The Big Lead is back!

Hello and welcome back to The Big Lead!  

Recently it was announced that we acquired The Big Lead from Minute Media, with plans to relaunch and reinvigorate the site. I have a historical connection with TBL, overseeing it from 2012-19 as an executive, when the site was part of the USA Today Sports Media Group portfolio.   

The Big Lead has always been my daily read for trending sports, media and entertainment updates. Each day I would wake up and head straight to TBL. Jason McIntyre and the hard working staff would already have at least five posts up, plus the Daily Roundup, allowing me to get a quick dose on the top stories in sports and entertainment.        

When I arrived at my desk, I would open the Daily Roundup — an aggregation of top stories compiled by McIntyre (and more recently Kyle Koster & Ryan Phillips) – and leave it open in a browser tab. Throughout my day, whenever I needed a break or had a few minutes between calls and emails, I’d navigate back to the Roundup and scroll down to the next linked story. Every day it was a fascinating compilation of links to other publications covering a wide swath of useful (and sometimes useless…but fascinating) information spanning pop culture, entertainment, news, politics, the environment, media, music and well-written features on important topics. The Roundup led me to explore new publications, longform and in-depth journalism, while also engaging me with silly gifs and YouTube videos.   

Jason McIntyre launched TheBigLead as an independent blog in 2006 focused on trending sports media topics, news and gossip. Over the years, the site would keep its loyal fan base updated on trends and occasionally break news on sports media and personalities.  

Often, in the early Facebook and pre-sponsored content widget days, the below story comment section would turn into a group hangout where loyal readers would have long and respectful conversations with each other, many times diverting completely from the story topic, with comments often filled with hilarious and (fairly tasteful) jokes and gifs.     

In 2007, Colin Cowherd mentioned the site on his radio show, sending floods of internet traffic that temporarily took down the site.

Bleacher Report’s 2009 Q&A with McIntyre is an insightful read on what made Jason, and the site, tick.    

In June 2010, McIntyre sold the site to Fantasy Sports Ventures, who then merged their many sites into the USA Today Sports Media Group. McIntyre stayed on as the main voice of the site while continuing to add new staff that amplified his unique approach and expanded the site’s smart reporting.   

From 2012-19, I had the pleasure of working closely with McIntyre and the TBL staff to grow and evolve the site. It was exhilarating to work with a content team that had its finger on the daily pulse of trending sports, media and entertainment topics. And as a blog with a mostly young, male audience, it would often keep me on my toes by occasionally delving into opinions, sports gambling and risque topics that weren’t in tune with parent-USA TODAY editorial standards. My biggest miss was fumbling the idea of creating a daily TBL broadcast show to highlight TBL’s take on trending topics, which likely would have been innovative at the time and an audience hit (since 2016 McIntyre has been part of Fox Sports and now successfully co-hosts The Herd with Colin Cowherd).  

In 2019, USA Today Sports sold the site to Minute Media, and while McIntyre departed to focus on radio and broadcast, much of the existing staff continued to drive the TBL trending topic drum beat. Loyalists continued to bookmark TheBigLead.com and social media platforms continued to amplify TBL and send traffic to the site. In 2024, Minute Media acquired the rights to Sports Illustrated, and transitioned the TBL staff to post on SI.com.    

So…I saw an opportunity…and my partner Gary Lee and I jumped to acquire the site and social handles. Gary is an experienced and innovative digital guru who owns Dodgers Nation and other ad tech and publishing assets.     

The content strategy is being developed, and will quickly evolve. We plan to hire a content team that can continue with the TBL tradition of serving up fun and interesting digital content, while investing in new opportunities to grow our video and social presence. We plan to test, iterate, fail, adapt, and evolve with digital trends and audience interests.

We are looking for innovative journalists and content creators. 

We hope you will stick around, and visit often, to see how we are doing.

More to come.

Thank you

Chris Pirrone & Gary Lee