Website: www.bustedcoverage.com

Interview with: J Koot
When did you start Busted Coverage?

The site was originally started in July 2007 under the name Big Ten Tailgate but was changed to Busted Coverage in late November/ early December after Big Ten Conference lawyers advised me it was in my best interest. That situation taught me a valuable lesson: the Big Ten hates when your site ranks higher than it on Google.

Did the Big Ten shut you down because you talked about booze and women or just because you their name was in your domain?

A little of each. I don’t think they liked the entire premise. These conferences want to come across as holy but the schools do very little to stop the boozing and canoodling. They pretend to care, i.e. Wisconsin started giving Breathalyzer’s to underage students who had previous alcohol violations before entering football games.

It’s a smoke screen. Without the frat house atmosphere you’d see less attendance and we know where that leads.

Look at NASCAR. They took an event and turned it into Mardi Gras every Sunday afternoon. A huge segment of society wants that escape on a weekly basis. It’s a billion dollar business.

At the end of the day, the Big Ten wants to squash use of its name with such activities. But that doesn’t stop them from showing boozing on its Big Ten Network.

What made you start it?

There isn’t a great story behind the site. It was just a chance to talk sports and post stupid items of interest. Things started to evolve in September when I found the lack of interesting Big Ten sites. So much of the shit out there was game talk, game review, game discussion. If I wanted that I’d just watch the game at a sports bar with my buddies. There is so much more to the football scene. Once I went in the direction of debauchery and out of control fans, the site gained readership and a reputation.

Aspiring bloggers should follow this advice: Don’t think you are going to be the next Jimmy Cannon.

Be creative, timely and interesting. Controversial writing never hurt, either.

What is your background?

Traditional media. Print. Advertising. I’ve done just about everything there is in the newspaper world. Writing, pagination, design, production. Print will always be my love. I don’t subscribe to the notion that blogs will eventually rule the world. Blogs rip off the print industry every single day. Radio rips off the print industry every single day. Broadcast news rips off the print industry every single day.

I grew up with a newspaper being delivered to the house and feel its still the best source of portable news available.

Many bloggers feel its their duty to bash print. Take a look where the same blogger gets his information.

You did a tournament bracket for best sports blog of 2007, how much extra traffic did it bring you?

The sports blog tournament brought in terrific numbers. The blogging world embraced the concept and ran with it. Several blogs took it very seriously. I must say that Metsblog has a crazy following and a great product.

The blog tournament was derived from the lack of legit football in late December. I figured why not end the year with this idea of seeding blogs. It’s natural to see how you compare to other blogs. Connections made with some of the bigger blogs allowed me to spread the word quickly. Once word got out things fell into place.

What type of blogging software do you use?

Wordpress. Is there anything better? Simply a revolution in digital publishing.

What ad network(s) do you use?

Adsense and Adbrite. Ideally there would be more display advertising going on.

How much money do you make off your site monthly?

Not enough to give up a full-time job. But the opportunity is there to make dollars. That’s what makes the Internet so great. It’s impossible to buy a newspaper, but you can be a digital publisher in a matter of hours. Making money right now is secondary to building a great product that others think is interesting, funny and an escape from their regular lives.

What are some of your favorite blogs and what are some of your least favorite blogs?

There are so many guys producing great content. One site that holds my attention is TV Tan Line. It’s the next best thing to actually watching a football game. I never would have guessed posting screen shots would win me over.

I usually start my day with The Big Lead’s Daily Roundup. It’s a great place to find nuggets of information.

Blogs that attract my attention make a point and quickly. I’m not going to read a 1500-word report on why Pittsburgh should have gone for 2 in the 3rd quarter. Let’s not joke ourselves. We all watch SportsCenter. I already know what happened in the game. I want to know what it looked like outside the stadium before the game and afterwards when your buddy Tony was making out with the fat Cleveland chick.

Any bold predictions for the future of sports on the internet?

Will Leitch will have a movie made about his life becoming the all-time most famous sports blogger? That’s bold, eh.

On a serious note, sports blogging is in its infancy. Where we go will be dictated by advertising dollars and how badly the major media companies want exposure to a younger audience.

STN’s Take:

With Joe’s writing style and his inclusion of skin you really can’t go wrong with reading Busted Coverage. It would be interesting to see how many other blogs have been threatened with a lawsuit like Big Ten Tailgate was. We are sure they can’t be the only one. For those of you that don’t know, Busted Coverage was actually apart of our Top 25 Sports Blogs for December. Based on Compete numbers they basically went from 7,000 uniques in November at Big Ten Tailgate to 25,000 in December at Busted Coverage. We believe they received that huge jump in traffic due to their top blogger bracket tournament. We are real interested to see if they can keep that traffic around for January.

In regards to our suggestions, please take off the full page Adbrite ads. They are very annoying. Those are the types of ads that drive people away from your site. Also, I am not sure why some Wordpress blogs do this but their pages are indexed by numbers and that can cost you in the traffic category. Google likes to read the page index first and if all they see is a number instead of the title of the article, your page may not get indexed correctly.