A numbered copy of the first edition, delivered to your mailbox
before the Super Bowl. Only 1,000 will ever be printed.
$ 147/year · founding rate
A year inside football’s inner sanctum — in print, and built to last.
Both premium issues this year — large-format, coffee-table quality, published twice per year.
A numbered copy of the collector's first edition — one of only 1,000 ever printed.
Your founding rate, locked — $147/year, the lowest it will ever be.
First access to limited-edition Aficionado merch drops — before anyone else.
Founding-member standing — you were here at the start, and the magazine will reflect it.
Most football media is designed to disappear. A take goes up, trends for an afternoon, and is buried by the next one before the night's over. That's not coverage — it's noise engineered to be forgotten.
Gridiron Aficionado is the opposite of all of it. Print creates permanence, and permanence changes how a story is read, valued, and remembered. This is a magazine built for the shelf, not the feed — oversized, numbered, printed on premium stock, and made to be held, revisited, and handed down.
“Built for the shelf, not the feed.”
I've spent my life inside this game — as a player, a coach, and a publisher. I'm building Gridiron Aficionado because football's best stories deserve to be printed and kept, not scrolled past and forgotten. If that's how you feel about the game too, I'd be honored to have your name in the first edition.
— Manny Matsakis, Founder
The first issue of Gridiron Aficionado will be printed once, numbered, and never reprinted. One hundred names will be printed inside it. When it goes to press, that list closes forever.
Most Names in Football Are Written in Sand. Records fall. Rosters turn over. The feed forgets by morning. Almost everything in this game is built to be replaced. Print is different. Print is the one place football still keeps its word. The first edition of Gridiron Aficionado is a numbered, collector-grade volume — printed once, built to sit on a shelf for decades and be handed down. It is not a periodical. It is an object. And inside the first one hundred copies of the brand's history, there is room for one hundred names. The Founders Circle is for the people who don't just want to read the first issue. They want to be in it.
then $147/year for life · only 100 seats
Your first year is $197 and includes both of this year's issues. After that, you renew at $147/year — locked for life. The public rate will climb over time. Yours won't.
Claim a Founders Circle SeatYour name, printed inside Issue No. 1, alongside the founding of a football publication built to outlast the noise. Not a username. Not a handle. Your name, set in type, in a magazine designed to be kept. Years from now, the first edition will be the one collectors want — the one that only existed in a numbered run, the one that started it all. The hundred people in the Founders Circle will be printed into that story permanently. You were there first. The first edition will say so.
Because the first edition is printed once, and then it is finished. There is no second run, no revised version, no digital reprint where more names can be added later. When Issue No. 1 goes to the printer, the Founders Circle is sealed — one hundred names, and not one more, for as long as the magazine exists. Scarcity isn't a marketing tactic here. It's simply what happens when something is printed and kept.
One hundred seats. One printing. Then the door closes for good. Choose your place in the first edition.
Both tiers secure a numbered copy of Issue No. 1, delivered before the Super Bowl. Only one puts your name inside it —
FOUNDING SUBSCRIBER
The founding rate. This is the lowest it will ever be.
✓ Both issues this year, premium large-format print
✓ A numbered copy of the collector's first edition
✓ First access to limited Aficionado merch drops
✓ Founding-member status, locked at the founding rate
✓ Delivered before the Super Bowl
FOUNDERS CIRCLE · ONLY 100
then $147/year for life
Only 100 will ever be.
✓ Everything in Founding Subscriber, plus:
✓ Your name printed inside the first edition — permanently
✓ Founders Circle recognition, reserved for the first 100
✓ Renewal rate locked at $147/year for life
✓ Closes forever when Issue No. 1 goes to print
Only 100 seats. When Issue No. 1 goes to print, the Founders Circle closes and never reopens.