Welcome to My New Mailing List

Plus Twitter alternatives and a Jalen Hurts interview.

Hi everyone, and welcome to the first edition of what I am very intentionally not calling a newsletter. Even though I am running this through Substack, it is strictly… my mailing list. Not that I have anything against newsletters, but I think that term implies some level of frequency, or at least a regular publishing schedule, and that is not what I’m going for here.

I set this up back in 2021, just to have another way to reach out to people when I have something important I want to share. (Shout out to anyone who signed up because they enjoyed my Olympics newsletter for Sports Illustrated that summer and hasn’t heard from me since!) For whatever reason, I hadn’t bothered to send one out, but it seems more worthwhile now.

I have spent the past 12 years as a chronic over-sharer on Twitter, which has been my platform of choice for bombarding people with everything from major career updates and long-term projects to, well, every single thought that popped into my head during an 11-hour NFL Sunday. With that place being run into the ground by a certain alleged business genius, I know a lot of people have either already bailed or are planning to as soon as a viable alternative arises.

I have always enjoyed interacting with the community I had built there, so my interest in maintaining a different way for those same people to keep in touch feels even more important than ever. (Hardly an original idea, as my feed has been full of people sending out links to follow them in a million other places.) I also know there are people who, even before Twitter fell apart, miss things on social media or take breaks for long stretches.

So subscribe to my Substack if you want to keep in touch. (Some of you are already reading this in your inbox, others are reading online and can subscribe here.) It’ll be good to have a way to reach everybody, including friends and readers who aren’t on social media, in case I write a book, start another podcast or become general manager of the Atlanta Falcons.

I plan to send out updates maybe 2-3 times per year. And as proof that I won’t spam you too much, keep in mind that I went two years between setting this up and sending anything out. Though you should be warned that when my Mitch Eats Food podcast hit 50 episodes, I compiled a “Best Of” list for people who were interested in listening to my best ones without going back through all 50, and I will probably send that out within the next few months.

Meanwhile, I’m not sure what will replace Twitter in my life, but I’m keeping an eye on a bunch of the possible contenders. You can follow me on Threads (which stinks right now, but might get better) or Bluesky (which feels like the most direct comp to Twitter, but is still invite-only and has a much smaller user base), and I still have a public Facebook page (which for years has been a place where I post links to all my work without anything else cluttering up the page).

Thanks again to everyone who has taken an interest in my career, supported me along the way, read and listened to my work, etc., etc. Readers and commenters have offered smart feedback and observations that have made my work better. I’m always grateful I get to do this for a living, and I look forward to making more stuff and sharing it with you.

Some recent work:

A few things to leave you with:

Last week I wrote a piece for SI in which I officially gave Jalen Hurts my Octopus of the Year award and spoke to him about his performance in Super Bowl LVII. If the first half of that sentence means nothing to you, it probably means you didn’t follow me on Twitter.

The week before, we brought back Bad Takes Week at The MMQB. I wrote an initial column introducing and explaining the series, wrote another column about why I think using computer chips to determine first downs won’t work as well as everyone expects and then appeared on The MMQB Podcast with Conor Orr to discuss all of the takes that ran on our site.

That’s all for now. Thanks again to all who subscribe.