Web Video / Secret Base

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Secret Base^note originally called SB Nation until 2020 is the official YouTube channel of sports blogging network SB Nation. They do deep dives and analyses of important moments in sports history and explore the careers of notable athletes and other sporting personalities, along with videos about trying to break Sports Games.

The channel is well-known for its rotating ensemble of writers and narrators, overseen by creative director Jon Bois, along with Will Buikema, Seth Rosenthal, Alex Rubenstein, and many others. Former contributors to Secret Base include Steven Godfrey of the sports podcasting network Falcon Scott Productions, as well as sports YouTuber Kofie Yeboah.

Secret Base also has a Patreon with exclusive content (including two podcasts, The Annex and Phys Ed) and ad-free versions of their videos.

For tropes specifically relating to the work of Secret Base's creative director Jon Bois, including Pretty Good and Dorktown, go here.

Secret Base provides examples of:

• Achilles' Heel: In "Can a team of 25 Shohei Ohtani clones take over baseball?", fielding proves to be a major weakness for the Ohtanis due to a quirk in MLB: The Show's game design.^note Any player who is out of their designated position has a reduced Defense stat; since Shohei Ohtani is designated as a pitcher and center fielder, the Ohtani clones playing other positions were far more likely to commit errors. Despite that, the Ohtanis win the World Series in "Our 25 Shohei Ohtani clones made the playoffs, so now what?"
• All of Them: One of Kofie Yeboah's self-imposed rules in "We ruined the NBA's past with a video game" is that, while simulating MyNBA Eras from The '80s to the present day, he must implement every rule change suggested by the game (such as getting rid of the salary cap, lengthening the shot clock, instituting the Elam ending, and then removing the Elam ending a few seasons later).
• Alternate Character Interpretation: invokedThe whole point of Prism is to look through the careers of athletes who have sparked controversy and/or debate, and examine the different ways the public has viewed them over time.
• April Fools' Day: For April Fools' Day 2019^note though due to issues with copyright claims, it was delayed to April 4th, Secret Base uploaded an episode of Rewinder called "Michael Jordan's life-saving dunk from Space Jam gets a deep rewind". It's a Self-Parody with the same level of research and attention to detail as their other videos, treating the events of the movie as if they actually happened and how it impacted Jordan's livelihood after his first retirement.
• Arc Symbol: In Overlap, the intersection symbol ∩ is used to connect the two subjects of each episode.
• Aside Glance:
  • In "Bill Buckner’s World Series error against the Mets gets a deep rewind", Buckner lets a ground ball go past him in a pre-season charity game against the New York Mets. Ryan Simmons takes a moment to glance at the camera knowingly.
  • In "Edmundo's beef with Romário included a drunk chimpanzee, stolen penalty kicks, and toilet cartoons", Seth Rosenthal can only look at the camera in confusion when relating an anecdote about Edmundo feeding beer to a chimpanzee at his son's birthday party.
• An Ass-Kicking Christmas: A few of their videos are about NBA games that were played on Christmas Day. "Kobe and Shaq's super-hyped Christmas Day battle gets a deep rewind" explains that Christmas basketball is a tradition that began in 1947 with a game between the New York Knicks and Providence Steamrollers. Seth jokes that the Knicks probably didn't mind because half the team was Jewish.
• Bizarre and Improbable Golf Game: In "We built and played the worst golf course ever and it was all your fault", Kofie builds a golf course in The Golf Club 2019, taking suggestions from their fans, and then he and Jon play a round. Naturally, the course is littered with objects in nonsensical locations, the terrain is horrifically difficult to golf around, and almost every hole has both Jon and Kofie shooting way above the seven stroke par.
• But Thou Must!: In "We made the winless Lions throw to only Calvin Johnson for the entire season", Jon and Kofie go through NFL Head Coach 09 as the infamous 2008 Detroit Lions, intending to use exactly one custom-designed play all year. Unfortunately, in Week 5 Kofie accidentally triggers a "Defining Moment", a mechanic where the game forces you to select from a handful of available plays, none of which are the one they made. In the end, Kofie chooses a slot wheel, since it most closely resembles their custom play.
• Butt-Monkey: Will and Seth are fans of long-suffering franchises (the Dallas Cowboys and New York Knicks respectively) and are often tasked with writing and narrating episodes about those teams.
  • Will jokingly grumbles that "as a Cowboys fan, this video absolutely sucked to make" at the end of "Tony Romo’s infamous mistake in Seattle needs a deep rewind".
  • Seth also jokes about it in "Larry Johnson's beef with Alonzo Mourning included a sad Hornets mural and a weird Knicks-Heat fight":
    Seth: (after showing footage of Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy failing to break up a fight between Johnson and Mourning) If you're not a Knicks fan...first of all, congratulations, and second of all, I can explain.
• Chekhov's Skill: In "Ray Allen's clutch three-pointer that saved Miami needs a deep rewind", Seth frames Allen's fadeaway corner shot that won Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals as one of these.
  Seth: According to SI's Lee Jenkins, Allen has been doing a drill since his early years in Milwaukee. He lies down in the paint, then hops up to his feet, backpedals into the corner, catches the ball, and shoots a three. Yes, Ray Allen has prepared his entire career for this exact moment.
• Crippling Overspecialization: In "We made the most violent NHL team of all time", Kofie builds an otherwise terrible roster with exactly three outstanding qualities: maxed-out goaltending, really hard body checking, and a gift for the overtime shootout. The USA Fumblers win the Stanley Cup despite their prowess in the shootout being useless in the NHL playoffs, where tie games are always decided in sudden-death overtime.
• Dark Horse Victory: The Florida (now Miami) Marlins' World Series title in 2003 is portrayed this way in "How the Marlins accidentally won another World Series in the middle of falling apart". Owner Wayne Huizenga, cutting costs while he was looking to sell the team, dismantled the roster after their first championship in 1997. Under new ownership, the Marlins were one of the worst squads in baseball, but somehow won another World Series just six years later.
• David vs. Goliath: Several episodes of Rewinder explicitly frame their subjects this way. Notable examples include "Appalachian State’s historic upset over Michigan deserves a deep rewind", "Mike Tyson's historic fight against Buster Douglas deserves a deep rewind" and "One of the most shocking finishes in UFC history deserves a deep rewind".
• Deliberate VHS Quality: Rewinder is edited this way as part of its Framing Device of "rewinding" from before an iconic moment to show the viewer How We Got Here.
• Developer's Foresight: Part of Fumble Dimension's appeal is seeing this trope being zig-zagged. Occasionally, the sports games being played have systems to fight back against whatever shenanigans Jon and Kofie are up to, but just as often they don't. In "We destroyed the NBA's future with a video game", NBA 2K19 initially tried to counter their attempts to stack the NBA draft with clones of the worst possible player by generating fake players of its own, but it only worked for a little while. Then later in the same video, once every team had the same statistically awful rosters, it was discovered that the tiebreaker to determine which of two identical teams would win was based on team nicknames sorted in alphabetical order; as a result, the Philadelphia 76ers win all 82 games in the 2049-50 season, along with five straight NBA championships.
• Did I Just Say That Out Loud?: In "The hit-by-pitch glitch that foiled two batters on the same day", Will casually mentions Ryan's ex-girlfriend (whose name is censored by the roar of a baseball crowd). Will then realizes what he just did and says "Uh, why would I say her whole name?!"
• Disco Sucks: "Disco Demolition Night became a fan riot set to Take Me Out to the Ball Game" is about the titular baseball promotion, a climactic moment for the anti-disco movement in the United States.
• Down to the Last Play: Rewinder explores real-life examples of this trope and shows the events that led to them.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Early episodes of The Worst had extended segments making fun of popular culture from whichever time period the moment in question took place. This was eventually reined in to focus more on sports storytelling; for example, "The Worst NBA Owner: Donald Sterling" uses its pop culture jokes as a Framing Device to show how the San Diego/Los Angeles Clippers remained consistently bad under Sterling's tenure while the rest of the world moved on.
  • The first episode of Rewinder, "Jordan's iconic final shot as a Bull requires a deep rewind", shares some visual flourishes with The Worst that do not appear in later Rewinders, such as Caption Humor and a bouncing red arrow. There's also a brief Flash Forward to Dennis Rodman and Karl Malone wrestling at Bash at the Beach 1998, which took place one month after the NBA Finals; future episodes of Rewinder ground their storytelling in the events leading up to the climax, with only occasional Dramatic Irony.
  • Videos made before the COVID-19 Pandemic sometimes included live-action skits and other material filmed in a studio. While some post-COVID videos have live-action segments, they are usually filmed from the home offices of the narrators. However, starting in late 2024 some episodes of Weird Rules returned to filming their conversations on the "black void" set that was used in pre-COVID videos.
• Epic Fail: In "Our quest to either fix or ruin soccer", Jon's tenure as coach of Fumble Chaos ends after 53 days because his play was so bad that the team goes on a losing streak that breaks the chart.
• Extra-Long Episode: Technically averted with Chosen and How to Make a Basket. While they are very long, and share a visual language with Rewinder and Beef History respectively, they are not considered part of those series and have separate playlists.
• Fading Away: Episodes of Collapse show a mural of the team's most important players, managers, and other personnel. As each person is traded, quits, or is fired, their portrait fades into silhouette.
• Framing Device: Some of their series employ one.
  • 1st is framed as Mike Imhoff reading to the viewer from a storybook, while Mike's behavior gets more uncomfortable as the episode goes along.
  • High Score is presented like a video game walkthrough, complete with Pac-Man Fever artwork, where the narrator gives tips on how to beat the discussed record.
  • Rewinder shows the history of each moment as if they were rewinding a video cassette, complete with Deliberate VHS Quality. Each episode's title card is a homemade VHS tape being put through a car-shaped rewinder.
• A God Am I: Played for Laughs in "Commissioner? God? Not much difference thanks to this NFL rule", about a Rule Zero which allows the league's commissioner to undo the consequences of "palpably unfair" and "extraordinarily unfair" acts.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: Rewinder uses one whenever the buildup to the climactic play is shown in slow motion.
• Hilarious Outtakes: Episodes of 1st end with outtakes of SB Nation staff filming the Silent Movie Dramatizations used in the main episode.
• Hockey Fight: "The Worst Hockey Fight" is about the Good Friday Massacre, a 1984 game between the Montreal Canadiens and Quebec Nordiques which saw eleven players ejected during a huge brawl between the second and third periods.
• How We Got Here:
  • Some episodes of Beef History begin by showing a public confrontation between the subjects, then flashing back to show the full story of their feud.
  • Rewinder frames its episodes by looking back at the events leading up to a game that came Down to the Last Play.
• Just Toying with Them: In "The worst NFL blowout ended 59-0 but Bill Belichick should've made it even worse", Will points to this trope to justify calling it the "worst" NFL blowout of all time. The New England Patriots could have easily won the game with the largest margin of victory in NFL history (the current record is the Chicago Bears beating Washington 73-0 in the 1940 NFL Championship Game). Instead, coach Bill Belichick decided to substitute his best players for benchwarmers during the fourth quarter, which Will compares to "a lioness teaching her cubs how to finish off their wounded prey"; neither team scored in the final 15 minutes as the broadcasters became audibly bored.
  Will: This beating should have been so much worse than 59-0. The Patriots set record after record with their performance, but with the garbage conditions and even more garbage opponent, we deserved to see them go for blood. Instead, in the most lopsided regular season game since the merger, the victors barely tried for half the game.
• Kids Are Cruel: Mentioned by name in "Fans catfished a college basketball player into one of his worst games". Clara and Will are equal parts amazed and horrified by the story of USC basketball player Gabe Pruitt, who was catfished by students from Berkeley; the next time the two schools played, Berkeley supporters held up signs with photos Pruitt had sent to "Victoria" and chanted his phone number, which threw him off his game. Will in particular is impressed by the logistics and planning involved in pulling off a stunt of that scale.
  Clara: Oh God, kids are so cruel, it's just–
  Will: But also so great at organizing for...nothing! To organize a cluster of 20-ish-year-olds into a chant of a phone number?! Like, there's orchestration that has to happen there that I'm pretty impressed with.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: In the Rewinder episode on Space Jam, Seth all but accuses sports super-agent David Falk of making sure that players he represented^note in addition to his biggest client, Michael Jordan, four of the five players whose powers are sapped by the Nerdlucks (Charles Barkley, Muggsy Bogues, Shawn Bradley, and Patrick Ewing) were represented by Falk had roles in the movie and appeared in merchandise...without breaking the April Fools' Day Kayfabe of treating Space Jam as if it happened in real life.
  Seth: I don't know if it was just a matter of convenience or bad scouting or what, but these aliens seemed to have placed just as much value on guys who are funny heights or have commercial appeal as they did on, y'know, actual all-star basketball talent. [insert of Space Jam merchandise] It's almost like they care more about appealing to kids than they do excellent basketball. It's almost like that super-agent we saw before represents most of these players [insert of a title card showing David Falk as executive producer] and orchestrated their inclusion. Huh...
• Living Drawing: The goofy animations in That's Weird and Weird Rules are chalkboard doodles that come to life.
• Medal of Dishonor: Some of the "records" discussed on High Score are not the sort of thing an athlete would want to be remembered for, e.g. the fastest a basketball player has ever fouled out^note picked up six fouls, resulting in an automatic ejection of a game.
• Mis-blamed: invokedIn "Steve Bartman is far from the only reason for the Cubs’ 2003 disaster of an inning", Seth argues that the titular Chicago Cubs fan fell victim to this trope. Bartman interfering with a foul ball, which was potentially catchable by Moisés Alou for the second out, was just one of many things that went wrong for the Cubs in the 8th inning. Seth believes that Alex Gonzalez's error, loading the bases on what should have been an inning-ending double play, was a much costlier mistake and swung momentum in favor of the Florida Marlins, but the TV broadcast kept showing replays of the Bartman foul ball instead.
• Multi-Part Episode:
  • Beef History episodes on Kawhi Leonard vs. the San Antonio Spurs and Scottie Pippen vs. the Chicago Bulls were split into two videos each.
  • Chosen and How to Make a Basket were originally uploaded in parts, and later reuploaded as one longer video each.
  • A few episodes of Fumble Dimension were released in two parts, while "We ruined the NBA's past with a video game" was released in four parts.
• Obvious Rule Patch: "One guy mercilessly trolled the NHL into creating a better rule book" shows just how many of these were added specifically to counter the Loophole Abuse of eccentric coach Roger Neilsen; for example, making it illegal to leave behind a pile of snow to block the net after pulling the goalie.
• Rule-Breaker Rule-Namer: "The quarterback hit that forced the NFL to consider safety" discusses the NFL's Davidson rule (which protects quarterbacks from late hits) after Raiders defensive end Ben Davidson speared Chiefs QB Len Dawson in the back in 1970.
• Running Gag:
  • Whenever Michael Jordan's first retirement comes up in a video, it's always dismissed in one sentence as that time he decided to go play baseball for some reason. Amusingly, the only time there was a proper deep dive on those years was the 2019 April Fools' Day episode about Space Jam.
  • Insisting that Barry Bonds hit all those home runs with the Giants by taking his vitamins and eating his vegetables.
  • In "Threats, doping, and the legal system fueled Lance Armstrong's beef with Greg LeMond", Clara punctuates suspicious behavior from Armstrong with a breathless "huh, weird."
• Self-Parody: The April Fools' Day Rewinder episode on Space Jam treats the events of the movie as if they happened in real life, with Seth connecting the plot back to important moments in NBA history and Michael Jordan's actual career. He even interprets an obvious continuity error^note during downtime before the final play of the game, the score changes from 77-67 Monstars to 77-76 as further proof that the referee, Marvin the Martian, is corrupt and/or incompetent.
• Share Phrase: Regardless of who is narrating a Rewinder episode, they always say "welcome to a moment in history" before playing the climactic clip.
• Shout-Out:
  • The channel's name is a reference to this strip◊ from Calvin and Hobbes.
  • In an episode of The Worst about the 2003 NLCS, Seth recommends the 30 for 30 documentary Catching Hell for a deep dive on the series-defining foul ball incident.
• Signing-Off Catchphrase: Clara has "For Secret Base, I'm Clara Morris. Good night and good game."
• Small Reference Pools: As a channel written and produced by Americans, most of their videos are about North American sports leagues (including the "big four" of the NBA, NFL, NHL and MLB, as well as Collegiate American Football and the NCAA as a whole). That being said, they occasionally make videos about other sports, including Association Football, Australian Rules Football, boxing, cycling, gymnastics, Mixed Martial Arts, tennis, and track and field. They've also covered lesser-known North American sports leagues, such as Major League Soccer, the WNBA, and Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest.
• Soccer-Hating Americans: A Running Gag claims that Americans only care about soccer when the US national team is doing well. "The Worst World Cup Match: A game so bad, FIFA had to investigate", about the Disgrace of Gijón, also plays into it, using several clips of the "Open wide for some soccer!" sketch from The Simpsons.
• Special Guest: Brian David Gilbert appeared in the 2018 Weird Rules episode "The NFL may have banned stickum, but Lester Hayes got to keep his interception record". In turn, Kofie Yeboah appeared in an episode of Brian's show Unraveled in 2020.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Several episodes of Beef History are about feuding teammates, and How to Make a Basket is all about the animosity between Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant when they were on the Lakers.
• This Is Going to Be Huge: In "Alex Ovechkin & Evgeni Malkin's beef had big hits, a nightclub fight, and Yanni", Will explains how the media were so convinced that Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby would start a rivalry that they didn't catch on to the actual feud between Ovechkin and Malkin^note who was both Crosby's teammate and Ovechkin's friend and ex-roommate until it was almost over.
  Will: The media chum the waters for itself, promoting the storyline of two young stars as rivals. Unfortunately, they focused on the wrong Penguin.
• Vote Early, Vote Often: Discussed in "You made us hit 3,000 batters". Kofie plays Out of the Park Baseball as the 2001 Seattle Mariners, basing his managerial decisions on votes from fans. Occasionally, the Mariners will hit dozens of batters in a row, which Jon speculates is thanks to a few people repeatedly spamming votes for the "hit batter" option. The Mariners are mathematically eliminated from the playoffs in July and finish with a regular-season record of 4-158 (the real 2001 Mariners went 116-46, the best regular-season record in MLB history, but lost to the Yankees in the ALDS). They also have a run differential of -3,226 and hit 2,896 batters, demolishing the real-life records held by the 1899 Cleveland Spiders (who had a single-season run differential of -723) and the 2022 Cincinnati Reds (who hit 110 batters).
• Walk and Talk: The opening shot of "Why can't you call it the Super Bowl?" is filmed this way.
• World of Snark: While it varies depending on who's narrating, their scripts have plenty of sarcastic, deadpan humor and other editorializing.
• Writer on Board: invokedPlayed for Laughs in "JJ Redick's beef with Maryland was flavored by ugly heckles, prank calls, and Duke’s legacy of jerks" because Clara is an alumna of the University of Maryland, whose Terrapins are sworn rivals of the Duke Blue Devils (even if Duke doesn't agree).
  Clara: In his senior year, Redick kept the beef sizzling by just completely out playing us...I mean, Maryland. Oops, my bias slipped out a bit there.