Editor’s note: Alex Alvarado is a former contributor and editor-in-chief at Hustle Belt. It was sent to our email and lightly edited for formatting clarity.
He can be followed on Bluesky @aralvarado13.bsky.social.
I believe that sports should exist to make you feel hopeful.
I wish I could say that the leaders of our favorite sports want the same, but alas. Media leaders want money, and they want to prove just how much of it they can squeeze out of people who fell in love with their teams.
Which is really counter-intuitive to the whole experience! Because let’s
say the other easy thing: falling in love with your team should be free! The cost of admission should be you! Just you! You want to feel inspired! You want to be moved!
We’ve gotta live long enough to see the moments that we’ve never seen before! Do you have a favorite sports memory? What’s the craziest play you’ve ever seen? What’s the best game you’ve ever watched?
Who’s your favorite player? Who’s the most underrated?
What the hell does any of that have to do with anybody getting filthy rich?
Friends, let me say something else to you: Me and you: we are college sports.
Obviously, the players, the coaches, the athletic directors, the hot dog vendors, the security guards, the media, the NCAA, the Supreme Court, Disney, Fox, CBS, and of course, private equity firms are all big parts of what make college sports today.
But there are a lot of characters that make up college sports. We, the Hustle Belt dot com, founded by Matt Sussman in August of 2010, have always been a legitimate member of college sports.
Always.
These games need participation from everybody, that means everybody from the field or court (or wherever) to the ones on the sidelines.
And that means you, too.
Have you ever played these games yourself? Don’t care, doesn’t matter. Because you still showed up. Never left your house? Also doesn’t matter, because we probably saw each other in the comments section or on Twitter. Or maybe you were reading one of the hundreds of other fantastic and beautiful team blogs across SB Nation and our niche focus stopped you in your tracks for a second to make you think to yourself.
Really, a whole-ass blog about the MAC?
Or better yet: REALLY!!? THEY GOT A WHOLE-ASS BLOG ABOUT THE MAC!?!?!!!
After sneaking-in some MAC football and basketball references into his blog posts across the internet in the 2000’s, Sussman launched Hustle Belt with this mission in mind:
“It’s always been a scattershot attempt on my part to cover the conference, but in the spirit of the hustle-based Great Lakes region economy, we’ll churn out some of the finest homemade MAC blogging known to hominids.”
None of this exists without you. All of this ever happened because of you.
I hope we remember what matters most when we choose what the future of these games should look and feel like, because they’re really important to us.
Thank you for reading.
