“What ever happened to Brooks from Sports By Brooks?”
That’s a great question that never fails to be raised by the Twitter crowd that remembers Brooks for his SbB girls and investigative work (sometimes wrong) on things like tattoos at Ohio State, Cam Newton and Alabama. If you’re reading this, you probably hated the guy. For some strange reason I’ll find myself wondering from time to time what the guy is up to these days.
Brooks’ site is still live and pumping out a few hundred pageviews each day even though it hasn’t been updated since 2012 when he was focused on Jerry Sandusky. The Twitter account @SPORTSbyBROOKS got weird in 2013 and the final sports-related tweet was published on April 8 of that year. And that was it.
Silence.
Brooks’ Facebook – silent.
Brooks’ Linkedin – silent.
According to domain registration records, SbB is due to be renewed on May 22, 14 years after the site was created.
Other tidbits we know about Brooks:
• Believed to be 47
• Last known address from his LLC filing leads to this Los Angeles apartment building
• According to a 2014 obituary for a Kenneth Melchior of Kansas City, he was survived by a son Brooks Melchior of Los Angeles. We can’t confirm 100% that this is Brooks’ father, but we do know that Brooks went to Barstow High School in Kansas City.
Conclusion: I spent about 3-4 weekends in early 2008 writing posts for Brooks. From what I can see in my email archive there was a point in April when he was done with my services. I seem to remember that was around the point when, instead of hiring me to write for him, he would just rewrite the work that I was doing on Busted. There was very little communication after that. I’d yell at him from time to time, but he’d just make up some excuse why my posts were being rewritten.
Maybe the guy just got burnt out on trying to keep churning out the constant barrage of material on the college of the day that he wanted to go to war with. Maybe he had medical issues. Maybe he went out of his mind and is holed up in an apartment. Maybe he went to work as an FBI informant and is laying low. Maybe he got married, had kids and changed his name. Here you thought it was pretty much impossible for someone to just disappear from the Internet. Brooks is pretty much proving that it’s possible. He doesn’t seem to have many family members. There aren’t siblings tagging him on Facebook. The guy has literally disappeared.
Brooks mentioned in a 2009 post that he was 41 and thinking of ending SbB. Of course that didn’t happen for another three years. Mid-40s and it was over. SbB was the first of us in this business to hit the age we’re all dreading. What do we do when the mid-40s hit?
It’s interesting how many people on the internet wished Brooks would just go away. So he did and now everyone wonders where he went. If he never comes back we’ll still be left with his investigative work and the SbB girls that you grew up with — full gallery here.
Update: I had this exchange on Friday with one of the legendary SbB Girls, Wendy Fiore.
Do you know what happened to Brooks Melchior? Let us know. We miss the guy. Why quit the Internet game?
mail@bustedcoverage.com
What Ever Happened To Brooks From Sports By Brooks?
