After having no cell phone for most of today, I logged on here tonight to see the Football chatter and saw three different threads that each in some form were about the lack of football coverage (or the poor coverage) on KSR. While I understand that some of those complaints are from the same few screen names that curse the mere mention of me or KSR (and likely will join Ky Joe as my future killers one day), some raised a couple of points I wanted to address.
--- On the website, I am not sure how anyone can say we haven't had a massive increase of football coverage in the past two months. We brought on Freddie Maggard and are about to hire a third full time writer whose main focus will be football. The football recruiting posts have been thorough, we have done previews of every position on the team and much more. As a matter of fact, I am certain that there is no site on the internet that has had more football stories than we have over the past two months. Practice has not even started and the coverage has been significant and will only ramp up (we are sending five people to Football Media Day). Comparing the amount of posts to basketball strikes me as silly, when the reality is that our coverage of football has never been more thorough.
--- The other line of complaint seems to be that I don't know anything about football and am an idiot when it comes to football...that could be true. I think it is very much exaggerated (I rarely see many posts from minature Bill Belicheks on fan message boards or blogs), but it is true that I am by no means an expert. However I have admitted that and it was part of the reason we brought Freddie on. I do know more about basketball but haven't claimed to be an expert in that either...instead I try to put on an entertaining radio show about UK sports and being a UK sports fan. Yes, I will get names incorrect (my Bell and Wiggins thing was strong) but when you are on 2 hours a day, mistakes happen. But I will also note that even in football, we break news all the time (the Marcelys Jones and Tate Leavitt commitments recently...the Stoops hire and Marrow extension in the past) and we try to give fans a fun option to talk sports. If you want expertise on Xs and Os, it isn't a secret that I am probably not your guy, but we have made the site include some that are.
Here is the deal about football coverage about UK on KSR and other sites in general...it has increased because Mark Stoops has put some life in the program and has folks excited...and the more UK wins the more you will see. However, diehard posts about the minutia of UK football will always be rare...first because there simply isn't a huge market for it...the amount of people who want that information is WAY less than those who want more general coverage of both sports...and because when football isn't in season, we have so little access to the team that there is very little to say or report. Football coaches are by their very nature (and for understandable reasons) quiet...thus you are just left with predictions...and you can only predict the same 12 games so many times.
I like football and want UK to win BIG...it would be great for my favorite program and would also be great for KSR. The more sports UK is good at, the better for us...especially when it comes to football. If UK wins 6 games, it would be (absent a national title in basketball) the best thing that could happen for KSR and for UK sports in general. To think otherwise is absurd. We have tried to increase football coverage for what I do think is a slowly growing demand and more is coming (including a weekly football-only podcast with Freddie, Nick and Lorenzen). Yes radio shows in other areas of the country talk more about football than we do...they also are, even in those areas, FAR less successful than ours in part because they dont get casual, non-hardcore fans like we do. Our model is Finebaum when he was in Alabama...it has worked and we will continue to do it. The more UK wins, the more football will be front and center. But I don't think we get anywhere as a fanbase by complaining about "basketball only" fans or getting mad that others aren't as serious as you...the reason the UK FB coaches reach out to us is simple...for UK to get where it needs to be, the casual fan has to get on board and be into it....that is where we try to play a role.
With all that said, I would be glad to check back tonight (since I have no cell phone coverage) and answer any questions from people who have real ones (and don't just want to blast us).
--- On the website, I am not sure how anyone can say we haven't had a massive increase of football coverage in the past two months. We brought on Freddie Maggard and are about to hire a third full time writer whose main focus will be football. The football recruiting posts have been thorough, we have done previews of every position on the team and much more. As a matter of fact, I am certain that there is no site on the internet that has had more football stories than we have over the past two months. Practice has not even started and the coverage has been significant and will only ramp up (we are sending five people to Football Media Day). Comparing the amount of posts to basketball strikes me as silly, when the reality is that our coverage of football has never been more thorough.
--- The other line of complaint seems to be that I don't know anything about football and am an idiot when it comes to football...that could be true. I think it is very much exaggerated (I rarely see many posts from minature Bill Belicheks on fan message boards or blogs), but it is true that I am by no means an expert. However I have admitted that and it was part of the reason we brought Freddie on. I do know more about basketball but haven't claimed to be an expert in that either...instead I try to put on an entertaining radio show about UK sports and being a UK sports fan. Yes, I will get names incorrect (my Bell and Wiggins thing was strong) but when you are on 2 hours a day, mistakes happen. But I will also note that even in football, we break news all the time (the Marcelys Jones and Tate Leavitt commitments recently...the Stoops hire and Marrow extension in the past) and we try to give fans a fun option to talk sports. If you want expertise on Xs and Os, it isn't a secret that I am probably not your guy, but we have made the site include some that are.
Here is the deal about football coverage about UK on KSR and other sites in general...it has increased because Mark Stoops has put some life in the program and has folks excited...and the more UK wins the more you will see. However, diehard posts about the minutia of UK football will always be rare...first because there simply isn't a huge market for it...the amount of people who want that information is WAY less than those who want more general coverage of both sports...and because when football isn't in season, we have so little access to the team that there is very little to say or report. Football coaches are by their very nature (and for understandable reasons) quiet...thus you are just left with predictions...and you can only predict the same 12 games so many times.
I like football and want UK to win BIG...it would be great for my favorite program and would also be great for KSR. The more sports UK is good at, the better for us...especially when it comes to football. If UK wins 6 games, it would be (absent a national title in basketball) the best thing that could happen for KSR and for UK sports in general. To think otherwise is absurd. We have tried to increase football coverage for what I do think is a slowly growing demand and more is coming (including a weekly football-only podcast with Freddie, Nick and Lorenzen). Yes radio shows in other areas of the country talk more about football than we do...they also are, even in those areas, FAR less successful than ours in part because they dont get casual, non-hardcore fans like we do. Our model is Finebaum when he was in Alabama...it has worked and we will continue to do it. The more UK wins, the more football will be front and center. But I don't think we get anywhere as a fanbase by complaining about "basketball only" fans or getting mad that others aren't as serious as you...the reason the UK FB coaches reach out to us is simple...for UK to get where it needs to be, the casual fan has to get on board and be into it....that is where we try to play a role.
With all that said, I would be glad to check back tonight (since I have no cell phone coverage) and answer any questions from people who have real ones (and don't just want to blast us).