When you’ve decided to jump into the Tubes and type as hard as you can to let the world know how sports REALLY are, the first thing you need is a blog title.

I ripped the name of this blog from Boogie Down Productions’ “Criminal Minded” because I couldn’t come up with anything original that said “sports and a whole bunch of BS”. Some bloggers, like Sports by Brooks, Alana G, and Larry Brown Sports, take the “It’s me bitches” approach and use their name. Others completely make a name up or take a recognizable person/event and flip it into a catchy name.

I sent out an email to some of the more recognizable blogs from the ’sphere to see how they came up with their names. I can’t say that all of the answers are true but each offers some sort of insight.

DEADSPIN
Will Leitch- “We struggled for weeks to come up with one, and finally Nick Denton said, “Let’s call it Deadspin.” I asked him why. He said, “Dead and Spin are short, easy to remember words. Everyone will make fun of it and be confused for the first week, and then they’ll just accept it as the name and move on.” And he was right.”

THE BIG LEAD
TBL-”All the witty, one-word sports blog names were taken. And while talking with friends and family about a title, we were watching a college basketball game and somebody – Florida ? – opened up a big lead on someone …”
“and the way Verne Lundquist said ‘big lead’ sounded cool, so we went with it.”

KISSING SUZY KOLBER
Big Daddy Drew- “Ufford and I brainstormed names over a couple emails. KSK was one of the names he sent over. I think it was one of his first suggestions. It was obvious that was the best one. Never a moment of doubt. “Deep Thigh Bruise” was a distant second. It’s really not that good of a story. I was I could tell you it came us after being hit by errant space debris, but sadly no.”
Matt Ufford- “This was also before the days when 8000 blogs had used the Mad Libs version of naming a blog (verb ending in -ing + famous person), so it felt fresh and original.”

WITH LEATHER
Matt Ufford- “Ryan Perry — the owner of Fat Penguin Media who funded WL’s launch — and I kicked around ideas for weeks. I didn’t want anything with “sports” or “ball” in the title, and Ryan came up with With Leather, which winks at Chris Berman’s “You’re with me, leather” quote while still kind of making sense as being sports-related. Or related to a sexual fetish, which is what people assumed before the site became better known.

Anyway, I didn’t particularly like the name, but we needed to launch, and I’d apparently used up my good name idea on KSK, so that was that.”

MR. IRRELEVANT
Jamie Mottram- “At first it was A Cinderella Story, because it launched in March of ‘04, during the NCAA Tournament. But that quickly grew stale, and I renamed it Mr. Irrelevant just before the NFL Draft that April. Not sure why, other than, you know, it rang true. Still does.”

BALL DON’T LIE
JE Skeets- “It was a Tuesday. Lunch. Kelly Dwyer and I were playing ball down at the waterfront courts. I distinctly remember this because it was a little windy so KD was rocking his favorite neon jacket.

Like usual, our weekly one-on-one battle went back and forth. I jumped out to an early lead thanks to a few sexy teardrops, but KD found his step-back jumper — it was in one of his pockets stuck to an old lozenge — and tied it late.

10-10, KD’s ball, dead at 11.

Check.

KD jab stepped toward the basket, dribbled behind his back, pump fake, pump fake, pump fake — “Foul,” he says.

“What?” I barely touched him.

“I’ll shoot for the game. We’re running late, man.”

“Are you [expletive] kidding me?”

“What? We got to get back to the office; Jamie’s going to kill us.”

I’m obviously fuming, but he’s right — Mottram’s a goddamn slave driver.

“Fine.”

KD steps to the line, dribbles twice and calmly nails the free throw. Game.

“Nice shot.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, I was just thinking: You want to name the site Ball Don’t Lie?”

“Sure.”"

WALKOFF WALK
Rob Iracane- “When Kris and I were picking a name, I wanted to go with something
like “The Clockless Game” because baseball has no clock, right? But
that would have sounded too close to “Cockless” which would have been
ridiculously embarrassing. Kris wanted something with “Ghostrunner” in
it which is weird, because when we brought on our third writer Lloyd
the Barber, he came from the Blue Jays fan blog Ghostrunner on First.

In the end, my girlfriend suggested, “How about something with the
word ‘walkoff’ in it?” and from there we opined that “walkoff walk”
would be the perfect concept to embrace. It’s the sort of outre, weird
thing that is really humiliating for the pitcher and it doesn’t happen
all the time. It does, however, happen frequently enough that we can
celebrate it a few times a season, which we do by playing a delightful
video of a shrimp running on a treadmill.”

EVERY DAY SHOULD BE SATURDAY
Spencer Hall-”

Like that, but with a specific day in mind.”

Hugging Harold Reynolds
HHR-”With the millions of sports blogs out there, we wanted something both memorable and catchy. Even if you’ve never seen the site, if you’ve heard the name, chances are it stuck (and made you snicker). We also felt that with the numerous bumbling idiots on television, radio and in print, HR was one of the more knowledgeable and less annoying ones, and that he got a raw deal. People often confuse our “embracing” him with us mocking him.”

The 700 Level
Enrico- “I was bored one day right after I graduated college and was thinking there was no real good Philly sports websites, let alone blogs. This was in 2003 before sports blogs really existed. I instantly thought The 700 Level would be the perfect name for said site. I bought it, and started the site soon afterwards. To those unfamiliar, the name clearly pays homage to the storied section of the Veteran’s Stadium (RIP) where the drunks and rowdiest fans sat. So if that’s were the passionate fans used to go sit in real life, I figured our site could be a place for passionate fans to congregate on the web.”

Tirico Suave
Harvey Bars- “You mean the origin besides our unbridled and undying love for all things Gerardo?

It’s sort of an indirect reference to all the Tirico stuff that was in the ESPN Uncensored History book plus I guess we figured it was a name that people would remember. One of our first posts was actually a bunch of other names we considered. Looking back, they were fairly godawful.

Once you try some online sports betting, you won’t have to wonder how PartyBets got their name.