A Gaggle Of Clever Sportswriters Is Starting A Long-Form Web Concern

The Classical bills itself as "a running, wide-ranging conversation between us and our readers about baseball, basketball, soccer, football and fighting, and about things that aren't sports, too." It'll have long features and blogs, modeling itself after The Awl.

Yes, we know you've heard something like this before, and it will sound all the more familiar if we tell you that some of its founders—Bethlehem Shoals, Eric Nusbaum, and Eric Freeman—have written for Deadspin on occasion. (The Classical also lists SLAM's Lang Whitaker, WFMU's Tom Scharpling, and The Awl's David Roth among its founders.)

But this thing isn't like that other thing, because these writers know that other thing exists but they're doing this thing, and they say this thing will be unlike any existing sports website. So we trust them. And more reasons this thing won't be like that other thing: There will be comments, and the promotional video says the editors "will have final say on what goes on there." But I suppose they will not have Jimmy Kimmel, @humblebrag, or footnotes.

In the meantime, they have a Kickstarter and hope to raise $50,000 in backing. There are plenty of tchotchkes involved for those who contribute.