I am one of the writers that left BamaRecruiting.com. I just want to clarify a few things here because there is a lot of misinformation circulating about the departure of myself and the rest of the staff.
There is no truth to the 'Kentucky fan' or 'we wanted more glory' stories. If you compare my writing style with that of my alleged 'Kentucky fan' post it is abundantly clear that it was not me who posted it.
Those of us who left are trying to jumpstart careers by doing what we do. For Tim, it was a fun thing that he did because he enjoyed the popularity it garnered him. As a result of our differences in long term goals, our views conflicted on how the site should be run. In the end, we felt our reputations were being harmed by some questionable reporting, which was the only the last in this long chain of events, and so we felt it was in our best interests to let him take his site on whatever path we chose and for us to fend for ourselves.
Most of us are young, to be sure, but we feel we have something to offer. I am a graduate of the UA business school, one of us is pre-law at Alabama, another of us will soon graduate from Jax State. We feel that we have developed a solid business plan that can build a wonderful site.
Our plan is not to be a pay site if we don't have to be. We have a number of ideas for funding that should take care of all the operating costs and also allow us to hire more credentialed writers, visit camps, etc, all in an effort to bring our readers the best and most original information at the lowest possible price--$0.
If it doesn't turn out that we can do the things we want to do with the funding our non-pay format provides, we feel that by that point we will, nonetheless, have a strong enough product to offer that a large portion of our audience would be willing to pay a small fee for our services.
None of us in particular are in this for monetary reasons. If you knew the man hours and money that we, including Tim, put into BR.com while at the same time asking nothing of our visitors, you would quite agree. We want this to help us obtain actual paying jobs in the field so that we can continue to bring you our offering either as the sole free recruiting information provider, or as the low cost leader in the Bama recruiting market.
We are simply a group of guys that love writing, obviously have some skill at it, and foremost love Alabama. Our new site is in the works, and we will keep all of you updated. In the interim, we would ask that you think before you call people names or propogate rumors as to why our relationship with BamaRecruiting.com dissolved. It may seem juvenile to you, but to us who are trying to nurture young writing careers, we feel it was immensely important that we make the right decision at what we felt was a very critical juncture. We never expected people to understand, but on the same token we expected a slightly more mature reaction from some readers in particular.
We will be in touch. Until then, we wish you all the best, and thank you for your continued support as we make the transition.
Nate
[This message has been edited by NateDogg (edited 11-21-2003).]