You may have noticed something new at the top of this page when you clicked on it today; if you were especially eagle-eyed you might have noticed it yesterday. Site maintenace is a necessary evil every now and then, so I’ve learned.
But the fact I know that at all is due to my partner in this venture, the sports-loving and detail-oriented byline you know as Davood Denavi. Davood has plenty of passions beyond that and maintains a site separate from this known as Binary Web. And as he explained in a post that dropped there yesterday, it’s a passion project that’s been decades in the making:
Back in 2005 I started my first blog, writing about sports or technology topics whenever I felt like it–usually only a couple times a week. Eventually, that blog went by the wayside because my education took precedence in 2007; my coursework at DePaul University started getting harder. In late 2009 I was getting ready to start a blog again when while discussing technology a friend called me a “walking contradiction”. That would become the name of my new blog, another short-lived attempt which only lasted until late 2012 before I entered my final year of classes at DePaul to earn my degree.
Then, during the holidays of 2020 as I was wrapping up a big website development contract, instead of starting my own blog again I offered Robbie Zoline, a friend of mine, a birthday/holiday gift of building his own blog to share his thoughts and hold full ownership of the content. I did this because he was posting a lot of thoughts to Facebook as longer statuses and I wanted him to be able to share those thoughts with people who do not use social media. He took me up on my offer and I built RZScoop for him.
Then I entered the picture, with my own pandemic-infused pent-up urge to launch a blog effort of my own, which the launch of Leblanguage.net in the spring of 2021. It was an especially significant year for me, largely because I made it a priority to reinvest in and see as many sporting events in person in as many different venues as I could afford at the time–that’s how much I missed that option during 2020. It was the first year since 1965 that I had not attended a live event of any kind, and I certainly hope it was the last. It made me realize how passionate I am about sports, and how I felt a second site might compliment both my desire to express as well as possibly open up new options for monetization. Off this vision, on the dog-whistling debut date of 2/22/22, Double Overtime was born. Your browser knows it as TheDoubleOvertime, since adding the same prefix as a certain Ohio university that another one of our contributors lives for saved us nearly $3000 in 
the effort to secure a domain.
And Lord knows we’ve tried to accomplish some form of monetizatibility along the way. We tried to integrate a fantasy league element. We’ve explored membership fees for more detailed content. We’ve toyed with adding audiovisual components. For one reason or another, usually several simultaneously, those efforts have borne no fruit to date.
But over at Binary Web, Davood has, after a lengthy wait, been approved for Google ads. And that happened to coincide with timing that he has that in an election year as gripping as this one, with a Democratic convention about to hit Chicago for what could be as tumultuous and emotional as the one that hit the city in 1968, an opinions blog with more different tentacles could appeal to a wider array of sponsors and draw more traffic to it.
Which led him to make this announcement yesterday which this site is reiterating today:
Starting on Sunday Binary News and Double Overtime will be one and the same. Double Overtime will become the sports page of Binary News and over the next week we will be merging RZScoop into Double Overtime. Then over the coming weeks we will be adding more sections to the site, starting with Technology and Entertainment. As part of this change our blog articles will see a few changes to the design including but not limited to a ‘Read Similar Articles’ section and Google Ads to help us bring in funds to pay some other writers on a per-article basis for contributing their opinions.
So the wheels are in motion for this effort. In the end, it will appear much the same as it always has, albeit with a few additional places to click which we hope you might be inspired to do. Heck, if Netflix can add ads to its experience, so can we. We are currently seeking paid advertisers from any and all sources, not just from Google Ads. Having spent more than a few hours sifting through the train wreck that Crackle became, I know better than most that varied and compelling ad content enhances the overall site experience.
More importantly, this will give us the ability to offer those of you with a nuanced take and a desire to express it the potential to be paid for such an effort once revenue begins to be generated. And by expanding the parameters beyond sports, more different voices will have those opportunities. We are actively seeking people to volunteer to write articles for our expanded site to join us who will have first dibs on being paid once revenue is generated. And we will also be looking for such voices to contribute to a podcast that will be available on YouTube with ads and in an ad-free form on a separate delivery platform. Some good ideas are worth being persistent about.
DOUBLE OVERTIME’s page will continue to be laser-focused on sports, including its more expansive overview of the increasingly evolving landscape of sports media. And Leblanguage will continue to be what it is–my own unique and experienced lens into the particulars of media, sports and life from the perspective of someone who’s immersed several decades of his own experience within them.
So strap on your proverbial hardhat and enjoy the ride. We’ll see you on the other side.
Courage…