STF Q&A: Jonah Keri

Here at STF, we like to talk to other basketball savants whenever possible. Jonah Keri is a renaissance man within the writing profession, equally at home with investment advice, sabermetrics, or ribald jokes on Deadspin. His writing has appeared wherever ink is spilled on newsprint (or pixels on flatscreens), including Investor's Business Daily, ESPN.com, Salon.com, and Baseball Prospectus. He also wrote a book about baseball called Baseball Between the Numbers, and picked up an enviable gig as the College Basketball Closer at Deadspin. So, in short, you should really read this.


STF: You've contributed to the mathy goodness of Baseball Prospectus. Yet you also cut up with aplomb on ESPN.com and as the Deadspin Basketball Closer. Is there a history of multiple personality disorder in your family?

JK: Wait, I haven't even mentioned my primary source of income. Every day, I write The Big Picture for Investor's Business Daily, a stock market column stuffed with more of that analytical goodness, only on the money side. Then there's my weekly college hoops writing gig for the New York Sun, and various freelance shenanigans with a bunch of other publications.

It's not multiple personality disorder so much as it's the evolution of writing opportunities for journalists. When I started in J-school, I had my heart set on becoming a beat writer for a major league team. Then I realized that would mean far too many red-eye flights, stale hot dogs and jostling for position to hear Ivan Calderon pontificate on clutch hitting. So I tried to find an outlet where I could sit on my high horse and dazzle the world with my brilliant insights on baseball and/or college hoops. But a decade ago, landing that kind of gig meant paying your dues by covering JV archery for 30 years first. Since there weren't many exciting opportunities for young sports writers then, I gave business writing a whirl. In the interim, the evolution of the Web brought cool venues like Baseball Prospectus, opening up new opportunities. So I jumped on whatever fun sportswriting gigs I could find, while continuing to do the stock market thing.

STF: Speaking of math, how did Canadian + Baseball Prospectus + ESPN = Deadspin College Basketball Closer?

JK: There's all that stuff I mentioned above, followed by meeting Will Leitch in person at a Varsity Letters event where I was promoting Baseball Between the Numbers, followed by discovering that he's a huge Baseball Prospectus fan. Then when the '07 baseball season ended, I went looking for more college hoops writing work. I realized Deadspin had a Closer column for every sport in the known universe except college basketball (my favorite sport, especially since the Expos kicked the bucket). Will and I chatted, I agreed to Gawker Media's standard pay of magic beans and a lifetime supply of Snorg tees, and here we are.

STF: Most of us can point to a team that really started our love affair with college hoops. Which one did it for you?

JK: I had several, really. I mentioned this in the first edition of the Closer, but the first big college basketball game I can vividly remember watching was the '82 national championship game, and I rooted for Georgetown. Then the next year, I got sucked in by N.C. State and their Cinderella run, so I backed them for a while after that, through the Fire and Ice days, all that.

Years later, when we moved to L.A. so my wife could get her doctorate from USC, I became a big Trojans fan. It was obscene--we got tickets in the student section for every game in every sport for $100 a person. $100! Total! That meant seats right under the basket for every basketball game and on the 30-yard line for football games. We showed up in the Paul Hackett and Henry Bibby days, so there was some suffering involved before we got to enjoy the Carroll and Floyd eras.

I know all this makes me sound like a sports bigamist, but I went to university in my hometown of Montreal, where you didn't have 90,000 people and a horse and a giant band at football games, or 15,000 for a basketball game. For a long time, the experience of big-time U.S. collegiate sports was something I'd only experienced on TV.

STF: If we set aside Duke/UNC as a given, what are the other college basketball rivalry games you don't want to miss?

JK: USC/UCLA is the biggie for me, having been immersed in it for six years. I'm a big Pac-10 fan period. Because of the way the conference is set up, with five sets of natural geographic rivals, it's a ton of fun to follow.


I'm also growing to like some of these new rivalries that spring up from made-for-TV home-and-home match-ups. Washington State-Gonzaga is one of my favorites right now on that front. I try my best to never miss a Wisconsin-Marquette game. I really like watching mid-majors too, though it's hard to point to one particular mid-major rivalry that leaps out at you. I'll watch any A-10 game these days, that conference has had a great turnaround, especially at the top.

STF: You've proclaimed your love for the New Hampshire Wildcats, but they're 4-9, so I can't really do anything with that. Instead, I'll ask you to make your informed prediction: which team will grab the auto-bid in the America East?

JK: I've played pickup hoops at the UNH gym 2-3 times a week since moving here in '06 since it's walking distance from my house, so rooting for the Wildcats is really more about proximity than anything else. UNH hockey and football are light years ahead of the basketball team right now, though.

I've actually been impressed with the mighty Maryland-Baltimore County Retrievers, and not just because I like jaunty dogs who fetch sticks. They're 2-0 in conference and have already played Ohio State, West Virginia, George Washington and Wichita State. They're the early favorites to me.

STF: We have a feature here where we invite fans to rant about their favorite team. Do you have any sharp words for anyone that you'd like to vent?

JK: Hey Tim Floyd, you've got the most talented player in the nation on your team. Learn how to freaking use him! The Trojans drive me crazy this year. O.J. Mayo either goes for 34 and they lose, or defers too much early in the game, then starts launching terrible shots later in the game, and they lose. I loved watching the Trojans last year, with Nick Young, Gabe Pruitt and Lodrick Stewart sharing the scoring, Taj Gibson emerging as an exciting freshman, the team playing great D and looking efficient and polished on offense.

They're just too young this year, having Young and Pruitt leave early killed them. Mayo's one-and-done, and the way the Pac-10 looks right now, there's a chance he might not even get to play in the NCAA tournament in his one year on campus. Blech. Almost makes me long for the days of Scalabrine.

STF: You've taken some heat from the commentariat at Deadspin for writing about the mid-majors. Defend their place in the universe.

JK: I actually know where the Deadspin crowd is coming from. The majority of college hoops fans that I know start getting excited the minute their pen fills in the first team on their tournament bracket, maybe a couple weeks before that at most. Drexel's probably not going to win the national championship, neither is Miami (OH), and most mid-majors get very little TV exposure. So people tend to shrug their shoulders. I'm that rare maniac that counts down to Midnight Madness, buys every college hoops TV package known to man, and starts searching for exciting new players and nuggets of knowledge from the start of the season.

If people want to get into mid-major teams but don't know how, I'd say start slow. Put college basketball on your radar a few weeks earlier in the season, look for games that don't feature Carolina and Duke, check out some of the great college hoops writers out there like Ken Pomeroy, and see what you think.

STF: When one is named a Closer, there are stylistic choices to be made. So fess up. Are you more of a Rollie Fingers type, or a Kyra Sedgwick?

JK: I saw Kyra Sedgwick once at Pearson Airport in Toronto. She was completely loopy, having all kinds of trouble at security, being really loud and strange. I can only assume she was either hepped up on goofballs, or just really excited at the prospect of sharing a title with me a few years down the road. Whether or not this puts me one degree away from Kevin Bacon, that's for the courts to decide.


Thanks, Jonah! We'll be reading the College Hoops Closer all season, though we should probably spend a little time with Investor's Business Daily, if we know what's good for us.