Six pieces that show what Beyond the Box Score is doing. Finance-trained reporting on the business and history of sports. If you are an editor looking for range, start here.
Available for freelance assignments and staff opportunities. Writing about sports since 2014. Finance background covering sports business, labor, history, and economics. Based in New York City. Reach me at the contact page or loneill2003@icloud.com.
Why your favorite team is actually a real estate play, a media company, and a private equity bet. Uses the Knicks, the Cowboys, and Manchester United to build a case about how franchise valuations really work and who benefits when the numbers go up.
Read the piece →Financial analysis translated for a general sports audience. Connecting real estate, media rights, and franchise economics without losing the reader.
Finance ReportingThe Curt Flood story told through the lens of labor economics and legal history. Traces the reserve clause from the 1870s through the 1976 free agency ruling, and argues that Flood's legacy is systematically undervalued by the sport he transformed.
Read the piece →Historical research with a clear point of view. Ability to find the economic angle inside a human story and make it feel personal rather than academic.
Historical NarrativeAn argument that the NFL's dominance is not about the quality of football but about the economics of supply. Uses broadcast revenue comparisons across leagues to show how sixteen games became the most valuable inventory in American sports.
Read the piece →Opinion writing with an economic backbone. Takes a contrarian position and defends it with data rather than rhetoric.
Analysis and OpinionDeconstructs the College Football Playoff expansion by tracing the media rights money behind it. Argues that the fairness framing was cover for a $7.8 billion broadcast negotiation and that the players were never part of the conversation.
Read the piece →Investigative framing applied to a widely covered story. Finding the financial angle that the mainstream coverage missed.
Investigative AngleCovers MLB's 2021 minor league contraction through the perspective of the communities that lost franchises. Examines the public financing angle — cities that built stadiums under affiliation agreements and got cut anyway — without losing the human side of what small-town professional baseball actually means.
Read the piece →Community impact reporting. Ability to hold both the financial story and the human story at the same time without letting one flatten the other.
Community ImpactTraces the business arc of pickleball from pandemic pastime to private equity target. Uses the MLP funding rounds and celebrity investor activity to argue that the sport's growth is structural, not viral, and examines the league war that could determine whether it survives its own momentum.
Read the piece →Emerging industry coverage. Ability to take a story that reads like a trend piece and ground it in real financial analysis.
Emerging SportsBefore Beyond the Box Score there was The Foul Language, a sports blog I was part of with a few friends from high school. I was 17 when I started writing there. These are the pieces from that era that show where the voice came from.
Written at age 19 trying to understand why sports fandom turns so easily into contempt. Uses LeBron, Kobe, Steph Curry, and Tom Brady as case studies. The question it asks is more relevant now than it was then.
Read the piece →Unfiltered early voice. A teenager asking genuine questions about sports culture without academic distance. The starting point of the RLO perspective.
Archive · Origin VoiceWritten hours after Super Bowl 50. Argues that Cam Newton will be remembered more for the dab than the football — and traces touchdown celebrations from the Miami Hurricanes through the viral era. Real-time writing on a story that was still happening.
Read the piece →Fast reactive writing on a live news cycle. Cultural analysis under deadline pressure. The kind of piece that shows you can turn something around while the story is still hot.
Archive · Reactive WritingWritten at The Foul Language in 2016 while the Warriors dynasty was actively happening. A Bay Area fan trying to identify the exact inflection point when a mediocre franchise became a dynasty. Real-time sports writing from someone who grew up watching this team.
Read the piece →Authentic fan voice with real stakes. Writing about a team you care about while the story is still unfolding. This is where the RLO voice started.
Archive · Fan Voice