This is Brentt Eads… I’m frequently asked how I got into sports media, specifically softball, and—looking back on my career—has it been worth it being in softball?

I thought I’d take a few minutes to share (if anyone’s interested) my journey into how I got to where I am today.

Technically, my position at Line Drive Media is “President & Executive Editor of Content” but I’m also the founder and co-owner of our company and site.

The first and quickest answer “has it been worth being is softball for several decades” is a simple and emphatic: “Oh yea!”

I was at 2026 summer events like Patriot Games, Top Gun and PGF Nationals and people would ask me how work was going.

My silly—but very true—answer was to wave to the fields where games were being played and say: “Doing great, but how could it not be? This is my work office!”

A pretty good gig if you can work outdoors watching great athletes compete under sunny blue skies and get to meet the wonderful people that comprise this great sport!

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How Do You Go From Music to Media?

So how did I get here?

How did a guy with a Bachelor of Arts in Music, who’s a trained organist (classic side) and bass player (rocker side) end up doing HOT 100 player rankings?

For those who are still reading to this point and care… here’s the long and winding road (that’s an obvious tip of the hat to my musical idols, The Beatles) of my 30-year career in print, event management and digital media… and, interesting, all three decades have involved high school sports.

And if for you poor souls who’ve had to endure me telling some of these stories a few hundred times, hold on; there will be new stuff I promise!

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From Ohio to SoCal…

I was born on a dark, cold and gloomy night in Columbus, Ohio, and let’s just say it was so long ago that Abraham Lincoln and I were both baseball fans (I root for the Red; he liked the Cubs).

As mentioned, I got my BA in Music at BYU and had an internship set up at a record company in Los Angeles and moved there post-graduation only to find the dude who offered it—and, more importantly, the internship—were gone.

Now what to do?

Fortunately, a friend of a friend knew someone at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles and I got an MBA there.

It was at the same time that Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble were lighting it up for the Lions if you remember the run-and-gun system when the 1989–90 LMU team set an all-time NCAA Division I record by averaging 122.4 points per game.

And then the horrible tragedy when Gathers collapsed and died on the court. I actually went to the memorial for him in the basketball gym on campus.

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Student Sports Media… & Being a Magazine Publisher

I did my master’s thesis on a sports subject and quoted a guy in it, Andy Bark of Student Sports, who I quoted in the Thesis. I sent him a copy, he reached out and ended up hiring me—I believe I was the fourth person there, including Mark Tennis of Cal-Hi Sports who currently does our Line Drive Media high school softball rankings and is the best I’ve ever seen in doing rankings of any kind!

I worked at Student Sports Inc. in Torrance, California from 1996-2007 and was the Vice President of Content Development highlighted by my running the monthly publication Student Sports Magazine which would feature cover stories on future Hall of Famers including Lebron James (NBA), Joe Mauer (MLB) and Tony Gonzalez (NFL)—all of whom I interviewed and found to be really interesting and impressive.

I was at Student Sports when this new thing called “the internet” came into being.

With that, I was involved with starting the Digital Department including initiating an online partnership with Rivals (now On3) where I managed a network of 48 publishers, with 250K registered users and 50M monthly page hits.

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Falling in Love with Softball

It was at this time that I first fell in love with softball, when I was tasked with starting the Student Sports Softball division including StudentSportsSoftball.com.

How I was asked to do this and get into softball is a story for another day…

In 2009, Student Sports was acquired by ESPN and I was required to move across the country to work in Bristol, Conn. for the then newly launched ESPN High School division.

My title was Senior Director of Events & Editorial Integration, and I managed a team of 12 who operated sport databases housing data for thousands of athletes and led digital analytics tracking for ESPNHS.

But ESPN, the “world-wide leader of sports,” didn’t know what to do or how to do high school sports (now they do) and closed the entire high school division.

I loved my time there and truly missed one of the great perks of the gig; ESPN is owned by Disney and we got free Disney Park passes. For a father of three girls, this was a huge plus!

I moved back to Southern California (Huntington Beach, specifically ) to work which included a stint in San Diego as Director of Business Development at the newly founded Brickfish where my job was to secure deals with companies like Nike, Oakley, North Face, Travelocity.

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Softball, Softball, Softball… 365 Days a Year (& Loving It!)

Later, I served as the General Manager of FloSoftball based out of Texas (I worked remotely from my home in SoCal) where I managed the softball channel and finalizing deals to livestream softball events including the Mary Nutter Collegiate Classic and the Spring Games that were livestreamed by Flo.

I had done softball coverage including player rankings at Student Sports and FloSoftball, but soon really got immersed full-time in the sport I’d truly come to love.

I had started a fastpitch softball-focused website by called Full Count Softball prior to Brickfish, where I was the President and Executive Editor of the platform that focused on daily content covering youth, high school, club, college, international and pro coverage.

In 2018, the idea was proposed the idea to start another softball-centric website, Extra Inning Softball, where I was the President and Executive Editor until 2025.

There, I oversaw the growth of the paid subscriber base to over 4,500 with daily content ranging from human interest stories, event coverage and, yes, player rankings which I had first brought into the softball space 25 years previously.

Why? Because I saw how much attention and recognition it brought to high school-aged athletes in sports such as football, baseball and basketball.

I believe I was the first to introduce player rankings into softball so you can credit—or blame—me for that.

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… And Here We Are Today

In 2024, I took all the ideas I’d accumulated from three decades in sports media and rolled them into creating our current softball site, Line Drive Media, of which I’m fortunate to work with great people like Carlos Arias, who’s also spent decades working in prep sports like me, and Grace White, a former college player who oversees our social media efforts).

So, again, the question arises: what do I think of working in softball today after three decades in sports media?

I wouldn’t have it any other way! Softball is fast and athletic and exhilarating. The only downside is it has somewhat ruined baseball for me because fastpitch is, well, so fast!

I especially love the people in softball—the athletes who are so competitive, motivated, hard-working and focused.

And I love the coaches who give so much of their time to help the athletes reach their best.

Club coaches are my unsung heroes—it’s funny that, typically, they will get into it to coach their daughter and 40 years later they’re still teaching and traveling with young players to help them realize their dreams in the sport.

For me watching from the sidelines, it’s so rewarding to see these female athletes start at a young age, work hard and develop their game where they get to live their dreams and love what they’re doing.

I’ve been blessed to have covered softball players from 10U up through high school, college and even Olympic and pro’s like those in the AUSL today.

For example, one of my first No. 1’s in the top 100 player rankings was Amanda Lorenz and she ended up doing some great accomplishments at every level including pros. Another was Jayden Coleman who I believe is the only softball player I ranked No. 1 from the first class she was in until she graduated.

And, to my point of great people who stay in the game for years, her father, Cedric Coleman, is today a coach in Kevin Shelton’s great Texas Glory program.

So today, I still love what I do and wake up every day excited to see what athletes, teams and stories I am fortunate enough to cover that day.

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The Rankings Continue Honoring Elite Young Softball Standouts

Right now, we’re in the beginnings of updating the Class of 2028 player rankings and it will be so fun in 10 years to see where many of these great athletes will have taken their game and succeeded, on and off the field.

Getting to know these young athletes, tell their stories and follow them from youth to successful and accomplished adulthood.

How could I not love that?!?

— Brentt Eads/Line Drive Media