Benched: What I Learned From Being Benched By Bleacher Report

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A week and one day later I have decided to pull a "Grant Wahl" and finally write a "tell all" article about my being benched by Bleacher Report.

I am writing this article for two reasons:  To share what I learned from being benched and how it affected me and as a lesson to other Bleacher Report creatures to show that people see what you say.

This article will be broken down into two parts.

Part one will share my reason(s) for being benched (Bleacher Reports version of a timeout/ban) and how it affected me.

Part two will share my incites and why everyone needs to take notice of what they say because everyone is watching.

Part One

On July 23, I logged into Bleacher Report.com, went to click the :write: icon to post my Seattle Mariners breaking news article.

I received a small 2x2 message that said, "You have been benched by bleacher report for your inappropriate behavior. To address this matter please contact info@bleacherreport.com."

It caught me a little off guard, but I proceeded to check my email and then I received a new inbox message from Dave Morrison stating that past altercations with another Bleacher Report writer had gone too far and that both me and the other writer had been banned for seven days.

By that time I had gotten a full page picture of the situation. The previous night before I was benched me and another writer got into an altercation.

As they say on ESPN, words were exchanged and the next thing you know it got out of hand.

Now this had all unfolded on an article that one Bleacher Report writer who was involved in the altercation had a problem with. Since then the article has been deleted and the writer had been banned but has now returned.

So I waited out my seven days which seemed like forever because the one thing that I love doing is writing, not just on Bleacher Report but sports writing in general.

Well as it turns out, during this seven day period I received a job offer to be writer for a sports website called Grid Iron Experts.com

I jumped at the opportunity because it gave me time to reflect off of Bleacher Report, and when I got this job offer five days out of the seven had already passed by.

So I had taken plenty of time to reflect and learn from the benching.

Now I do pride myself on professionalism and when the seven day ban had ended I personally spoke with all of the other writers that had seen the incident unfold. I personal apologized to Leroy Watson and Heart Beat Of the Bronx Stephen Meyer who have been great supporters of me since returning to Bleacher Report.

Both Meyer and Watson accepted the apology but also wanted me to prove that it was behind me and I have done exactly that.

This article is just meant to reach out to everyone on Bleacher Report and share my experience.

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