The Sports Judge preserves and revives the editorial work of The Sports Jury — a contributor-driven sports site that ran from roughly 2008 to 2014 — organized by author, with each story's images and view count kept alongside it. What follows is the story of the original publication.

An independent sports-media site, built before the model was obvious

The Sports Jury began as a project among friends from the FTJ Sports Forum — a tight circle of sports fans who wanted a place of their own to publish — and grew, as it caught on, into a contributor-driven publication where writers covered the games, storylines, and debates of the era for a growing online audience.

As the site caught on, it grew well beyond that original group, bringing on more writers to cover the games, storylines, and debates of the era.

“Bleacher Report before Bleacher Report.”

The founders describe it as an open platform where sports writers could publish, build a byline, and reach readers without waiting for a traditional media gatekeeper. The contributor model was the core of the site: recruit capable writers, give them a clear editorial lane, and keep the publishing engine running on a steady cadence.

~100kUnique monthly visitors at the site's peak
6 yrsFounded and operated, ~2008 through 2014
ContributorDriven publishing model, coordinated by a single operator

Operating the platform

Running The Sports Jury meant managing a full publishing operation: finding and recruiting writers, coordinating who covered what, keeping an editorial workflow moving, holding a publishing cadence readers could rely on, and administering the site itself — all while growing the audience to roughly 100,000 unique monthly visitors at its peak.

  • Writer recruitment and coordination across a distributed contributor roster.
  • Editorial workflow — assignments, review, and scheduling from pitch to publish.
  • A consistent publishing cadence that kept the site fresh and readers returning.
  • Site administration: platform upkeep, publishing tools, and day-to-day operations.
  • Audience development — traffic data read month over month, with editorial and growth decisions following what the numbers showed.

Writers & reach

The clearest measure of a contributor platform is what it does for its contributors. Several writers connected to The Sports Jury went on to wider visibility in sports media. In the early 2010s, several had work featured through SportsIllustrated.com — a meaningful marker for an independent site operating outside the established sports-media ecosystem. For the writers, The Sports Jury was a working byline and a proving ground; the model was simple: recruit well, edit consistently, publish reliably, and the platform lifts the people on it.

Key people of The Sports Jury, LLC

William Horschak President & Chief Executive Officer
Tom Johnson Executive Vice President
Ben Dial Vice President
Jacob Colonna Member
Mathew Orzechowski Member

What it taught

The Sports Jury was an early chapter, not the headline — and its value is what it established: working fluency in building and operating things online, earned years before that skill set became widely relevant.

Lesson Early Entrepreneurship Starting, owning, and sustaining a venture for roughly six years — the unglamorous discipline of keeping something running.
Lesson Web Publishing Hands-on site administration, publishing workflows, and content operations learned by doing rather than delegating.
Lesson Audience Development Growing traffic deliberately — letting the analytics show what readers returned for and building a cadence that earns the habit.
Lesson Managing Contributors Coordinating creative people toward a shared standard — recruiting, editing, and keeping a distributed roster productive.

Bylines are preserved as published. Where an original image could not be recovered, a placeholder or generated cover is shown. Archived editorial works are © The Sports Jury, LLC, a now-defunct Wisconsin LLC.