A year or so ago, our writing staff grew by 100 percent, with the addition of Michael David Smith, whose other assignments include AOL’s FanHouse, FootballOutsiders.com, our own CollegeFootballTalk.com, the New York Sun, and most recently the Fifth Down blog on the New York Times web site.

We’re now expanding by 50 percent, at least on a trial basis, with the addition of Josh Alper.  Josh covers pro baseball (zzzzzz) and the NFL for FanHouse, and he’ll be helping out on the days when my day job actually requires the expenditure of effort in the daytime hours.

Josh is scheduled to get started on Wednesday morning, and you’ll see his stuff from time to time as we attempt to keep the site full of content, if order to minimize the “did you die?” e-mails that I inevitably receive if/when more than two hours pass without a new story being posted.