Originally posted by Ketchum:
Originally posted by Copperhead Road:
Wow, I've been busy and just saw this.
Massive loss. Chip's articles were the best thing about this site.
Ketch, as a suggestion - and I'm sure you're covering all your bases - you need to replace a great sports news reporter with a great sports news reporter. The recruiting guys here are great at what they do, but not everyone is here for recruiting. Chip covered everything that was not recruiting, and he did it brilliantly and always with a sense of humor. He will be very difficult to replace. People with sources like Chip had don't grow on threes.
Spare no expense in finding a replacement, or the light from this shining beacon in the industry will be significantly diminished, and subscriptions will suffer, IMO.
I have never been a multiple site guy, but I will have to check out Scout.com and see what Chip has cooking up over there. Glad to see that Chip will continue to do his radio show, which I listen to every morning.
A few random thoughts...
a. Chip did outstanding work for us. Day-in and day-out, I'll stick up for the other content on the site and say that our work stands up to any comparison. For instance, I'll take my 10 Thoughts From the Weekend and hold it up for comparison to any writer's work in the entire nation. It does roughly 2X the traffic of other columns on the site every week. I think McComas' Wednesday column can stand up to just about anyone's in the nation.
b. I will hire a great sports news reporter. You guys under estimate the attraction to this job. I have had two nationally known reporters from SI talk to me about the job in the last week. One is a guy I consider to be perhaps the best young reporter in the sports media industry. Neither will be the person that fills the role for a couple of different reasons, but both openly believe it is one of the elite positions in college sports media.
c. Orangebloods continues to have great sources. We were breaking major stories before Chip arrived and we will break them afterwards. The combination was great because it matched up the two biggest story breakers together.
d. I feel underestimated, as if I'm not one of the elite people in this business, myself. Suddenly, I am thirsty for milkshakes.
Let's go play ball.
This post was edited on 4/24 9:32 AM by Ketchum