by storm. Stay tuned!

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