Inside the Website - I'm Crazy, but you like it
By Adam Knoll | January 22, 2010 at 12:46 AM EST | No Comments
The Playoff Pick’em has in many ways been a huge success. Last week we had 25 players vying to see who could pick what best, and it was fun. I hope to do more things like this and I also hope that our players realize that while other squads are just as dedicated to this league and to what they do, no other team does visitor participation like we do. The main goal is to keep people coming back, keep them interested and have them see something new each time they walk into our cyberspace. In the past three weeks, the Pick’em has in part generated over 700 hits to our lead page. That’s a real nice number number, yet I’ll be honest, January has been a slow month otherwise in content.
The important thing for me as an owner is not to have my guys show up here 2-3 times a month and find the same old crap splattered across the pages. That’s not interesting, nor does it inspire confidence that we are serious in our goals: Becoming a serious contender in the GFL, generating a viable fan base, informing our members on everything, keeping newcomers up to date and have a system where folks can feel as if they can be a part of something refreshing. Again, we are not better for this, we are just different.
Other things that we do, or will do come season time, will again illustrate how we try to make sure things stay fluid, focused and committed to be just flat out the best website experience the GFL has to offer. The space we give to our local businesses (for free), the reporting of the Wilmot HS sports scores and this very blog here gives any visitor a chance to see something new. Many of you don’t know this (maybe everyone), but during the Wilmot Football games I did live reporting via twitter, come March I’ll do the same during our tryouts. Why? Because someone may poke onto the site and go ‘Wow, I never expected to see that.’ With this Pick’em doing so well I think we may take a stab at Match Madness, which is daunting considering the tryouts and beginning of the season practice schedule which happen at the same time. Yet damn it’s fun right?
Come season time there will be polls, everywhere, for Player Of The This, That or Something Else. We have 14, (14!), weekly awards in which 4 of them will be voted on by visitors to the site. Pictures and video will be cramped into every spot possible. If you want to see what to expect from our game highlights, go to YouTube and search Branoic23; are they the best highlights in the world? No, but they are something, and I’ll be doing them again. I will personally be doing the league previews and recaps for the entire league for the GFL website (and maybe even a video for that too). All of that will make it onto our site as well for the sole purpose of never having to hear one person say ‘yeah, I went to your site last week and it was the exact same as the week before.’ Why have a sports site then? Why run a sports team?
I may be crazy in all I do, in honesty, it’s too much. I could do a quarter of what I do, and be fine. But I care…way too much, about this team and really about this league. Before you get into how much of a bum I am, I got kids, two doge and 4 (4!) cats; I got a job and I go to college, same as every other owner (perhaps not the school part), so having too much time on my hands is not the issue. Yet first and foremost, I owe it to my guys, I’m asking for at three nights a week out of your lives for a team you don’t get paid from. That’s dedication I require, and if I’m going to do that then the least I could do is update a webpage. Secondly, if we are lucky enough to get a fan to come to the site, then why not blow them away with content? That’s not a bad thing in my eye. We are in a position of proving ourselves to everyone, they owe us nothing.
Lastly, I don’t know about others, but Semi-pro or not, owning a team has always been a pipe-dream of mine. Who hasn’t been watching a game and gone, ‘I want to run everything…and I’d be good at it too! I’d do this, and that…’. That’s what I’m doing. You only get so many shots in life, and none of you know me well enough to know that I’ve already wasted a lot of bullets. Getting to run a team with a great group of guys (there are 4 of them), who really make it so much easier (and fun) to run the squad, is a wonderful daily life. Practicing and playing ball for a team I’m integrated in every aspect with is thrilling. Why would I waste that opportunity, especially playing in this league where truly, the sky is the limit? Succeed or fail, I want to be able to look back and say that I did everything I could, in every way, to make the Phoenix as good as possible. I want everyone to dig in for the ride, and if I were you, I’d bet on us succeeding.
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