Tonight a six year tradition has been interupted, maybe forever, while a new season of the NFL kicks off. In August 2000 I approached an adult webmaster community with the idea of a weekly sportspicking game that was called somewhat unceremoniously “sportspicks.” Every year since 2000 it offered adult webmasters the chance to compete against each other picking the weekly NFL games. It was enjoyed by many webmasters who played and some impressive prizes were awarded over the six years it ran. It was something I never thought of as work each year but instead a lot of fun. We even had a sportspicks blog (now defunct too) for the last few seasons.

In July of this year my month to month contract with that adult webmaster organization ended and Sportpicks was sort of left, well, homeless. Around the same time we went on vacation and then my wife had neck surgery. Meanwhile I’d been thinking about what to do about Sportspicks. Would we do a new version under one of our own sites and offer it to mainstream sites as well as adult webmasters? That was the initial plan and felt like the right way to move, so I registered an appropriate domain name for the project. I even started scratching out some code and mentioned my plans in the forums when other adult webmasters inquired about the game (some of which read this blog). I promised them that I’d write something here updating what I planned to do about this season’s contest this week.

Well, tonight the hour is growing way past late as they are playing football as I write this post.

In order to recode the program in a couple weeks it was going to be a challenge with my time limitations and the end of summer upon us, but that wasn’t the reason tonight the tradition has ended. Somewhere along the way the last couple weeks I lost interest in the project. Maybe it’s the fact that we don’t have the NFL Sunday Ticket on DirecTV like we’ve had in year’s past or that I didn’t want to just throw together a new version that wasn’t a dilligent effort. Or maybe it was I keep reading about anti-gambling sportsbetting stories like the one below.

Sportingbet PLC, an online gambling company, said Thursday its chairman has been detained in the United States, two months after the chief executive of BetOnSports PLC was arrested in the U.S. on racketeering charges.

The company said a hearing has been scheduled for Sportingbet Chairman Peter Dicks, though no further details were given. Sportingbet declined to specify where in the U.S. Dicks was being held.

There was never any sort of gambling associated with the version of sportspicks I administered for six seasons, but in order to monetize a site like this on our own, there are limited advertising choices available. The best of which are sites like the one above which would be in violation of Washington state law. I’m sort of flummoxed these days on anything even potentially gambling-related — or that gives the impression of being gambling-related. It’s an area our company is currently trying to move at least a little bit away from rather than trying to invest in anew. This doesn’t mean we’re shutting down mostly personal sites like tdcasino.com (my wife and my blog about visiting terrestrial casinos).

Whatever the ultimate reason if you throw all this in a blender it still means I’ve killed the project at least for this season. Maybe not forever as the domain is registered and live (nothing there, so no point in linking). Maybe during this football season I’ll quietly work on it so next year I can pick up the tradition again. I like the idea of opening this up beyond adult webmasters and to others.

Next year, perhaps, the tradition can continue. Have you ever felt kind of empty after doing something for years and then stopping? I don’t want to use the word “quitting” as I really haven’t had the time to consciously quit anything and that’s not really what’s on my mind long term anyway, especially with the history. More like temporary hiatus. At least one season, but possibly more.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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