OUR STORY
It Started with a Newsletter
John Fredericks has always been an avid sports fan, consumer, and handicapper. During his daily political talk radio show, he would often regale his listeners with the emotional torment or triumph of his favorite teams, the Tennessee Titans and the Houston Astros. Longtime listeners of his show will recall the two Astros World Series championships, the Titans’ early playoff exits, and the many stories of John on the road with his youngest son, Joseph, as they traveled from one travel baseball tournament to the next.Â
But his love for sports and handicapping started much earlier.Â
In his early twenties, John trained standardbred racehorses in the New Jersey circuit. He stuttered throughout his childhood and the safety of the stables made for a natural transition into adulthood. You see, horses communicate. Sometimes better than humans. They read body language, demonstrate sadness, joy. They let you know when they’re tired or anxious. If you pay close attention, you can learn how to talk to humans by first communicating with horses. John learned how to intuit a horse’s needs, respect its raw power, tame its proclivity for wildness, and encourage it to perform under immense pressure.
Horses are his first love – a love inextricably linked with sports, competition, and handicapping.Â
So in 2020, seized by the boredom bought on by the pandemic, John decided to start a newsletter. The pitch? He would handicap every NFL game. Every week. He’d make his picks, have some fun, and win some games. What he didn’t expect was the outpouring of support from his avid listeners, spurred on by an incredible two seasons of handicapping, where he won over 60% of his picks.Â
As the newsletter grew, so did the demand for more sports content. That’s when he came up with the idea – one of many John has had over his illustrious career – to start a sports handicapping website: Godzilla Wins.Â
But he couldn’t do it alone. So he brought in his oldest son, Jack Fredericks, and Reno handicapping legend, Nate Perry.Â
In August of 2022, John, Jack, and Nate launched Godzilla Wins. They started the website and their flagship Saturday Picks radio show from their kitchen table, scheduling conference calls to hammer out a business model. They had no money to invest. No writers to pay. No experience with SEO strategy or odds tickers. But they knew a little about football and a lot about sports betting.Â
Godzilla Wins: Where Quality Writing Meets Sports Betting Content
The idea for Godzilla Wins is simple: sports betting content meets quality writing. Jack and Nate’s background in creative writing have propelled the website’s modus operandi from the early days of publishing. We think of ourselves as a website for writers. We give our writers the freedom to pursue their own interests, develop their style and voice, and make sharp picks with excellent analysis.Â
Godzilla Wins publishes passion. We don’t make demands on content or set quotas for popular sports. We like to publish picks on everything from the NFL to the Bundesliga. The most important thing to us is that our authors can demonstrate their passion in their writing.
They solidified this approach with some incredible columns from passionate fans with a flare for the written word. Columns like Behind the Hedges, Flying with the Flock, and Dispatches from Behind the Bar allowed our writers to show their personality, write about their favorite sport or team, and have fun doing it.Â
As we continue to grow, we are looking to publish terrific writing from exciting new voices in the sports media world. If you have an idea for a column or would like to write for us, please contact godzillawinsbig@gmail.com.
