About a year ago I had the opportunity to interview author Will Leitch, writer for New York Magazine, creator of the uber-popular sports blog Deadspin.com, and author of God Save the Fan.

Will, who has a new book coming out in May called Are We Winning, opened up about faith, Michael W. Smith, and being a humor writer for a sometimes crude sports blog.

I hope to interview him when his new book releases (and not just because 1 of the 17 brief anecdotes that lead each chapter is written by me), but in the meantime I thought some of you would enjoy this  interview from last year.

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BA: Will, you mentioned once in a Deadspin column that you had spent the first 17 years of your life as a “rather devoted churchgoer”. Did your family attend the same church throughout your youth? what type of church(es) did you grow up in?

WL: When I was very young, the Leitches went to the First Baptist Church of Mattoon, out of obligation and without much passion. I used to sit in the back of the church with my grandfather, where he taught me the “Who’s On First?” routine and he showed off his supercool electric pen. I was about 10 when he died, and we stopped going. I was baptized there, but, again, without much passion. I did, however, read “The Book For Children” — remember “The Book?” — which was smart enough to tell the whole Bible as series of adventure stories. This has helped me ace religion questions on Jeopardy! to this day.

It wasn’t until I was 13 that I started going regularly, on my own, without my family. The neighbors down the road went to Broadway Christian Church, a pseudo mega-church before our suburban landscape was riddled with them. Lori Nottemeyer, our neighbor and friend, would pick me up and drive me to church every Sunday morning and Wednesday night, and I became rather devoted to it.

It served, initially, as a social bridge; I only hung out with the boring smart kids at school at was eager to meet new people. But I caught onto it because it was really fun: We had an outstanding youth minister named Ken Rutledge with whom you could talk sports (sadly, he was a Cub fan; in this matter, I was never going to be converted), music and, sometimes vigorously, politics. Even then, at 13, I didn’t understand some of the church’s rules — I couldn’t quite figure out why the sermon sometimes condemned my gay uncle in Philadelphia, who was a really great guy — but I was very serious about my studies. After a few summer sessions at Lincoln Christian College, I decided I wanted to be a youth minister. I saw a guy there, a young guy, who spoke to us with humor. It didn’t seem uncool to be Christian. I thought that was something I could do. I liked getting in front of people, and I felt like I would have something extremely important to say.

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the scene: Inside of Bagel Rising, a small bagel shop in Boston, Massachusetts where my brother Jordan works. This morning, Jordan sees a customer he recognizes from earlier in the month when they had a conversation about Deadspin.com

Jordan: “Hey, last time you were here we were talking about Deadspin. My brother actually interviewed Will Leitch from Deadspin on his blog. It’s a sports/faith blog.”

Awesome Customer: “Yeah, I’ve been to a few of those.”

Jordan: “His is called Prayers For Blowouts.”

Awesome Customer: “Yeah ive been to that one! and i read that interview that he did with Will it was really good. That’s cool that he’s your brother.”

Jordan: “That’s cool that you read the interview.”

Aaaand scene.

Jordan later tells Bryan of this encounter. Bryan pumps his fist in delight several times, and then blogs about it. Which brings us to right now, because I just finished blogging this, but I can’t stop thinking in the third person. Or is it the second person. I don’t know, but I can’t stop typing either. This is kinda weird. I bet most readers are confused as they read this. I should probably hit the ‘post’ button.

I’m pretty stoked about this. Over at Prayers For Blowouts I interviewed someone who’s work I greatly admire. Will Leitch founded the sports blog Deadspin.com a few years ago, and thanks to his writing and the niche that his site found, the site is now the #1 sports blog in the country (has been for a while actually). No sports site gets more scoops, and even though will has since moved on to write for New York Magazine, no site has as much impact on the sports landscape as Deadspin does.

Will still writes for Deadspin on occasion, and when he recently mentioned being a devoted churchgoer earlier in his life, I posted on PFB that I’d like to interview him. Since that post 7 days ago: Will contacted me to say he’d be honored to do an interview, I spent time writing up the interview questions, Will answered all my interview questions thoroughly and honestly, I sent him follow-ups, and he answered those too. Not bad for a holiday weekend!

The result is the interview I posted over at PFB today with Will Leitch. In it we cover the high school years Will spent in church, his ambition to chase his dreams, and the line between “too crass” and “too funny”.

The icing on the cake?

Will gave a shout out to Prayers For Blowouts in his Weekly Deadspin column today! For a sports blog, there’s few things cooler than a Deadspin link. Not to mention getting a compliment from the site’s founder, who said

“And speaking of God! My DC Talk-inspired column last week caught the attention of the Christian sports site Prayers for Blowouts, which is a much better site than many of you would probably think. For fun, I did an interview with them, in which I confess to seeing a Christian band that only covered Oak Ridge Boys songs.”

(if you’re not offended by sultry pictures of Tina Fey and coarse language, you can check out Will’s Deadspin post here, in the section on team #26. if you are offended by those things, then you can take my word for it.)

I might throw out my arm pumping my fist for that one. Thanks so much, Will!