Sportswriter Jason Kirk graduated from Kennesaw State with a degree in English in 2006, and for the past nine years, he has worked as the college football editor of SBNation.com, among the country’s top producers of digital sports media.
Kirk does far more than his job title suggests. He writes a daily newsletter, regularly publishes articles and is a host on the podcast “Shutdown Fullcast.”
Recently, he helped launch the new multi-platform college football site Banner Society. This collective is self-described as “a college football internet” and it aims to create a wide variety of content for each form of social media.
As a student at KSU, Kirk was able to improve as both a writer and an editor by working as a tutor at the KSU Writing Center.
“[Being a tutor] was an insanely good experience,” Kirk said. “Classes are cool, but nothing beats experience.”
He mentioned that his professors were integral in the development of his writing. In particular, Kirk stated that Dr. Aaron Levy and Dr. Mary Lou Odom “really took it to the next level.”
After graduating, Kirk did not exactly plan on becoming a sports journalist. He learned a variety of skills by being a department manager at Publix, a writer for a textbook company and a developer for a web design company.
“I was just very lucky to have all these [jobs] that sort of built up to the right amount of experience,” he added.
Throughout this time, Kirk was a consistent reader of his future employer SBNation, especially loving the uniquely written college football blog. The articles were like nothing he had ever seen, filled with wit and humility.
When he read them, Kirk remembers thinking to himself, “Finally, someone gets it!”
After some years as a fan he began writing for the site as a hobby, and in March 2010 he joined the masthead of the site’s Atlanta Falcons blog. Due to his rapid success as a blogger, Kirk was hired as the site’s full-time college football editor that December.
In under a year, Kirk had gone from a fan of the page to being in charge of it.
Since then, Kirk has helped grow SBNation into a primary authority for college football coverage. This month, he and his team launched Banner Society, which now stands alone as SBNation’s college football media outlet.
It will allow writers to have total creative freedom by releasing both daily content on several social media platforms and more evergreen pieces on the website.
This choice was made to bring coverage directly to fans, rather than forcing them to seek it out. For this reason, it is not a website, but a “college football internet.”
What sets Kirk and his colleagues apart from other sports writers and editors is their shared focus — to make content that is fun. Instead of simply reporting the events of a season, they use humor and raw emotion to relate to more fans.
In this era of media and instant news, there is not a need for circumscribed game reports. College football has always been a source of joy for Kirk, and his work conjures that joy in each fan who reads it.
“I care much more about the fun [of football] than I do all this other stuff,” Kirk said. “I mean, we don’t watch sports because it makes us smarter.”
To read Kirk’s work, visit https://www.bannersociety.com. To listen to his podcast, follow ‘Shutdown Fullcast’ on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
