491: Chris Stone on Why Sports Coverage and Media Isn’t Dying, It’s Fragmenting

Live from Super Bowl Radio Row, Joe Favorito and Scott Rosner sit down with Chris Stone, whose career spans across sports media at Sports Illustrated and the LA Times and Co-Founder of emerging platform, Off Ball, to unpack how sports storytelling is changing in real time. Stone explains Off Ball’s founding premise: making it easier to sort the “chaos” of the internet and surface the most interesting sports-and-culture stories across formats, from longform writing to YouTube shorts and social threads. He details Off Ball’s approach to human-driven curation (not aggregation), including how a small team selects dozens of pieces each day from a much larger universe and sends audiences directly to creators. The conversation also turns to the week’s major media news, Washington Post sports cuts, and what it signals about the difficulty of reinventing legacy organizations, the growing fragmentation of sports coverage, and why demand for high-quality local and cultural sports storytelling hasn’t disappeared. Stone shares what he’s learned in Off Ball’s first phase, establishing credibility and relationships with creators, and previews the platform’s next chapter: building original storytelling experiences and new formats, while helping connect the creator class with media outlets, brands, and leagues.Connect with Chris: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-stone-1401b31/The CUSP Show is hosted by Joe Favorito (@Joefav) and Tom Richardson (@ConvergenceTR) and produced by Sam Henry (@s_henry11), LJ Holmgren (@LJ_Holmgren), and Danny Hagenlocher (@DhColumbiaSPS), with social media efforts led by Lissa Ruiz. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thecuspshow.substack.com