Who am I?

My name is Neil Paine, and I write about sports with a focus on statistics, data and analytics. Before I started this Substack, I was sports editor and a writer at Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight.com — you can see my whole archive here. I’ve also worked for the Sports-Reference family of websites, and was a consultant for the Atlanta Hawks. And of course, I sporadically co-host the hockey podcast A Couple Of Goons with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist

What will you find here?

I’m a big believer in storytelling that mixes the narrative tradition of sportswriting with modern statistical analysis. So what I hope to do here is to bring together those two worlds with stories that break down news and trends from the sports world today, along with historical stories like these every so often — heavily focusing on the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB, with NASCAR and various other sports showing up as well.

I also aim to do videos and podcasts eventually, and I would love your feedback about what you, the reader, want to see/hear more of. Email me to let me know what you think: neil.paine[at]gmail.com

Why subscribe?

Sign up if you want to support my work and stay up to date on what I’m doing. Also, once I get my footing here at Substack, I’d like to organize subscriber-only chats and other special features for those who are so instrumental to what I’m doing here. But even if you read for free, know that I appreciate you reading. The support from people like you has meant the world to me over the years that I’ve been lucky enough to write for a living.