December always feels a little bittersweet to me. It’s nice to catch my breath for a bit, prop my feet up, and rest. But, it’s also a stark reminder of the inevitable passing of time. More gray hairs in my beard. More scalp peeking up between strands of hair. That sort of thing.
But, this December is particularly bittersweet. See, after wrestling with the idea for well over a year, I finally made the tough decision to de-monetize SoBros Network, close it as a business, and just convert it to a personal blog. If you haven’t noticed this year, things have slowed down. And, I mean really slowed down…to a borderline screeching halt. No more ad campaigns. No more t-shirt sales. No more “eight posts a day” to keep the content engine running. It’s still around, and it won’t be going anywhere, rest assured. It’s still around for the occasional food review, travel blog, or funny post we can’t fit in anywhere else. But, things change.
Ultimately, I think that’s what I struggle with the most. Of course, I’m thankful that my career is where it is in 2025. Opportunities have arisen for me to continue chasing my dreams in a more serious and lucrative fashion. I’m grateful for that and excited to see what the future holds for me. But, I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t hard to swallow….to take something that I had worked for nearly 12 years to build into something sustainable and say “I can’t do it the way it needs to be done anymore.”
In some ways, it feels like giving up. In others, it just feels like the natural evolution of things. I had made my peace with it until I sat down to recap the year and share the most-read posts from this website. That’s when it hit me again. It used to take me hours to comb through the website and find the posts with the best numbers, link to them, and write this post. We’re not too far removed from a time when we were literally writing eight articles a day. Now, we might hit eight articles in a month…if that. The body of work is so small that I couldn’t help but feel a little bit like the knife was twisting inside of me. What was written in the totality of 2025 probably would’ve been written in a few days five years ago. Man, how time flies, how things change, and how quickly it can all pass you by if you let it.
I’m doing okay, though. I don’t want anyone to worry about me – this just used to be such a grind for me…it was so ingrained in my DNA that I was relentless about pushing SoBros Network. It feels incredibly weird for me to look back at the last 12 years now as if I’m watching old home movies. Things are different now. But, I do still believe in what we put out here. People have always liked looking at this stuff for some reason. I used to get texts and DMs saying “I can’t believe so many people read that.” The “best of” pieces always served the purpose to allow us to relive our greatest hits. I won’t let that practice die. And, I won’t let SoBros Network die.
The Best of SoBros Network, 2025
20. An Ode to the Hot Chicken Biscuit Bene at The Goat – A brunch dish so good I immediately ran home to write about it. Inspiring!
19. Let’s Dig Through Some of My Old Journals from the Early 1990s – This was such a fun exercise to perform earlier back in the fall. My hope for y’all is that you have some relics of your childhood that allow you to relive it a little bit at a time.
18. I Have Figured Out the Perfect Thing to Do With a Head of Cabbage – Cabbage is underrated. If you know what to do with it, you can put together a phenomenal cheap meal.
17. This Guy Commentating His Fight With a Deer Is Peak Cinema – I would never want to fight a deer, but if I ever found myself in that situation, I’d give whoever was with me permission to film it for this reason alone.
16. An Ode to Wal-Mart Candles – They’re underrated and I’m tired of pretending they’re not!
15. Travel Blog: An Afternoon in Jim Thorpe, PA – A sleepy, relaxed town in the mountains with plenty of grub and scenic views. I’m already wanting to go back and spend more than a single afternoon there.
14. The National Bestselling Gooseberry Patch Super-fast Slow Cooking Cookbook Is Completely Unhinged – This book is crazy. Coffee in pot roast. Sprite in beef tips. I couldn’t make this shit up if I tried.
13. Murfreesboro Reviews: Metro Diner – One of my new favorite meals in Murfreesboro, and it’s definitely become our go-to breakfast spot if we happen to be out there early.
12. Infectious ‘Egghead & Twinkie’ is a roadtrip movie for a new generation – “While Egghead & Twinkie is a coming-of-age love story it really is so much more than that. It’s really a movie about friendship and the bond that is difficult to break between two lifelong best friends.” -Steven McCash
11. Travel Blog: One Night in Knoxville – Technically, we made this trip in October of 2024, but it wasn’t until January of 2025 that I got around to writing about it. It’s such an easy and peaceful trip from Nashville.
10. Star-studded Riverbeat Festival delivers good times and vibes – McCash’s account of enjoying the Riverbeat Festival in Memphis back in May.
9. Nashville Hot Chicken Reviews: BJ Hot Chicken – Well, it’s hot and it’s chicken.
8. Ranking 21 Beers from the East Nashville Beer Festival – Brittany Fernandez went out to the East Nashville Beer Festival back in April, tried *21* beers, and ranked them all.
7. Travel Blog: A Long Weekend in Rhode Island – Take me back, please. Just take me back. What a memorable weekend. What a few days off. True New England coastal vibes. I just want to go back and explore a little longer.
6. Important: My Thoughts on the Yankee Candle Rebrand – Arguably the most important story of the year, I had to weigh in on what the “new” Yankee Candle looks like.
5. Reliving Bam Margera Hanging From the Bottom of a Hot Air Balloon – Man, this is some old school SoBros Network writing. It certainly made me miss the good old days.
4. Pro Wrestling Symphony Delivers in Debut Show at Brooklyn Bowl – What a fun afternoon this was, and the team at Pro Wrestling Symphony deserves a ton of credit for putting on a good old fashioned wrestling show.
3. Mount Juliet Reviews: Keke’s Breakfast Cafe – Keep bringing more breakfast spots to Mount Juliet!
2. Country Junction: A Trip to the World’s Largest General Store – It really is a wild place that needs to be seen to be believed. How something like this could exist in the middle of nowhere is mind-boggling to me, but there’s no doubt in my mind that I’d be there bowling every Friday night if I lived up in those mountains.
1. An Evening at Nicholas Barrel & Roost – So lovely of so many people to enjoy my anniversary meal with my wife with me. Even as I write this, I think this is still the best meal I’ve had all year….maybe in multiple years.
Stoney Keeley is the Editor in Chief of The SoBros Network, second on Football & Other F Words, analyst for Stacking The Inbox, and a Dogs Playing Poker on velvet connoisseur. He is a strong supporter of Team GSD, #BeBetter, and ‘Minds right, asses tight.’ “Big Natural” covers the Tennessee Titans, the NFL Draft, Nashville, Yankee Candle, and a whole wealth of nonsense. Follow on Twitter @StoneyKeeley.
Elsewhere on the SoBros Network: Check out Stacking The Inbox for premium coverage of the Tennessee Titans and NFL Draft. Subscribe to Nashville Movie Dispatch for all of our movie content. We get weird on Phone It In, the history podcast that explores legendary tales, important historical figures, and events.
