Yesterday Ballhype and all the associated DailyRadar Blips sites were shut down. If you try to access them now, you're directed to a thank you page. From what I understand, even some close to the situation did not know this was coming.

Many might not know that I was one of the original Ballhype advisors, back when Jason and Erin Gurney were first starting the company. Jason first described the idea to me as "MySpace for sports fans" (hey, it was 2006, MySpace was still relevant). The idea eventually developed into a site that combined aggregation and ranking of sports content with user activity and other fun features like blog rankings.



Ballhype was definitely the Gurney's baby, but I'd like to think I was one of the cooler aunts or something. And I'm going to go ahead and take credit for the name of the site, which was originally called Ballhop, believe it or not. I suggested using the phrase "hype it up" (which was inspired by Yardbarker's "bark it up") and the name Ballhype was born.

Ballhype was sold to Future US in 2008 and the Gurneys eventually moved on. I ended up coming to work for Yardbarker later that year. (Contrary to popular belief there was never bad blood between the two companies, and we in fact have always been friendly.)

I don't want to overstate my contributions to Ballhype because it was really the product of gallons of Gurney blood, sweat, and tears. But I'll always have a special place in my heart for Ballhype, as I'm sure all of the original advisors, beta users, and early fans will too. *pours out some hyphy juice*