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(Update, March 6: Isaac died Thursday, his family said. “Andy passed away peacefully this morning beside his loving family,” the family wrote on his X account. “We thank you all for your support and love over the years. This was a genuine space of laughter and kindness. Please carry this spirit on in honor of Andy. As always, Faturday forever and FTB.” Our original story appears below.)
Earlier this week, sports blogging pioneer Andy Isaac announced that he was entering hospice care after battling cancer for nearly 20 years.
“Life has been a struggle these last few months and years. I hope I can find some peace in hospice,” Isaac wrote on multiple social media platforms. “I may keep a journal of my final days. I’m not sure yet. I’m tired and I’m in pain. I have a horrible foot infection that is preventing me from walking and I just don’t have the strength to do all the last minute things I want. But I’ll try. I hope I gave you all a positive impact on life. I hope I made even the smallest impact.”
Isaac, 44, had been candid about his ups and downs during cancer treatment for years after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2006, and the news sent shockwaves through the digital sports media community that is familiar with him both through his work and as a friend.
Isaac co-founded the men’s culture site Guyism in 2009, with Chris Spagnuolo, Cass Anderson, and Doug Scheckler. It was a merger of sorts between their personal blogs; Isaac’s was called World of Isaac, which would remain his X handle through the present day.
The site went viral in the early days of social media, and was frequently linked on Jimmy Traina’s Hot Clicks column at Sports Illustrated, receiving a firehose of traffic. Katie Nolan worked at the site for a stretch and was ultimately discovered there by Fox producers for the FS1 show Crowd Goes Wild which also featured Regis Philbin and Jason Gay.
“He was a pioneer in GIF creation and real-time sports clipping and was the first person I knew and worked with that was lightning fast at getting real-time clips onto Twitter, and he opened a lot of people’s eyes to how Twitter could be used that way while watching live sports,” Anderson recalled. “He had his own brand of humor which everyone loves/loved because he’s so unique and always did a great job of helping lift up female talent in the industry, which we’ve seen testimonials of on Twitter for the last 24 hours.”
Fellow Guyism co-founder Spagnuolo said Isaac was an exemplary teammate and an optimist in spite of his health struggles. “Even though the cancer was obviously always a big part of who he was, he really had one of the most positive world views of anyone I’ve ever come across in spite of that,” Spagnuolo said.
Guyism was acquired by the company Woven Digital in 2013 and merged with another men’s culture site, Bro Bible, the following year. Woven ultimately became Uproxx Media, and Isaac remained there as Senior Director of User Acquisition and Strategy until 2022.
Brandon Wenerd, a founding partner at Bro Bible, recalled the time Isaac “led the charge” of a group of colleagues to fly to New York for the funeral of Jerry Sullivan, a behind-the-scenes developer of Uproxx, back in 2017.
“It’s always stuck with me how much it meant to Jerry’s family that some people from his work came,” Wenerd said.
Isaac was a voracious eater. He made food review videos across the Detroit region, kept an ongoing ranking list of Dairy Queen Blizzards from best to worst, and created the “Faturday” moniker where every Saturday like clockwork he would chronicle his latest feast.
He was also a die-hard Detroit and Michigan State sports fan, to the extent that the official X accounts for the Pistons and Lions responded to his announcement with heart emojis earlier this week. As a Pistons season ticketholder, he would document when the Sausage Haus concession stand was open and protest when it was closed. Lions losses would make him catatonic.
Kyle Koster, an editor at Sports Illustrated who worked with Isaac at Woven, connected with Isaac through their shared Detroit and Michigan State fanhood.
“Andy’s superpower, which has only grown more impressive as the internet has evolved, is the ability to draw people in with humor and unrelenting kindness. I first got to know him as an avatar for all things Detroit and Michigan State, an independent voice capturing the pulse of the fan—authentically himself and willingly to share the joy, heartache and everything in between,” Koster said.
“Getting to share all of those experiences with him online built a community for people who would never meet in real life in a way that was truly beautiful,” he added. “Being able to work alongside him offered the ability to see the wonderful human being behind the profile picture and is one of the great professional privileges of my life. His warmth and innate ability to make everyone smile with ease—despite all of the challenges he faced and bravely shared—should serve as inspiration across the community he fostered.”
Isaac’s announcement was viewed more than 5 million times on X, and received thousands of responses.
“Be kind to each other. I love you all. Truly, I do,” he concluded his note.
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