The Best of Times and the Beginning of B/R: Remembering Zander Freund
In 2005, Zander Freund and I, along with Bryan Goldberg and Dave Nemetz, co-founded Bleacher Report. We were all 21 or 22 at the time. B/R was a shared dream, and in the end it was a massive success. But the experience was also very challenging, in ways that are impossible for anyone to fully understand except the four of us. We all gave a lot.
Last Wednesday, three of us spoke at a celebration of Zan’s life. He died this fall after a long battle with addiction and mental health issues, at the age of 39. He is our second close friend whose life was cut short by opioids.
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I’ve cried a lot since he died. Frankly much more than I ever imagined I would for a non-family member. As I’ve reflected on the impact he had on my life, I’ve been overwhelmed with emotion and mostly gratitude. There just aren’t many people outside of my wife, kids and parents who mean more to me.
Zander was brilliant in unusual ways, but he was also extremely kind, caring and charismatic. He had a huge heart and a bigger soul. Some people really feel life, and I think Zan probably felt enough joy and pain in his years to match 10 normal lifetimes. He loved music, and if you spent real time with him you’d be converted into a super fan of Tupac, Phish and the Grateful Dead, at a minimum. He was an obsessive sports fan with an encyclopedic memory for sports history. His baseball and basketball knowledge was superb, but for someone who grew up during the heyday of the late '80s thru mid-'90s 49ers, his knowledge of earlier NFL history was astounding. No one has ever stuck up for Otto Graham more than Zander Freund.
Another way that Zan was special: He could disarm literally anyone in minutes and pull them into a long and open conversation. His ability to relate to people who were nothing like him on the surface was uncanny. I’ve seen him get people I was terrified of to start pouring out their most vulnerable feelings to him. It just came naturally. I credit Zander with helping me become a more compassionate and empathetic person. He was especially good at opening my eyes to other points of view and helping me try to walk in other people’s shoes. I think I’m a much happier person as a result, and hopefully a better person to my friends and family.
Zan was in charge of the writer community during the first four, "Wild West" years of Bleacher Report, and he and I sent out thousands and thousands of assignments to amateur writers who used our platform to build an audience around their sportswriting. I had the easy part. I just came up with the assignments. Zander actually had to partner with the writers…before we had any money to pay them!
He worked tirelessly to develop and nurture community leadership across most of the biggest leagues and teams we covered, and his efforts were crucial to helping B/R grow our initial base of a few million readers back when that was a really challenging thing to do. He was very well-liked by his colleagues, and a number of our early writers were able to leverage their Bleacher Report portfolios to find full-time work in the sports journalism industry, which made Zan very proud.
Our founding team all went to high school together, and Zander was the glue guy of a very eclectic and creative group of friends. There were 12 of us. We were a collection of nerds, jocks and popular kids. Some were all of the above.
We spent so much time at Zander’s that our parents' houses were almost more like our homes away from home. We were obsessed with music, dark humor, and sports, and we were nicknamed “The Zan Clan” by other kids at our school because Zander was just one of a kind and everything always ended up revolving around him.
And, yes, we were full-on obsessed with sports. We played them, we talked about them, we debated them. Nonstop, as a lifestyle. All of it with extreme passion and intensity. Every sport across every time period. We were just enthralled with greatness, and how competition reveals it. And, yeah, we made hundreds of lists and rankings over countless discussions, and...what else would you expect from the guys who started Bleacher Report?!
So in true B/R fashion, and as a final tribute to Zander, I’ll leave you with my five favorite sports memories that we shared together. I’m sorry it wasn’t a little longer, my friend, but it was a run I’ll treasure forever. I hope you’ve found your peace.
No. 5: Super Bowl XIX, Miami Dolphins vs. San Francisco 49ers
Zan was a connoisseur of NFL quarterbacks, and we were Bay Area kids who caught the tail end of Joe Montana and revered every minute of Steve Young. When we were kids, it was unquestioned fact that Joe Montana was the greatest quarterback who ever lived. He was the Michael Jordan of football. When it mattered most, he was a God.
During the height of the Peyton Manning-Tom Brady rivalry (I’ll just guess this was circa 2007), I made the mistake of proclaiming to Zander that we had to be honest: Montana was never as good as either of these guys. “Players in subsequent eras are always better than those who came before them, and look at how they’re throwing the ball down all over the field! It’s just how it works. (99 percent of the time!)"
Well, Zander proceeded to make me sit down on his couch as he popped in a VHS of the 1984 Super Bowl when Dan Marino, coming off the greatest regular season ever, matched up against Joe Montana. He didn’t say much; he just made me watch.
Marino was spectacular. Watching him at the height of his powers before injuries slowed him blew me away. Unbelievably quick release. So accurate, so much zip on the ball. But Montana was more, and the second half of that game left no doubt. He was like some combination of football artist and ballet dancer and magician. He had a skill-set and feel for the game at that point in his career that just didn’t exist in the NFL of 2007. After finishing the game, I was not so confident that the guys I was watching put up huge stats on Sundays were actually better than Joe Cool. Zander had relative comparisons imprinted in his brain for every famous athlete, ready to be discussed at all times. He was able to recall details big and subtle with more accuracy by far than anyone else I’ve ever met.
No. 4: Frispole and Tennis Court Baseball
These are two great games that we made up (at least as far as I remember) and had so many great times playing. I highly recommend them.
Frispole is a combination of half-court basketball and ultimate frisbee. Your goal is to touch the frisbee to or throw the frisbee off a pole that is usually the pole below a basketball hoop. The game is best played 2-on-2 or 3-on-3. If the frisbee touches the ground, you lose possession. If the player with the frisbee travels, you lose possession. The level of physicality is up to you. We would beat the crap out of each other.
Tennis Court Baseball is an amazing summer game over maybe a beer or two. The batter stands at one baseline with a crappy plastic bat (a small, kid's plastic bat is usually best). The pitcher (easiest if they’re from your own team) throws a tennis ball from just over the other side of the net in the center of the court. All the defensive players have to stand behind the net except the catcher. Any ball hit into the net is an out. Any ball that’s hit over the net is in play and normal baseball rules apply. First base is the right side of the net. Second base is the far center baseline. Third base is the left side of the net. A ball hit over the back fence is a home run. Anything that flies into the back fence is an automatic double. We had many good times playing this.
No. 3: The 2006 World Cup
A month before the 2006 World Cup in Germany, our co-founder Bryan Goldberg’s dad found out that he couldn’t use his tickets. They fell to Bryan, who invited our good friend Brandon plus Zander and me, and we went over for a week to immerse ourselves in all things World Cup and watch the USMNT play the Czech Republic and Italy.
A few points here: (1) The World Cup in Europe is the single coolest sporting experience on the planet by far. I’m as spoiled as it gets here, and there is just no second-place. (2) The cultural experience plus sports passion is unlike anything else. Every night we hung out with a different group of girls, usually from a different country. We sang songs with Swedes about Zlatan Ibrahimovic until late into the night. We poured out onto the streets of Hamburg with a hundred-thousand Germany fans after they scored two goals in the final three mins to beat Poland 2-1. We were part of a human wave that stretched further than we could see. We watched that match at a packed fish market. You can’t beat it. (3) There is nothing better than watching the U.S. national team in the World Cup. The energy is bananas. What an experience to share with my good friend.
No. 2: HORSE
I was the only one of our friends who played anything close to competitive basketball, and I was a decent shooter when I was younger, but Zander was on a totally different level. He spent years practicing shooting for hours every single day, and he could absolutely stroke the ball. He was the kind of guy who would shoot 100 free throws in a row and make all of them. Or he’d make 97 and be upset with himself.
He and I had hundreds or maybe thousands of epic HORSE battles that featured a lot of Jordan/Kobe-inspired turnaround jumpers and almost always proved out that he had much better and more consistent range. He was cash from 25 feet every day. Zander just loved to shoot. Like Klay Thompson before Klay Thompson, but without the defense. It was also a legit pleasure being his rebounder, a role that I and his other friends played many, many times.
No. 1: We Started and Built Bleacher Report Together
We were kids who just really, really loved sports. We had a crazy idea to put our passion to the mat and magically, through some risk plus a lot of blood, sweat and tears, it became something far greater than we ever could have imagined. It’s our shared legacy, and, in that sense, it means the world.
Dave Finocchio co-founded Bleacher Report with Bryan Goldberg, Dave Nemetz and Zander Freund in 2005. They sold B/R to Turner Broadcasting in 2012. Finocchio served as CEO of the company until June of 2019.
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