Jon Bois

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the American sportswriter. For the English scholar, see John Bois.

Jon Bois
Born (1982-09-24) September 24, 1982 (age 38)
NationalityAmerican
OccupationCreative Director
EmployerSB Nation
Notable work
17776, Chart Party, Pretty Good, Fumble Dimension, History of the Seattle Mariners
Websitesbnation.com/authors/jon-bois

Jon Bois (/bɔɪs/;[1] born September 24, 1982) is an American sports writer, video producer, and YouTuber. He is currently employed as the creative director at SB Nation, a sports blogging network.[2] Bois is known for his speculative fiction works on sports, such as 17776, its follow-up 20020, and "The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles," as well as his documentary video series, including "Pretty Good", "Chart Party", and "Dorktown".

Career[]

Jon Bois was born on September 24, 1982, and is originally from Louisville, Kentucky.[3] From the fifth grade until high school, Bois was homeschooled.[4] He dropped out of college after one semester.[4] Bois worked at RadioShack sometime in the early to mid 2000s, later publishing multiple articles detailing his personal experiences as an employee.[5][6][7] Bois started as an editor at SB Nation in 2009.[8] From 2013 to 2015, Bois published "Breaking Madden," a series of articles in which he created unusual football scenarios in the Madden NFL video games.[9] In August 2014, he published "The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles," a sports story based on the fictional premise that NFL quarterback Tim Tebow had joined the Canadian Football League.[10][11]

In May 2015, Bois published the first episode of a documentary video series called "Pretty Good." The series told true stories of unusual events, often related to sports, such as the career path of baseball player Lonnie Smith, professional poker, and the infamous 1904 Olympic marathon, but also including a variety of other topics such as the Lawnchair Larry flight and the TV series 24. As of March 2021, the series has thirteen episodes, the last of which was published in September 2017.[12]

In 2016, Bois began another documentary video series called "Chart Party," in which he used statistical analysis to explore and understand sports stories. Of particular note, Bois published an episode in December 2016 called "Every NFL Score Ever," in which he discussed how football's scoring system makes some final game scores very unlikely, and coined the term "scorigami" to describe the act of achieving a never-before-seen final result.[13] The video led one viewer to create a website to track new scorigami instances, and the term has seen usage in other sports publications.[14][15]

In July 2017, Bois published a serialized multimedia narrative called 17776, a work of speculative fiction describing unusual forms of American football played in the distant future.[11] According to Bois, the story garnered four million pageviews from 700,000 unique visitors in two weeks.[16] The series won a National Magazine Award for Digital Innovation from the American Society of Magazine Editors.[17] Bois began a sequel to 17776, entitled 20020, in September 2020. A sequel to 20020, called 20021, was planned to be released in Spring 2021, but has been delayed.[18][19][20]

A chapter of Upon Further Review, a collection of sports what-if scenarios compiled by editor Mike Pesca published in 2018, was written by Bois, with his scenario being "What If Basketball Rims Were Smaller Than Basketballs?"[21]

In April 2018, Bois and fellow SB Nation personality Alex Rubenstein began the series "Dorktown", which followed a similar format and style as his prior series "Pretty Good", showcasing unusual events, statistics, and personalities from sports history. In 2020, Bois and Rubenstein released a 6-part special mini-series of Dorktown chronicling the history of the Seattle Mariners baseball franchise. [22] A "Supercut Edition" of the film, running 220 minutes in length, was released on YouTube on September 24, 2020. The film would go on to win the Best Documentary Feature award from the Seattle Film Critics Society in February 2021, with its first episode, "This is not an endorsement of arson," being listed by The New York Times as one of the best episodes of TV of 2020.[23][24] He and Rubenstein are in the process of releasing a similar documentary on the Atlanta Falcons American Football Franchise.[25]

In 2018, Bois collaborated with Felix Biederman of Chapo Trap House on the five-part documentary "Fighting In the Age of Loneliness", presented in style influenced by British documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis, which focuses on the development of Mixed Martial arts from the early development of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Vale Tudo in the development of more complex fighting styles. It focuses on the development of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) as a mainstream sport, including Pride Fighting Championship and the development of Ultimate Fighting Championships, and their parallels to the 21st century neoliberal socio-political landscape of financial collapse and inequality. On December 29, 2020, a supercut edition of Fighting in the Age of Loneliness was released to YouTube to commemorate the Secret Base channel accumulating 1 million subscribers.[26]

In 2019, Bois released a two-part series on professional athletes named Bob.[27][28] Titled "The Bob Emergency," the series details the specific stories of athletes named Bob, the title referring to the dwindling numbers of such athletes, with Bois only tallying 10 active athletes named Bob at the series' end on May 21, 2019. Bois has previously written on this topic, referring to it as the "The Bob Famine" in a 2012 article about Bob Sanders, believed to be the last Bob in American sports.[29]

On September 17, 2019, Bois and SB Nation video producer Kofie Yeboah started a video series called "Fumble Dimension". Similar to Bois's earlier "Breaking Madden", it consists of using in-game mechanics of sports video games to create unusual scenarios, usually with fan input.[30] The games involved vary wildly, involving the titles NBA 2K19,[31] NFL Head Coach 09,[32] The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour,[33] Out of the Park Baseball,[34] and Football Manager.[35]

He is a Kansas City Chiefs fan.[36]

Bois has a very distinctive audiovisual style, heavily utilizing Google Earth as a medium in which to place various visuals, making heavy use of newspaper articles, charts, and timelines. His videos often make use of smooth jazz as background music.

References[]

  1. ^ "We destroyed the NBA's future with a video game | Fumble Dimension Episode 1". SB Nation. September 18, 2019. Retrieved January 25, 2020.
  2. ^ "Masthead". SB Nation. April 28, 2017. Retrieved July 7, 2019.
  3. ^ Bois, Jon (September 25, 2012). "What It Feels Like To Be 30". SB Nation. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  4. ^ Jump up to: a b Bois, Jon (May 1, 2013). "Go to Homeschool". Vice. Retrieved November 17, 2020.
  5. ^ Bois, Jon (November 26, 2014). "A eulogy for RadioShack, the panicked and half-dead retail empire". SBNation.com. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
  6. ^ Bois, Jon (November 5, 2020). "The ballpoint pen". SBNation.com. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
  7. ^ Bois, Jon (February 19, 2015). "The end of RadioShack, through the eyes of a store manager". SBNation.com. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
  8. ^ Colon, David (August 3, 2015). "How'd you get that cool job: Jon Bois editor at SB Nation". Brokelyn. Retrieved July 7, 2019.
  9. ^ Bois, Jon. "Breaking Madden". SB Nation. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  10. ^ Bois, Jon (August 18, 2014). "The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles". SB Nation. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  11. ^ Jump up to: a b Crouch, Ian (July 12, 2017). "The Experimental Fiction That Imagines Football-Obsessed Americans in the Extremely Distant Future". The New Yorker. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  12. ^ Bois, Jon. "Pretty Good". SB Nation. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  13. ^ Mattingly, Dave. "NFL Scorigami". Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  14. ^ Musgrove, Kole (December 3, 2018). "Seahawks continue bizarre 'Scorigami' streak under Pete Carroll". Seahawks Wire. USA Today. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  15. ^ Roeder, Oliver (September 17, 2018). "Significant Digits For Monday, Sept. 17, 2018". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  16. ^ Bois, Jon [@jon_bois] (July 19, 2017). "over the last two weeks, 17776 got four million pageviews and 700,000 unique visitors. people stuck around for an average of 11 minutes" (Tweet). Retrieved July 25, 2017 – via Twitter.
  17. ^ American Society of Magazine Editors [@ASME1963] (March 13, 2018). "Ellies 2018: @SBNation wins Digital Innovation category for '17776: An American Football Story'" (Tweet). Retrieved July 17, 2018 – via Twitter.
  18. ^ "20020". Secret Base. SB Nation. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
  19. ^ MacAree, Graham; Bois, Jon. "20020 Open Thread". Secret Base. SB Nation. Retrieved October 2, 2020.
  20. ^ Bois, Jon [@jon_bois] (October 13, 2020). "PROBLEM: the giant football game in 20020 is way too large, there are 111 teams and 134,000 miles of field, we'll never be able to talk about this entire thing in just 12 parts SOLUTION: t.co/5WF7wlVPnA" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  21. ^ Roberts, Stephen V. (June 29, 2018). "What if Nixon had excelled in college football? What if Ali hadn't been banished?". The Washington Post.
  22. ^ Bois, Jon (March 25, 2020). "Why we're making a 3-hour documentary series on the Seattle Mariners". SBNation.com. Retrieved May 4, 2020.
  23. ^ ""Nomadland" Named Best Picture of 2020 by Seattle Film Critics Society". Seattle Film Critics Society. Retrieved February 17, 2021.
  24. ^ Poniewozik, James; Hale, Mike; Lyons, Margaret (December 17, 2020). "The Best TV Episodes of 2020". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
  25. ^ https://twitter.com/jon_bois/status/1425268750798962693?s=19
  26. ^ Fighting in the Age of Loneliness: Supercut edition, retrieved February 26, 2021
  27. ^ Bois, Jon (April 29, 2019). "The Bob Emergency: a study of athletes named Bob, Part I". Retrieved April 26, 2020 – via YouTube.
  28. ^ Bois, Jon (May 21, 2019). "The Bob Emergency: a study of athletes named Bob, Part II". Retrieved April 26, 2020 – via YouTube.
  29. ^ Bois, Jon (January 18, 2012). "The Bob Famine: Athletes Aren't Named 'Bob' Anymore And There's Nothing We Can Do About It". SBNation.com. Retrieved February 26, 2021.
  30. ^ "We destroyed the NBA's future with a video game | Fumble Dimension Episode 1". Retrieved October 26, 2020 – via YouTube.
  31. ^ We destroyed the NBA's future with a video game | Fumble Dimension Episode 1, retrieved February 26, 2021
  32. ^ We made the best NFL play ever for the worst NFL team ever | Fumble Dimension, retrieved February 26, 2021
  33. ^ We built and played the worst golf course ever and it was all your fault | Fumble Dimension Ep. 4, retrieved February 26, 2021
  34. ^ You made us hit 3,000 batters | Fumble Dimension, retrieved February 26, 2021
  35. ^ Our quest to either fix or ruin soccer, Part 1 | Fumble Dimension, retrieved February 26, 2021
  36. ^ Bois, Jon (October 6, 2015). "CHART PARTY: THE CHIEFS KICKED SEVEN FIELD GOALS AND LOST". Retrieved February 16, 2020 – via YouTube.

External links[]

Retrieved from ""