PAUL EIDE'S WEIRD SPORTS ADVENTURE
No journalism degree. No master plan. An unreasonable work ethic, a writing contest in 1999, and somehow a whole lot of press credentials later.
The story behind Paul Eide, I-80 Sports Blog and 25+ years of sports, entertainment, and assorted weird shit.
Who is Paul Eide?
I’m a writer.
That’s probably the easiest answer.
I’ve been doing it professionally since 1999, and somewhere along the way writing took me into sports journalism, entertainment, men’s lifestyle, interviews, SEO, websites, and eventually marketing.
I’ve written for publications including Sports Illustrated and AskMen, covered major sporting events, interviewed people I grew up watching on television and accumulated an archive of stories, photographs and recordings that I’m finally organizing here at I-80 Sports Blog.
But none of this started the way you might expect.
Did you go to journalism school?
No.
I didn’t graduate from high school.
I didn’t graduate from college either.
I’ve never taken a journalism class, and nobody formally taught me how to write.
I’m completely self-taught.
Which admittedly makes what happened next a little weird.
So how the hell did you become a writer?
In 1999, a friend told me about a writing contest being held by The Reader in Omaha.
The deadline was Monday.
It was Friday.
The contest required three pieces of more than 500 words each, and because apparently this sounded like a reasonable weekend activity, I spent roughly the next 48 hours writing.
I submitted them.
I won.
That became my first real writing opportunity.
One of those early pieces was about something extremely important to American culture:
40 Ounces to Freedom — Which 40 Is Right For You? →
And from there, I just kept writing.
How did writing turn into sports journalism?
Gradually, then all at once.
I started with entertainment and lifestyle writing, kept chasing opportunities, kept saying yes, and eventually found myself covering more and more sports.
Football became a huge part of the work. So did NASCAR. Interviews became a regular thing. One assignment turned into another.
Eventually, I was covering Super Bowls, traveling to races, interviewing professional athletes, and getting invited into places that the kid who didn’t finish high school probably wouldn’t have predicted.
I never really had a five-year plan – I had a 24-hour plan. Single dad, divorce from hell, 15+ year custody battle, menial jobs, constant refinement of self + skills.
I just kept doing the work.
How many NASCAR races did you cover?
Around 30, in person.
For a stretch of my career, NASCAR sent me all over the country.
Garages. Pits. Tracks. Press rooms. Sponsor events. Drivers. Celebrities. Very questionable decisions.
Somewhere in there, I accumulated a pretty ridiculous archive of photographs and stories.
I WAS THERE →
You've covered Super Bowls too?
Yep.
And that’s one of the reasons I WAS THERE exists.
I could write a paragraph here explaining that I’ve covered major sporting events and interviewed famous athletes.
Or you can just look at the archive.
The second option feels more like me.
Who have you interviewed?
LOL how much time you got, buddy? A lot of people.
Michael Irvin. Tony La Russa. Frank Thomas. DeAndre Hopkins. Leigh Steinberg. Gabby Reece. Charles Tillman. Luke Kuechly. Mark Schlereth. Terry Bradshaw. Franco Harris. Blake Anderson. Katie Ledecky. Becky Sauerbrunn. Steph Curry. Drew Brees. Richard Petty. Candace Parker. Klay Thompson. Casey Calvert. ICE-T. Joe Gibbs. Steve Smith. Tobias Harris & Boban. Nelly. Yelawolf. Etc.
Athletes. Coaches. Agents. Actors. Models. Entertainers.
And quite a few people who don’t fit cleanly into any of those categories.
Some of those interviews became articles.
Some became podcasts.
And fortunately—or unfortunately—we kept a lot of the recordings.
The Tape Room is coming.
What was the weirdest interview you've ever done?
That’s going to require more than one answer.
There was the time an NFL kicker kicked a donut directly into my skull.
There was karaoke involving J.J. Watt and Kiefer Sutherland.
There have been celebrity dates, bizarre media events, questionable promotional concepts, and conversations that probably wouldn’t survive a modern corporate communications department.
That’s part of what this archive is for.
Did you really go on a date with April Rose?
Next question.
Did Cheryl Burke from DWTS invite you to her hotel room after the ESPYs?
Sort of.
Why did you start I-80 Sports Blog?
Originally?
I needed somewhere to keep my work.
I’d written for enough different outlets that my articles were scattered all over the internet. I-80 Sports Blog started largely as a portfolio and archive—a place where somebody could see the work I’d published, and where I could continue writing about whatever interested me.
Eventually, the site became something else.
I started answering sports questions I was curious about.
Then I discovered people were actually searching for those answers.
Stats. History. Records. Arguments. Forgotten players. Weird rules. Salary math. Sports questions nobody wakes up intending to research, but somehow desperately needs answered twenty minutes later.
And that’s how we ended up with…
What exactly is The Sports Hole?
You came looking for one answer.
That was your first mistake.
The Sports Hole is where the stats, histories, arguments, explainers, and wonderfully unnecessary sports questions live.
It’s the part of I-80 where one article about an NFL statistic somehow ends with you researching Madden ratings, PitchCom, and whether Joe Paterno really pooped his pants.
Enter at your own risk.
What does I WAS THERE mean?
Exactly what it sounds like.
These are the stories where I was actually there.
The interviews I conducted.
The events I attended.
The people I met.
The assignments I covered.
The road stories.
Rather than tell you I’ve had some pretty ridiculous access over the years, I figured I’d just put the evidence in one place.
Why don't you cover breaking sports news?
Because ESPN already exists.
So do CBS Sports, FOX Sports, NFL Network, and a thousand other organizations with reporters, television networks, league access, and enormous editorial staffs.
I have no interest in pretending I-80 is going to beat them to a Tuesday afternoon injury update.
What I can do is answer questions they probably aren’t going to spend 2,500 words answering.
Or tell you what happened when I was actually there.
That’s a lot more fun anyway.
Is I-80 Sports Blog a sports news site?
Not really.
It’s a sports archive.
Part journalism. Part sports history. Part reference library. Part personal archive. Part statistical rabbit hole.
And occasionally something that probably should have remained unpublished.
Sports Content You Didn’t Know You Wanted.
That’s been the idea for a long time.
It just took me a while to realize that’s what the site actually was.
Do you still consider yourself a journalist?
Yes.
But journalism is only one of the things I do now.
Learning to write led to learning content.
Content led to websites.
Websites led to SEO.
SEO led to branding.
And eventually, all of those things became interconnected.
My greatest skill is being able to learn whatever I need to learn, when I need to learn it.
I still write because writing is where everything started.
What do you do now?
Today, I run Wandering Eye Marketing, where I work on branding, websites, SEO, content, and helping businesses figure out how the hell they should present themselves to the world.
Which, when you think about it, isn’t that far removed from what I’ve been doing since 1999.
Find the story.
Figure out what matters.
Make people give a shit.
So what is all of this?
A pretty weird sports adventure.
I didn’t map it out.
I just kept working, kept writing, kept showing up, and—whenever somebody handed me a credential—tried not to waste the opportunity.
Fortunately, I kept a lot of the evidence.
Welcome to I-80.