Catching Up With Evan Brunell

Who's Evan Brunell?  With a name like that, he sounds like he should be the quarterback for the San Diego Chargers or Atlanta Falcons.  He's not.  Evan is an entrepreneur (Quick: Say Entrepreneur three times fast with Triscuits in your mouth.  It can't be done.).  Sorry, lost my train of thought.  I like Triscuits.  Very wheaty.  Crunch.  Put them in the oven and heat them up.  Yum.

Sorry again.

Um...  Okay, Evan Brunell.  Did I give you the quarterback for the Chargers or Falcons line?  Uh... Yeah.  All right, moving on with this.  So Evan is a young upstart who has put his intense love for baseball and the Red Sox to good use.  He runs a company called MVN.com.  What is MVN.com?  It's one of the top places to go on the internet if you want to write a blog about sports.  You see, you can go it alone, like I've done.  Or you can go to places like MVN.com that provide all of the backroom support somebody, like you, may need to start a blog.   (By the way, Evan has two other blogs too: EvanBrunell.com and Firebrand of the American League.)

Anyway, Evan and I have communicated about doing some things together.  One thing led to another...  Well, we're in love!  We're getting married next month!  And I am soooo happy!

LOL.  I kid you.

Quick Aside - make sure I never - EVER - write LOL again.  Even if I'm spelling the word "lollipop."  I'll just write "pop" and you can decide whether I'm writing about a lollipop, a sodapop, or my dad.

Back to Evan.  He's a good guy.  I thought it would be interesting for you to read his story.  I would have done a full-blown audio interview, but Evan is deaf.  So not only is he young, he can't hear.  But he still loves baseball and he still runs a business built around it.  He's inspiring.  I'm proud to know him.

I prepared a handful of questions and emailed them to Evan.  He prepared a handful of answers and emailed them back to me.  Want to be slugs on walls and see our correspondence?  Then by all means, read on.  And keep your radio tuned to Jimmy Scott's High & Tight.  The home of Rock 'n' Roll!

1.  Describe the genesis of MVN.

I was sitting around one day with a friend and decided to start a Boston Red Sox blog. He, likewise, opted for Pittsburgh Pirates and the thought came into being that we should get a blogger for each team. Long story short, it evolved from there. A webmaster got wind of what we were doing, liked the idea and set up a site for us and the advertising allowed us to get bigger and better.

2.  Are you a fan of Genesis?  Or do you prefer Peter Gabriel?

Put me down in the camp of Eminem. It's tremendous fun hearing "Lose Yourself" in the mid-9th if the Red Sox are behind. I'm sure you've heard it plenty of time, having pitched against us for the hated New York team.

3.  What's your goal for the company and your career?

My goal for the company is for it to continue growing and (hopefully) be looked at as the independent version of ESPN.com. I wouldn't be opposed to
MVN being bought out by a mainstream media company, either, if it furthers the goal of providing an outlet for staff writers, bloggers and fans to all share in the passion of sports. As for my career, I would love to ride out the wave of MVN. If that's not possible, however, I'm an entrepreneur and I love baseball and writing. I'm sure I can squeak in a fit somewhere.

4.  Who signs up?  What are they looking for?

A fan who wants to be vocal. A fan who wants to write, who wants to get his opinion out there. And if it's not their thing to write an article, they can read articles from other fans just as passionate as they are and comment on their articles.

5.  How autonomous are the bloggers in your network?

We have three tiers of bloggers: users, partners and staff. Staff, as you can imagine, have to follow several guidelines from MVN, much like any employee has to for any company. Partners are blogs that we bring into the fold and personally recruit, so we know what we're getting there. Users are the unknown; anyone can sign up and say anything they want. Of course, if it's racial, profane and provides no value whatsoever, chances are your post
is getting deleted, but that should be obvious. Can't imagine that happening, though. I'm a big proponent of the First Amendment, as one may surmise given I hold a degree in journalism.

6.  What kind of traffic does MVN get overall?  What are your most popular blogs?

We usually get about a million page views each month, but we expect that number go up significantly. Sure would help if you endorsed us, Jimmy!

7.  How do you help promote the game of baseball?

Well, I promote it by giving it a space on the internet at my Red Sox blog, firebrandal.com. We also have a baseball section at MVN and we have numerous advertisers hawking their baseball products, mostly tickets. I also shell out a ton every year to go to ballparks and buy apparel.

8.  What are you wearing right now?

Black air monarchs, black under armour socks, boxers that say "I'm with stupid" and an arrow (bonus points if you know where the arrow points), a white undershirt and a black nike shirt. I suppose I should mention I have glasses too.

9.  How do you help the bloggers in your network so they can be heard (or read)?

Bloggers in our network get customized webpages that they creatively control as well as defray all technical costs to us. All MVN asks is that we put three graphical advertisements on the page, and that's it. In return, not only do you get the above, but you are aggressively promoted via our front page highlights and aggregation throughout MVN's communities. We also emphasize community (the outside kind) -- bringing in other bloggers to
contribute and fostering an environment of discussion.

10.  What's your business model for MVN and, separately, your bloggers?

MVN's model is to be the best and most innovative independent sports network around. That includes taking advantage of technology that becomes available to us with every passing second and coming up with innovative ideas that push us ahead of the competition. We want to be a friendly, customer-oriented site and I operate with the intent of making sure everyone
has a positive experience browsing MVN. For the bloggers on the network, I want to make sure their every need is taken care of and they truly enjoy being part of MVN and all that it offers.

11.  How is MVN different from SB Nation and other blog networks?

MVN is primarily different in that it is a family-owned business while the others have venture capital money in them. The other difference is in the new platform: we allow any user to sign up and contribute content (like Bleacher Report), we have a spot for bloggers to blog on similarly designed pages (like SB Nation), staff writers (like Fanhouse, ESPN) a 'recommend' feature (like Ballhype, Yardbarker), social networking (we'll have the most
advanced social networking tools of any sports blog network in the coming months), the ability to bring on needle-moving blogs by taking on support and web design responsibilities, leaving the blogger free to blog and remain independent (a new idea we've come up with). In essence, we took what made every sports network successful and packaged it together so you only have to go to one site... and then added more!

12.  What are your plans for MVN TV?

You mean besides it crushing ESPN? Well, our aim at the outset is to take advantage of a market that hasn't been explored -- that of sports media presenting opinion as a show, showing highlights but focusing primarily on reasoned, impassioned discourse in a friendly setting. We don't want talking heads on the cusp of exploding like they have on ESPN.

13.  What's the fastest land animal?

Jacoby Ellsbury.