What’s up at SportsMyriad in 2013

When I left USA TODAY in 2010, I immediately embarked on two projects:

1. A book on The Ultimate Fighter.

2. This blog, SportsMyriad, with the intent to “flip the sports page inside-out.”

Those projects were sidetracked a bit, in a good way. USA TODAY kept giving me a lot of freelance work, particularly in its new magazine division. I also got a bit of work from ESPN. In 2011, it turned into a lot of work with espnW and still some more with USA TODAY, though I fulfilled my 2011 SportsMyriad plans, more or less.

In 2012, things shifted back to the 2010 plans. The book is, at long last, done — if you’d like to publish it, please get in touch.

And I learned a lot about what is and isn’t working on the blog.

In 2013, I plan to ignore all that. Well, sort of.

I’m not closing the door on freelance work — again, if you want something covered, please get in touch — but I’m going to focus a bit more on some long-form work. Tossing out bits of info on a blog that generated double-digit revenue exactly once — well, it’s fun, but it’s not adding to anyone’s college fund. (Seriously — I’d make more money grabbing two sticks and doing percussion solos on the railings at the Metro.)

I’m going to keep covering Olympic sports, but a lot of it will be framed in terms of medal projections. Sochi is only 14 months away, and as of now, I’m planning to be there.

Women’s soccer, in the words of that old movie quote, keeps pulling me back in. The stories are too interesting to ignore, and the lack of respect for the club game is too irritating to go unaddressed. Maybe I’ll find a project there as well.

I’m not quite sure what to do with the MLS team pages. I had to disconnect the news feeds when the site was snarled with traffic during the medal projection frenzy.

But I’m going to do another “page” project, and you can see that I’ve already started. I’m doing unofficial rankings — at least by category, if not by number — for each UFC weight class. And I’ll probably keep doing recaps of The Ultimate Fighter. I did write a book about it, you know.

The blog won’t have quite as much daily stuff. I’ll be sure to preview most of the things on the 2013 calendar, particularly Olympic sports that will count toward medal projections. For more daily stuff, check the Twitter feed.

Then for fun and informative features and videos, check the Monday Myriad.

So maybe a bean-counter would look at my stats and say the Monday Myriad and the youth soccer should go away. Well, it’s not. I have my reasons.

But the things you are reading — the medal projections, the women’s soccer news and so forth — will keep going as well.

After I get some “me” time.

Happy New Year.