Author Archives: The World of College Football

Essay #2

Throughout my months in Publication 101, I learned so many new tips and tricks, and as a result my website got better while I gained more knowledge. So many components go into creating a website, and I had no clue what it was like maintaining an up to date website. I do have a fair amount of publishing background as I’ve created two yearbooks in highschool, but this was a lot different as it was all online. I can admit I am not the strongest writer, so when I first found out how much I would have to write each week it was a bit daunting and I wondered how I would fair. However, I found out that when writing about something you are really passionate about, such as college football, it makes it really easy to write and more fun.

 

When first got my website and I was deciding on what wordpress theme to choose for my blog, it was super difficult to decide which one to choose. There were literally thousands to choose from and it took a long time to find the right one. In the end I decided to go with one of the most basic themes called Aakriti Personal Blog, since I wanted my blog to focus mainly on the content and not have the theme distract the reader from my writing. I eventually introduced some color into my website after getting the suggestion from Jennifer’s peer review of my website. I then turned my website a neon yellow color. I choose a very unique color because I wanted to make my website stand out as I’ve never seen any website use yellow as their background and it helps set my website apart from all others and makes it distinct. One thing I did learn about the process while creating a website is that you must have a really good theme that allows you to manipulate it. The biggest regret of my website was actually the choice of theme. If I were to start over and make a new website, I would not use this theme again. I was very constricted on what changes I could make and I didn’t like how the sidebar was tucked away behind a three bar line on the top right which you had to click to get to the CFB standings and the archives. I wanted the standings to be on the homepage going down right hand side, but was not able to do that as I didn’t choose the right theme to get that. Overall, the theme I choose wasn’t right for me, but for the time it did its job and made my website very clean.

 

For the actual content I was producing, I looked to get inspiration from the leading producers in college football news. ESPN, Bleacher Report and theScore are just 3 of the biggest companies that write about college football. I used the general layout from Bleacher Reports articles on mine as I thought it might give my website more credibility if it resembles a well known sports writing website. These big companies didn’t get this big on luck so they must be doing something right so I decided to take a page out of their books. I also took suggestions from peer reviews to help improve my website. I implemented many great suggestions from Tessa’s peer review of my website. I switched the name of the author writing the posts from “admin”, to my name to make it more personal. I started using hyperlinks to make my posts look more professional Furthermore, I spread out the writing in to multiple paragraphs instead of just one long paragraph to make it easier to read. Getting suggestions for my website through peer reviews helped improve my website and every suggestion I really thankful for. Going forward, if I was to continue my blog I would want to figure out how to put videos directly in my posts so readers won’t have to click away in order to watch the video I am referencing. In the end, very happy about how my posts turned out and the way they looked in the end.

 

When I had to consider my audience for what I was writing about I had to do some research on who I was writing for. What I learned was that I was writing for all demographics. College football reaches over such a wide spectrum of people and after reading an article by nielsen.com on the reach of college football, I finally realized how big college football actually is. I learned that over  155 million Americans watch college football and it is split 50-50 by gender which makes college football a massive market. Also all ethnicities are shown to watch college football which really shows it covers everywhere in America. With this new knowledge, I had to make sure that what I was writing was very neutral and it wasn’t to difficult or to easy to read so it could appeal to everyone. Also if anyone has read many of my articles you might notice it follows the basic pattern of talking about the best teams in the nation. This is done with a purpose because typically the best teams are the most popular and have the biggest fan bases. For example, I would rather write about Ohio State, who has the #1 fan base of 3,167,263 than Maryland whos fan base is 474,059, according to a report done from the New York Times on where the fans lie. I want to attract as many people to my blog as I can and talking about the big teams was a tactic I used in order to get people here. This didn’t really work as my website had minimal viewership and almost no one went on my website. Hopefully, if I were to continue writing on my blog viewership would go up as that is one of my major goals of this website.

 

Having a blog and talking about something I’m passionate about each week has been an amazing experience and it was super fun. Going forward I will probably not keep posting on my blog as the college football season ends in just over a month and once its over there is almost nothing to talk about. I had a really fun time writing about topics I’m interested in and I might want to do something like this again next season. Likely I will not use a blog next season but rather I will create an Instagram account to post on, which will be a lot easier for me. What I learned most from this course is that I really enjoy creating content and whether it is on Instagram or a website I will try to always keep publishing something.

 

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A Look At The Future Of College Football – 2019 Recruiting Class

With week 12 being a big down week in CFB, and the only big upset being Oklahoma State beating #9 West Virginia 45 – 41 in a massive offensive showdown, we are going to look ahead to the 2019 recruiting class. Recruiting is possibly one of the biggest parts, if not the biggest part of having any success in college football. In order to win games you have to have stand out players and the only way to get those players is by going out and recruiting them. The recruiting scene is a major part of every university, with hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into it whether paying staff to go out and recruit or flying out future prospects to convince them to come to their school. One sub par recruiting class could be a major setback for any program as with a week class they might not win as many games and in result not get many top recruits the next year which can be hard to reverse. We can see this by looking at the top teams and noticing that they get all the best high school players since they are the best teams in the nation. Players want to play on the best teams and as unfair as that might be for teams that are not doing that well, that’s just how it is.

Even though the 2018 season has still not yet completed, many teams have already raked up many top star recruits. Georgia and LSU lead the nation in 5 star recruits, each having 3. Alabama however, as expected has the #1 ranked recruiting class of the 2019 season so far totaling 290.39 points. So far they only have one 5 star (Pierce Quick), but have an astonishing 19 players committed that are 4 star recruits. Clemson might have the most rounded recruiting class so far as they have two, 5 stars, nine 3 stars and thirteen 3 stars as they come in with the #6 ranked class. Other big schools that make up the rest of the top 5 classes are #2 Texas A&M, #3 Georgia, #4 Oregon and #5 LSU. Oregon is the only team in the top 6 who still doesn’t have a 5 star commit, but will likely gain more in the months to come as they are the only western American team in the top 16. One surprising thing about the ranking classes is that Oregon and Texas A&M are ranked to high even though they are not ranked in the top 25 of the college football playoff standings. These teams both however have a long lasting history of success so that would likely contribute to them still being able to recruit at such a high level.

Image result for elite 11Finally, you can’t talk about a years recruiting class without looking at the future top level quarterbacks coming out of high school. This year it looks like most of the top quarterbacks are going to teams that either need a star, their quarterback is graduating or is going to the NFL. Standout and Elite 11 MVP, Spencer Rattler leads this years strong quarterback class and has committed to Oklahoma where he will likely take over for Kyler Murray who is leaving to play baseball for the Oakland A’s. Filling out the top 3 quarterbacks are Bo Nix who has committed to Auburn and Ryan Hilinski whos committed to South Carolina. Both competed in the Elite 11 competition where the best of the best quarterbacks go to learn, train and try to win MVP. Overall this year’s recruiting class is shaping up to be very strong and college football next season looks very promising.

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Process Post Week 11

Last week in my process post, I talked about how viewership on my website was almost at zero and that I need to find new ways to get word out my website exists. One way I was thinking to gain viewership would be through social media, specifically, Instagram. Instagram would be a great place to post smaller updates and individual highlights and I would have my website linked so if someone wants to read a more bigger article then can do so on my website. All of my blog posts online are way to long for Instagram, but Instagram does have its own set of advantages where my website does not. For example most things that happen in college football such as a highlight, update or score are not meaty enough to make in to a full article but can be put in to a couple of sentences which is great for Instagram. For example, if there is a great catch in a game and everyone should know about it, it’s a lot easier to get it out there through Instagram rather than my website. Linking back to my website on every post will be key as reminding viewers to go to my website is a main reason of having an Instagram account. Another great part of Instagram which I can take advantage of is Instagram Stories. I can do polls and viewers can ask questions about college football which I will answer. This will hopefully be big in growing my account which will translate over to my website. Finally, Instagram would also help make my website in to almost a community as there can be lots of interaction between writer and reader. Overall, the first step I will take in marketing my website and trying to gain viewers will be through Instagram.

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