Jayski's Silly Season Site is a web site focusing primarily on NASCAR news and rumors. The website was founded by Jay "Jayski" Adamczyk in 1996 (who was a fan of Mark Donohue) after he had difficulty finding news regarding the Melling Racing team, and subsequently worked to get all NASCAR news grouped together on the site.[1] The site was purchased from Adamczyk by ESPN in 2007; after ESPN shut the site down in January 2019, Adamczyk reacquired the rights to Jayski-related properties in April 2019 and rolled out a limited version of the new website with a full launch occurring on May 13, 2019.
Website
The name for Jayski's Silly Season Site is a reference to the midpoint of the NASCAR season when rumors within the sport most often circulate.[2] The main feature of the site is a "News and Rumors" page for the major three NASCAR series.[3] The sites also hosts pictures of the paint schemes used by teams throughout that year, television schedules and tributes to deceased drivers.[4] The site also lists series statistics and external links to teams and drivers.[5]
History
Adamczyk created the site in 1996 and used his moniker from his time in the military, Jayski, to brand the site.[4] On December 3, 1999,[6] Adamczyk quit his job as a computer programmer for the Federal Aviation Administration to work on the site full-time.[7][8] Two years later, Jayski's content began to be featured on Knight Ridder's racing website, That's Racin'.[7] That freed Adamczyk from several business commitments (such as advertising),[9] and enabled him to focus solely on creating content,[9] and hosting external links to newspaper and magazine stories on the NASCAR world.[6][7] In January 2004, sports network ESPN began to host Jayski.[6]
In early April 2007, as part of its renewed interest in NASCAR following re-acquisition of broadcasting rights, ESPN purchased Jayski.com.[10][11] Jayski underwent a stylistic overhaul in August 2009.[4] The site was redesigned in early 2017, becoming part of ESPN.com,[12] but Adamczyk continues to operate the site on a daily basis with a staff of two.
Jayski's Silly Season Site was featured in Time's The 50 Best Websites of 2011.[13] Jayski ran a podcast until 2013.[14][15] Adamzcyk had later expanded the Jayski staff to include two other employees to compile information about NASCAR.[16]
On January 28, 2019, ESPN ceased operations of Jayski.[17] The move was part of a wider exodus from NASCAR for ESPN, which also let go of reporters Ricky Craven and Bob Pockrass over the 2019 offseason.[18] Many within the NASCAR community expressed gratitude for the two-plus decades that Jayski ran online.[19]
The domain of jayski.com was acquired back from ESPN in April 2019, and a partial site was rolled out while the search for a new web host partner began.[20] A full site, now hosted by NASCAR Digital Media, was revealed on May 12, 2019.[21]
