“It has to be small, it has to be shared quickly, you want it on Twitter and Tumblr, and he’s great at realizing which moments are best for it, which tiny slices are indicative of something larger,” Mathis-Lilley said.

Burke also posts elegant screen captures, and some video, though he tends to use it sparingly and only in situations that lend themselves to it, like the last, roller-coaster day of the Premier League season earlier this year, or the idiotic reports delivered by some television journalists, as he saw it, during the hunt for a suspect after the Boston Marathon bombing. Video is problematic, though, because most platforms will not support the new technology he likes, and because the N.F.L. periodically issues stern letters to Deadspin’s editors ordering them to take things down.

The league has not made much of a fuss over the animated GIFs, which are perfect at capturing instances of embarrassment and absurdity — a baseball player tumbles over a fence, ESPN’s football score box shows one team leading another by 975 points, a spectator swears or a football player mows down another before the play starts. The charm of animated GIFs is in the content — those clumsy moments captured, and repeated again and again. Unlike videos, which provide a smooth stream of action, a GIF is like a digital flipbook, a choppy rendering that adds to the silliness of what happened in real time.

“Video requires a reader’s intervention to play, whereas a GIF adds itself forcefully,” Burke said.

He added: “It’s an art object. You’re taking this little moment and making it exist in perpetuity, because it constantly loops,” as in a GIF of a fumble by Bears running back Matt Forte.

“A lot of stuff I do here — nobody’s done this stuff,” he said. “How did I learn to do it? I messed around with stuff until I found something that worked.”

To start his day, Burke organizes his desk. He then organizes the games he wants to watch on the various monitors. He makes sure his three Mason jars are filled with water so he will not have to leave the room on the account of thirst. He keeps track of Twitter feeds, Deadspin and breaking news on a monitor he has programmed so he can keep abreast of the many things he needs to keep abreast of.

On one of his computers, he has nine hard drives, which he uses to store the data that he has amassed. He built it himself, “out of components,” he says vaguely.