Before February 2006, ProFootballTalk.com was a hobby for me. From November 2001 until late 2002, the site didn’t earn a penny. Starting in late 2002, we solicited donations from time to time, which eventually covered expenses and provided a few extra bucks to buy a periodic bowl of soup.
We then began to churn up some cash via click-based ads, along with the rare direct sale of ad space. The numbers were decent, but it was still a hobby -- something that justified a couple hours of effort in the early morning, and maybe another hour or two after wrapping up the “day job.”
In February 2006, that changed. Dramatically. Sprint became the official telecommunications partner of PFT, and this thing became much more than a hobby.
At that point, I started shrinking my law practice and spending more time churning out content. As we churned out more content, the traffic grew. We started to hire other writers, and we began to update the site all day long, every day of the week. By July 1, 2009, when we launched the NBC partnership, PFT was a full-time operation, and it will continue to be for as long as I can type -- and hopefully well beyond that.
We’re fairly confident that PFT would have survived without Sprint, but it never would have really thrived. Now, even though Sprint’s official sponsorship of the NFL has concluded, Sprint’s relationship with PFT will continue.
Starting today, Sprint’s NFL Mobile Live becomes Sprint Football Live, with a PFT news feed, PFTV segments, a football-themed Twitter feed, and many more features.
For the upcoming draft, Sprint Football Live also has exclusive blogs from Sam Bradford, Ndamukong Suh, and Jay Glazer. (Glazer is projected to go in round seven, to a team that needs someone to run out and get the tee after kickoffs.)
So check out Sprint Football Live, if you’ve got a Sprint wireless device. If you don’t have a Sprint wireless device, you need to get one.