SB Nation has decided to discontinue the Podcast. But we’re not done yet.

When I started the Pride of Detroit PODcast, I was a year coming up from a low, a very low spot. I had lost nearly everything after years of searching for work in Georgia, and I had just moved back in with my mother. I was taking jobs as a carpenter, dealing with abjectly low pay and haphazard clients and bosses. There was no future for me, there was no direction, nothing.

The one thing I had found over those quiet, listless years was listening to sports talk radio. It was ESPN Radio at its zenith. Scott Van Pelt, Dan Le Batard, Bomani Jones, Colin Cowherd and Freddie Freeman, those were the voices who filled the silence and let me view sports in a complete different light. For it had been a deathly serious affair for so long, but in radio there was fun. Sports were fun, they could be fun, you could kick back and talk with friends about it, laugh about ineptitude, poke fun at the monoliths and do bad Boston accents.

That fun led me to try to pursue this stuff on my own. I didn’t think it’d be more than a hobby. But within a year, a college football podcast I had started with my friend Ross had hooked me into a life I wanted to try to pursue. I was in Chicago covering Big Ten Football Media Days and I put in my application to write for Pride of Detroit.

Somehow that led to this PODcast. Sean Yuille left within a year, Jeremy let me run roughshod and before I knew it I was trying the same ridiculous nonsense with the Lions I had done with college football. It was a learning process, I was not good to start - but what I did figure out pretty quick is how a podcast, a radio show garnered so much powerful community.

When I’m at my lowest, I envision myself as a rat trying to claw up a wall as the rain falls and the water rises. I’m scrambling and my claws are scraping off the slick wet surface. I’m crying up at the other rats above, dry and safe, not understanding why I can’t get up there or why I can’t get any help. And I’m so full of despair and threatening to be swallowed by hate in turn. It drowns me.

But when we started to roll, when we started to find our groove, I didn’t feel like I was at that bottom. I managed to get a foothold in the radio business. I convinced myself that I could go back to school, I moved out on my own again and got back on my feet. It changed me. It saved me.

But this has been too much about me.

This wasn’t my microphone. It was a channel to you.

I wanted to be an arm to pull people up to stage. To turn the microphone to the lot of you, to hear what you had to say and reflect it. This isn’t about me, an ego or a take, it’s about being your voice. Your fire, your rage and spirit and hopes and passion, that’s what this is about. That’s what this is all about. If you didn’t care about the Detroit Lions, I wouldn’t be able to do it.

We may not claim to break news or be insiders with dubious sources, because I don’t think that’s what you really want. We can break down film and roster implications all we want, but I have never been with friends, having drinks and talking about all-22 film. You know what we talk about? What we think about Jared Goff, how we hate the big drop in the last game, how we wish a wide receiver would get up to speed already, and the certainty we know that we can kick the asses of the Chicago Bears.

You have to have fun, and you have to talk about sports in a fun way. This isn’t a Sun-Tzu treatise, this isn’t a science to be solved, nobody is going to hire you as a scout or color analyst because you’re well read. Smarts will only take you so far. Fun is how you prove your humanity. Humans play games, we make great big games and sports with elaborate rules and we dictate vast amounts of leisure time to it. It is beautiful, so beautiful.

On Thursday, SB Nation terminated my contract, but more than that, they terminated the entire podcast offerings of their network - which includes the Pride of Detroit PODcast. We are not the only podcast being dropped. Entire communities like ours are being forced to say farewell.

The move was communicated with such impromptu nature I found myself locked out of our platform Megaphone and couldn’t upload any new podcasts or recover any data about our show. The decision was made unilaterally, without any input from us, meeting us beforehand to let us argue our case or even get an opportunity to be part of whatever they have in mind to come next.

I consider this extremely unprofessional, but thankfully in this country the only professionalism ever demanded is from the lower rungs but never given from on high—I have to stand here and say “I want to thank SB Nation for the opportunity” to someone who actively destroyed nine years of my passionate labor, without any knowledge or concern about what it meant or how it made money. If I do not do that, that’s considered bad for my career.

God. Nine years of this. Nine years of finding friends and passionate people like me. It’s unreal. I tell people all the time, this wasn’t just a gig, it wasn’t just a job. This was something I looked forward to doing every week. No matter how good or bad the Lions were, I got to do this with Jeremy and Ryan and I got to talk to all of you.

We did this because of your passion. All I asked for it was a chance to be the one with the microphone having fun. I got that. I got all of that. The only thing I regret is that I still want more of it.

We’re not done. I don’t know what the next form takes. But rest assured, I’m not going anywhere. I love this community and Detroit Lions fans have showered me with it in turn the last few days. This can’t be the end. Not yet.

But I think the best thing to do at this point is to stop writing and do a podcast, and to talk with Jeremy and Ryan. We recorded this hours after being told we had to stop podcasting. It’s our last salvo here, as far as SB Nation is concerned.

This is the last PODcast.

See you starside. See you soon.

Editor’s Note: Hi, it’s Jeremy. First of all, I want to thank everyone who was ever involved in the podcast’s creation and growth. Secondly, a small request. Everyone involved in the podcast will still earn a paycheck from the show throughout the rest of April. That means any downloads or streams will still help support Chris, Ryan Mathews and Erik Schlitt. So if you care about supporting Lions creators who put hours, days, and years into this thing, please continue to download and stream our full archive. Have it playing on your computer when you run out to the grocery store. Download this entire Spotify playlist of our episodes. Support these people who have been an integral part of my life and hopefully yours.

If you want to find old episode of the PODcast you can do so on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow Pride Of Detroit on Twitch to get notified when we record the PODcast live and chat with us. Video replays are available on Twitch and YouTube. We will try to deliver updates on our next moves on those platforms when possible.