“I never went into content creation with a career goal in mind of, ‘I’m going be a Stephen A. Smith,’ I was just like, ‘well, I’ll just see what happens if I go through this and I’ll see where I land,’ ” said Theo Ash, an independent sports journalist on TikTok and YouTube.
For someone who dropped out of Arizona State University’s sports journalism program, Ash is now at the forefront of a new wave of sports coverage by noticing the details in sports that he feels traditional media neglects.
Ash started his content creation on TikTok in the fall of 2020 where he started breaking down NFL games. He now has a following of nearly 330,000.
He has also managed to secure a deal with Blue Wire for the podcast “Stay Hot” with co-hosts Matthew Sponhour and Blaiden Kirk. The podcast has 33,000 YouTube subscribers.
Originally, Ash was not a fan of the content on TikTok when he was first introduced to it.
“I thought the app originally was just kind of childish,” he said.
“I didn’t think there was a lot of room for nuanced dialogue about sports on there. From what I could see, it was a lot of lip-syncing and joking around which wasn’t what I was looking to do,” Ash stated.
Even though the app didn’t start off as a place for sports coverage, Ash saw an opportunity and took it.
“On TikTok, it’s just kind of this unconquered frontier where I could go on there and be the most serious person talking about sports, and that’s a good way to grow, so eventually I decided to download that app and just give it a shot.”
By the time Ash started to post, other accounts were talking about sports – but not quite exactly how he wanted to approach it.
“I knew there was some appetite for sports content on there, but no one was actually getting into the nitty-gritty of it.”
The “nitty-gritty” content he posts is footage of NFL games where he breaks down what’s happening in a game which he calls “film breakdowns” or “film reviews.”
These film breakdowns of NFL games are where he challenges current sports narratives, recognizes players/teams whether they are performing well or not and overall helps NFL fans get a better understanding of the game.
Ash explained why he took this approach instead of showing stats like other creators.
“I wanted to be as accurate as possible and I realized that stats are just kind of this byproduct of the actual thing that’s happening on the field.
“There’s a lot that’s unquantifiable over a 17-game sample size…so, if I want to give people the best possible look at what’s going on in the sport, with their favorite teams and players, it’s not just to say like they had 5,000 yards and leave it at that.
“It’s to paint a lush picture of everything they do well and some of the things they struggle with.”
This way of sports coverage not only differs from other content creators but other traditional media outlets as Ash feels like sports’ talking heads don’t touch upon these details.
“I feel like you don’t always get that from Skip Bayless’ Show or Colin Cowherd’s show, which might be the biggest shows in the world…they’ve got a format that they stick to because they know that it works.
“There’s a lot of room outside of that format to grow over the years,” he stated.
However, Ash recognizes why people won’t get those details from those shows, “They’re out there every day…they just have the time to go watch and notice.”
Ash covering sports independently allows him to catch these details as he has more time in comparison to the traditional shows which has got his viewers to sometimes trust him more than people in traditional media.
An example of this is when he covers Super Bowl media days and how fans react to the questions he asks players at the podium.
“People in my comment section are like ‘this is so much better than the silly questions that get asked’ when I ask about like run fits or whatever,” Ash said.
Ash feels like some journalists aren’t as serious when it comes to asking questions to players as he has witnessed reporters looking up what questions to ask players at the podium on Google and ChatGPT which contributes to why fans have more trust in his opinions.
“There’s a lot of just aimless people, and I’m kind of aimless too because I don’t go down there working on a story.
“But at the end of the day, they’re football players and they like talking about football.
“A lot of people are there and they’re not inherently curious about what’s happening in the game or what happened throughout the season. They’re there, and they don’t break down film like I do,” Ash explained.
Though Ash and other sports content creators like him are not as big as sports media outlets like ESPN, he is glad to fill his role of exploring the curiosity of sports independently.
“Independent pages like mine are a little bit more appealing for some people, whether they realize it or not and I’m glad I can fill any kind of role in the ecosystem.
“I do hope that people who enjoy my film reviews try to carry that curiosity into all kinds of areas of their life, whether it be sports, school, politics, or whatever it is.
“As I get older, that’s definitely the thing that stands out the most to me about what I do is, just trying to carry that energy through everything,” Ash said.
