Who are you?

Don’t worry, we get that a lot.

Who are you? What are you? Why are you?

We get it. It’s warranted. It’s understood. We didn’t exist a year ago, at least not collectively, not as the amalgam of Miami sports media misfits we are now.

Five Reasons Sports? What the hell is that?

(We sort of explain on the FAQs page here, but yeah, we’re faking it.).

Individually, you knew some of us.

You were a fan of the Miami Dolphins when they were trying to win? That O.J. McDuffie guy, the toughest teammate Dan Marino ever had, was always in the middle of it. Would have been fun for Dan to have played with our Chris Chambers too. And Seth Levit might have been nearby after the game, making sure to keep media nuisances like me from asking any probing questions.

You watch the Florida Panthers or Miami Heat on television?

Good shot you are aware of Steve Goldstein and Jason Jackson.

Probably more aware of Jax. It’s the ascot thing. Or that it… is… never… time for him to stop talking.

You scan Twitter to find out which future MVP that the Miami Marlins traded now? You probably saw it break from Craig Mish’s feed. Sometimes, he’s right.

You’ve trolled the Miami Dolphins message boards? There you have found the most detailed, thoughtful analysis on our troubled NFL team, from three characters who go by CK, Simon and Uptown — and then you may have re-read that very same analysis later in a major metropolitan newspaper under the name Chris Cordero. (Google it. Thank us later.)

You’ve followed a Miami Heat game on social media? Then you know all 3,123 of the Miami Heat Beat crew, some of whom can spell. (Thank you, Nekias.) They’re unbelievably unavoidable. And the one screaming is Alf. It’s always Alf. We know. Culture good, Process bad. Why’d we put you on a second podcast?

You’ve heard a radio play-by-play broadcast on Sports USA? Then you’ve heard Josh Appel. (OK, no one’s ever heard Sports USA. Sorry, Josh. That’s why you do wrestling here.).

You’ve heard of the Ballscast? No, you haven’t. We definitely haven’t. We tell every attorney at Seltzer Mayberg (shameless plug for a sponsor! we do that!) we haven’t. That podcast has a guy named Slim, with a Proper Sausages sandwich named after him?

But he’s not…. slim…..

You’ve been irritated by an unsolicited soccer opinion or an NBA playoff spreadsheet on the radio? Might have been Chris Wittyngham. Yeah, it was Chris Wittyngham.

And me?

Yeah, at some point over the past quarter-century you’ve probably read or heard something from me. Or about me. Better not to believe all of the latter.

(This is what this crew thinks of me in our group chat, by the way….)

So that’s who we are, individually.

But collectively? That’s something different.

We’re something different.

We’re…. you.

I know. We’re not thrilled about it either.

We’re the ones who care way too much about the local teams, even when they definitely don’t deserve it, which is basically all of them now. (I know, I know, the Heat will fix it.). We’re the ones who tweet about every play of every game, who create the mindless memes and .gifs (Camby!), who print up the #JustiseBetter t-shirts for the Heat’s Kids but are too cheap to pay for our logos, who have a furnace full of scorching takes that change with one bad Dolphins quarter, who actually know someone in the Marlins’ lineup, who still believe the Panthers are OK if they have games in hand, who proudly declare that the Canes are back when they beat Savannah State. We’re the ones who host watch parties, and never see a win. We’re 0-9-1, and that one is because we don’t really care that much about Real Madrid or FC Barcelona. Except the Cinco Razones trio. But I never understand what they’re saying.

And you needed us, kind of. You didn’t always, but you do now. The national outlets got too big to care about Miami sports, especially after the Big Three broke up. The local outlets got too small, smaller and smaller each year, smaller and smaller-minded at once, small as they may be. So they talk at you, not with you. They don’t ask your opinion. They ask for monthly subscriptions.

We just ask that you meet us.

All 50-plus of us.

We’re a football team, with the same number of playoff wins as the Dolphins for the past 19 years, but weaker ankles.

You can find all of us (young, old, men, women, white, black, Latino and of course an Anime lover, which proves we don’t discrimate) on the Who We Are page; we probably missed someone, but that’s part of the point. We could have put your photo there instead, especially instead of Tito’s, since we have no clue what he does here. You helped us build this from the single Five Reasons flagship podcast to 15 (16 soon) in less than a year.

You helped us get just one of our 60-plus Twitter accounts to nearly 10 million tweet impressions per month. You made us (well, at least me, but I dragged along the others) believe that this is not only a sustainable enterprise, but can be the top source of sports in South Florida (sorry, Lebby and Stu, we admire you and all but that ain’t your thing anymore).

And that, eventually we can expand to other markets, maybe first just by trekking up the Turnpike.

But for now?

We’re by Miami, for Miami — except for the curmudgeon in London with the funny accent, who somehow knows every long snapper the Dolphins are targeting in the draft. (I was right about Gase, Simon. You lovable wanker knob, you. I doing that right?).

We’re Dade, we’re Broward and we’re about to a be a little more Palm Beach.

We’re Sports on Your Schedule.

We’re Miami Sports on Demand.

We’re Small as We May Be — and proud of it.

(See the t-shirts. Note the logo and color scheme. Be careful with your interoffice e-mails.)

We’re a bunch of blissful idiots who should all be doing something meaningful with our lives, but instead we obsess about Vice color schemes and Erik Spoelstra’s early fourth quarter rotations and whether Ryan Fitzpatrick is too good and whether David Beckham will ultimately be housing his little soccer side in Wittyngham’s carefully-coiffed hair.

Nice to meet you.

All of you.

Well, some of you.

We hope a few of you will say the same to us, so long as we’re here.

Which, sorry to say, should be a while.

 

Ethan J. Skolnick can be found at @ethanjskolnick but mostly at @5ReasonsSports, all day and night long. 

Editor’s note: We’re not just sports here. Our hosts from Ballcast and Light Skinned Opinions and others will be posting Voice pieces on everything from culture to food to politics. Reader discretion advised…..  

 

The internet. This place where we pretend we come to to get sports scores but really just use to masturbate with is, by all accounts, mostly a hellscape of terrible memes, bad LeBron takes, Donald Trump Did a Racist Thing Again news, and Twitter. Sometimes — not often — but sometimes, however, the Internet can be a glorious place where the free exchange of ideas and perspective helps mankind shake its ever-thickening abeyant malaise to get back to the goal of achieving the heights of what Epictetus called “making the best use of what’s in our power” as a species.

And with the Avengers: Endgame theory that Ant-Man should totally kill Thanos by flying up into his ass and then growing giant, we’ve done just that.

This theory was posited a little over five months ago on Reddit then expanded on Twitter by @filmgloss, and it damn well needs to be the way Avengers: Endgame (in theaters April 26) ends or so help me I will protest by walking into the lobby of my movie theater, taking off my shoes, and dipping my feet in the slushie machine.

The idea is simple. The 285 or so Marvel movies that have come out have shown us that Scott Lang (aka Ant-Man) can shrink himself down to microscopic quantum levels. He can also grow into a 60-foot giant (he also happened to survive The Snap, if that means anything). We’ve seen him shrink down to get himself out of a pickle before. In Captain America: Civil War and in Ant-Man and the Wasp, we saw him grow giant and fuck some shit up Godzilla-style. So, with this information in mind, the theory posits that Ant-Man would simply shrink down small enough to enter Thanos’ asshole then, once deep inside the Titan’s dark mauve rectum, grow into a giant.

Boom, Thanos explodes via his shithole, he is dead, roll credits, onto the next 271 Marvel movies.

One can argue that the two most frustrating parts about Avengers: Infinity War were the times the heroes blew their shot at taking Thanos out. The first and most egregious fuck up was when Peter Quill (aka Star Lord) threw a giant hissy when he found out Gamora was dead and ruined the team’s best chance at bodying that purple sociopath once and for all. Then there was Thor’s pissing in the punchbowl when he failed to strike Thanos in the head with his hammer. Thanos even told Thor he should have gone for the head when he said — and this is a direct quote — “You should have gone for the head.”

Good grief, Thor. What the hell good is having the power to wield Mjolnir* if you’re not going to smash people in the face with it? Nordic God of Thunder my dick.

Anyway, this places us firmly in film symmetry-land. The place where movies circle back to an original point that ties shit together. So, instead of the obvious “going for the head” move, this time the Avengers need to go for the ass. Literally.

It would be epically glorious, and a befitting way for such a monster of a movie villain to go out. The dude snapped half the universe out of existence with his Michael Jackson glove. If this were real life, he would be considered a war criminal on par with despots like Adolf Hitler and Muammar Gaddafi (who, if reports are to be believed, happened to meet his own demise via the butt in a most heinous manner. Google it!). The punishment should fit the crime, is all I’m saying.

It would also be placed right up there with the greatest movie deaths of all time.

Hans Gruber falling off the skyscraper in Die Hard.

Sonny getting shot up in the causeway in The Godfather.

Samuel L. Jackson in Deep Blue Sea.

The Nazis face melting at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Colonel Kurtz getting hacked to death in Apocalypse Now.

James Cagney yelling “Top o’ the world, Ma!” at the end of White Heat.

The guy that blows up like a balloon and explodes in Big Trouble In Little China.

The guy that blows up like a balloon and explodes at the end of Live And Let Die.

HAL singing “Daisy” in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

This guy:

And, now, Thanos getting his ass blown the fuck up in Avengers: Endgame.

This needs to happen. I’m sorry. There simply is no way I’m going to sit in the theater for 4 god damn hours only to watch Thanos be defeated by the Avengers Working Out Their Differences And Using Their Powers In Unison Because, TEAMWORK!

Fuck that.

Anything less than having Ant-Man crawling into this giant purple dick’s anus and then blowing him up into ash is going to be the biggest cinematic letdown since George Lucas introduced us to Darth Vader as a little kid who screams out shit like, “Now THIS is pod racing!”

Alas, it probably won’t go down that way. Because everyone hates fun.

Just like the Internet, Hollywood can suck sometimes.

*Yes I know Thor uses Stormbreaker in that scene but Mjolnir makes for a better joke calm down, nerds.

 

Chris Joseph (@ByChrisJoseph) is a host of Ballscast, and has written for Deadspin, Miami New Times, CBS Sports, and several other outlets.