Last week, Josh Pate, a college football Youtuber with 500,000 subscribers, broadcast his popular show from a hotel room, those unmistakable curtains, floor lamps, and bedside sconces all in the background. Normally he produces content from a brick-lined, souvenir-laden studio in Nashville, but Pate had fled the city’s destructive ice storm to seek refuge out of town. The college-football season is over and there was no breaking news, and he’s only contractually obligated to put on a show twice a week in the offseason. For him, though, there was no question that the show must go on.
“We had all the reasons to slack off a little bit,” Pate said by phone recently. “But there is someone out there who is really counting on the episode drop on Tuesday.”

It’s not because Pate’s audience is thirsting for offseason college-football chat, exactly. It’s because he and many other football content creators are a lighthouse, or a North Star, both Pate’s words, to a generation of men, an audience who, behind the scenes, quietly and often reaches out to their favorite YouTubers and podcasters asking for help — or just for someone to listen. These fans might be going through a breakup, or lost their job, or are even contemplating suicide, but their favorite streamer is something to look forward to — maybe the only thing at the moment. For 21st-century media celebrities, this is the secret side of their professions. The ease of texting and private messaging has opened up a new dimension in parasocial relationships between sports-media celebrities and their fans, one in which there’s no offseason.

“If you’re having a shitty day at work, or you just failed a test, or your parents are getting divorced, you know I’m going to post something,” said Andrew Fenichel, another prolific creator who specializes in punchy sports takes in the TikTok overlay style. “I don’t want to speak for the audience, but from what they tell me, they know I post every day and that........

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