It’s always been easier for me to create things rather than to explain things I created.
This newsletter is no exception.
It’s not even a newsletter, per se, if we’re being technical. It’s a blog. A sports blog. Or a sports section in my utopian digital newsletter.
I've always read lots of sports blogs and sports sections of newspapers. I miss reading so many now-defunct sports blogs and now-defunct sports sections as well. (Deadspin, Sports On Earth, Grantland, ESPN TrueHoop Network, ESPN SweetSpot Network, Everyday Should Be Saturday, SB Nation Team Blogs, FOX Sports’ Just A Bit Outside, etc.)
I’ve been drawn to reading and writing about sports for as long as I can remember. It’s always been my passion in my professional life to read and write about sports.
What I want this newsletter to be is a digital sports section for sports fans who want to read a column, a feature, a gamer, or any other kind of story on a sports topic that interests you as much as it does me in the wonderful world of sports.
I hope that whenever you visit Sports Renaissance Man, you stumble onto a piece on a specific subject that interests you. I will often write about MLB, CFB, the NBA, the NFL, the Vols, the Hawks, the Braves, the Falcons, what I’m watching and reading, and whatever else is on my mind on any particular day.
So if you’re a fan of the NBA, MLB, college football, the Vols, the Falcons, the Hawks, the Braves, or all of the above, like I am, I always want this site to feature something you might want to read.
Always.
Who Is the Sports Renaissance Man?
My name is Chase Thomas, and I’m the Founder & Publisher of Sports Renaissance Man.
If you’re wondering where the name for this newsletter originated, I have your answer.
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The Chase Thomas Podcast
“Chase Thomas is one of my favorite up-and-coming guys in sports media. He covers a little bit of anything and everything in the sports world, a 2017 sports renaissance man.” - Brandon Anderson
I loved the nickname, so the nickname stuck.
A little more on me. I am originally from Stone Mountain, GA. I graduated from the University of North Georgia with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism, and a few years later, graduated from the University of Tennessee with a Master’s degree in Strategic & Digital Communications.
From North Georgia to Tennessee, it was always meant to be.
(Here’s a photo of me in a vintage North Georgia sweater below, back in the early ‘90s at a Tennessee vs. Vanderbilt game on the field at Neyland Stadium.)
I know not everyone reading my newsletter shares my passion for the Tennessee Vols, Atlanta sports, Friday Night Lights, the NBA, and so on.
Thankfully, Substack has a Sections feature that you can check out at the top of the homepage under the ‘Newsletters’ section.
If you only want to read my pieces on the NBA, you can subscribe to that section. If you only want to read my pieces on college football, you can subscribe to that section. It is my desire for this all to be a one-stop shop for a one-of-a-kind sports section.
I’ve separated each topic so that you, the reader, can make your own selections.
You can easily make your selections here.
Chase Thomas is the Sports Renaissance Man
Over the years, I have written for publications like SB Nation, Cox Media Group, VICE Sports, SI’s The Cauldron, ESPN’s TrueHoop Network, among many other outlets, and I’ve missed the kind of writing I did at those places.
From 2024 until late 2025, I hadn’t really been the sports renaissance man I was in early 2024 and the years prior. Longtime readers and listeners of The Chase Thomas Podcast know that I’ve focused on the University of Tennessee athletics for the last two years. That content shift paved the way for fun local Knoxville opportunities at TPL Tennessee & FOX Sports Knoxville. It gave me an excuse to chat daily with the awesome long-term friends I have made here in East Tennessee. However, what I’ve learned during those professional stops is how much I miss variety in my sports diet.
I’m not a sole-beat guy. I’m just not wired that way.
That’s what drove me in the early days of podcasting and writing. I loved talking with Georgia Southern’s Clay Helton one day and The Dan Patrick Show’s Todd Fritz the next on The Chase Thomas Podcast. I loved writing about Elimination Chamber one day and writing about the Dallas Cowboys the next at various outlets. The way that I’m wired is that I love to know a little bit about a lot in sports.
That’s not to say I won’t ever write about the Vols here at Sports Renaissance Man — it’s just that I won’t be doing so again as a primary beat. One day, I will write about Tennessee football, the next I will write about the Chicago White Sox. I need that creative freedom, ultimately.
Why Subscribe to Sports Renaissance Man?
This is an important question to answer. There are a lot of newsletters out there.
Why subscribe to this particular one?
I hope it’s my writing. I hope it’s my consistency. I hope it’s my passion. I hope it’s a collection of all those reasons.
As a native of Stone Mountain, Georgia, I grew up racing to the driveway to check Georgia high school football scores in the local newspaper early on Saturday mornings. I grew up around elite high school football, Parkview Forever, and my love for sports and sportswriting only grew from there. I memorized everything there was to know, or so I thought, about sports from the time I was around seven years old to the time I attended the University of Georgia’s journalism camp before my senior year of high school where a fellow journalism camper referred to me as a “walking sports encyclopedia”, but not in a complimentary way I would later learn. I struggle to function without a firm handle across all major sports. Whether it’s Friday Night Lights in East Tennessee or the Los Angeles Lakers, I like to stay on top of it all.
That’s the heartbeat of Sports Renaissance Man. To know a little bit about a lot in sports.
This is all I've ever wanted to do. Read and write professionally. I’m both too old to dream and too young to quit. I can’t imagine chasing anything else. Writing makes me happy. Typing Keying on this keyboard makes me happy.
In this publication, I will write about so many different things in sports, and I will do my darnedest to write well. This is a completely different kind of sports section, and I hope you will come along for the ride.
Best,
Chase
