When Scout approached us more than five years ago to become part of their new idea for a college sports network, we really didn’t want to join. Ironically, as we fought with them over the five years we were together, we didn’t really want to leave! But we did join. And we did leave. And I will try to clarify some aspects of both the joining and the leaving so that the speculators amongst you can relax and go back to following the Buckeyes as your primary focus…The Bucknuts guys that left usThere are two dozen people employed in the Bucknuts Media Network. When we terminated our agreement with Scout last Friday, they approached many of them to “come over” to the new/old site. None of the full-timers wanted to be affiliated with Scout, despite the offers of more money or possible promotions. That says a lot. Because some of our other guys (the part-timers) were in constant negotiations - as Scout upped the ante and increased the pressure - I thought it was inappropriate to comment as the guys made the best deals they could make. Now they are gone and I can comment.We are friends with Nevada and with Bill and with Kyle. All these guys were message board posters on our site, Bucknuts.com. When they wanted to do more, we let them write columns (in Kyle’s case) or go on the radio or even hold chats (in Nevada’s case). They were – and still are – primarily hobbyists, and we had a good time with them. Bill and Nevada had never been paid for their time and opinions and when they asked to be paid, we complied. In fact, we just increased NB’s take three weeks ago when he requested more money for his time spent on the message boards.To try to gain traction with our community, and to buy some credibility, Scout approached all three of our colleagues and offered them five times as much money as they were currently making at Bucknuts. That’s a difficult negotiation! I told them all that they might be better off “taking the money” because Scout was desperate to show they were doing something. To that point, Scout had simply plugged in a bunch of recruiting analysts from out of state and tried to convince (confuse?) Bucknuts people that they were really Ohio guys.Now, they have something to talk about. Even though Nevada and Bill never really wrote for us or covered the games, they are good guys and have good connections in Ohio. AND, they are still friends and I will continue to treat them that way.The Bucknuts/Scout relationshipSince all this is in the courts and open to public scrutiny, I can discuss (actually summarize) our issues with Scout. And since Scout was only too eager to make it seem like I had “pulled a fast one” and abandoned the Bucknuts fan base, I thought it would be equally instructive to discuss the, well…facts.As with many of the larger Scout sites, Bucknuts has been fighting with Scout leadership for a number of years. Why? They wouldn’t spend money on technology or graphics or web-metrics or marketing or personnel or recruiting or anything that seemed important to our customers. I will grant you, that opinion is OUR opinion (and that of many of the sites) but the opinion never changed. And Scout’s behavior never changed. When Scout sold out to Fox, they created a buzz that new money would be invested, updates would be coming and that Fox would add power to the network. None of that happened.To the contrary, we became an itty-bitty part of a giant corporation that didn’t see fit to devote time or capital to the Scout concept. Worse than that, all the publishers were part of a group that was to receive 10% of the proceeds from the sale to Fox. That stake was reduced to less than 1% through a dilution technique. The publishers were incensed. The guys that got the money? Well, they basically left and implied that we were “on our own”.Jim Heckman kicked himself upstairs at Fox and worked on MySpace deals. Brian Kosar “retired”. Peter Gruman left the company. All that remained in the executive suite was the corporate lawyer, Patrick Crum, and he became the head of Scout.We didn’t know what our future was, but it wasn’t with them!Our disputeAs you could surmise from the litigation, we have been very unhappy with Scout for a very long time and they know it. We allege that they took advantage of us and our subscribers. That they didn’t properly reimburse us for advertising and refused to make an accounting for any of the funds that were generated. They wouldn’t let us audit “our books” and the revenues the publishers received were mere fractions of industry standard. And it wasn’t just the money. The agreements with the publishers were dense, complicated and fraught with language to keep anyone from leaving or even expressing their opinions. And support? When the NCAA alleged that Scout and Rivals were “recruiting networks” and that coaches and players shouldn’t talk with our Bucknuts staff, Scout never came to our defense and left it up to us (and our good relationships with Ohio State) to argue our way back in. They didn’t help with credentials or engineering or accounting or marketing – they were just there as a revenue collection entity to which we were paying more than half of all the monies. Worse than paying them for what they did, they refused to give us a proper accounting for our interests!Finally, we were incensed by the way they treated recruiting and Ohio kids. That is a “white paper” all by itself.The relationship and its endScout started as Vulcan (magazine people) and morphed into Citadel (wanting to sell “permission-based” lists) then into Insiders and Scout and finally Fox. Their methods of operations – along with their promises changed along with the names and a shifting cast of people. Jim Heckman had originally started Rivals, burned through $80,000,000 of other people’s money and used remnants of that implosion to begin all over again to form this network, of which Bucknuts was one of the early sites.Glossed over in all the talk about our “sudden” leaving is that we gave notice to Scout in August that we were going and that they had breached many of the material aspects of our agreements. Since September, no one at Scout would engage us in dialogue. They wouldn’t even return calls or e-mails! Our only alternative was to put together our own website platform, our own message boards (Scout wouldn’t permit EZ Board to work with us…) and to cull our own information about our membership (despite an agreement to the contrary, Scout refused to share OUR membership information). When all that work was completed, we informed them and we left.Who’s left?Well, pretty much everyone, despite Scout’s best efforts to confuse the Bucknuts’ nation. We have gone back into court to seek a temporary restraining order to keep Scout from using our name, our materials and to prevent them from raiding our staff. So far – as you can see – we haven’t been very effective!As to the staff, we lost three part-time contributors: Nevada and Bill off the message boards and Kyle as one of our basketball reporters. The rest of Bucknuts is intact. That’s Steve Helwagen, Jerry Rudzinski, Kirk Larrabee, Dave Biddle, Charles Babb, Duane Long, Gary Housteau, Chris Johnson (basketball), Ed Douglas (radio), the JJ Huddle staff (Matt Natali, Wes Durkle, JJ himself, Todd Bell, Paul Boggs, Heath Dawson, Glenn Forbes), and all of our writers/stringers/photographers.Oh, and me. We started together with many of these people and we are very excited about moving forward together.As importantly, more than 70% of our subscribers have already come over within the first six days. Despite Scout’s efforts to muddy the waters and our own efforts to screw up all the registration technology (really –it’s pretty much fixed now!), the Bucknuts nation is home. And we are pleased that you have shown us the loyalty and support that a community deserves.My pledge is to continue to add to staff, content and coverage. If you have issues with registrations, go to http://www.bucknuts.com/easyregister. If you have other questions about our services, go to [email protected].And if you just want to say something to me? I am at [email protected]I am still here and working. And will be after a lot of the others are gone. Thanks again for your understanding, your patience and your support.
In fact, we just increased NB’s take three weeks ago when he requested more money for his time spent on the message boards.
QuoteIn fact, we just increased NB’s take three weeks ago when he requested more money for his time spent on the message boards.I also request more money for my time spent on the message boards.
Everything Old is New AgainYou just typed www.illiniboard.com in your browser, but the site looks different. Where are the banners? Where is the navy blue header? Where are the drop-down menus on the top of the page? Where are the pictures? Where are the five main page stories and all the links to other stories?You might have a lot of questions, or maybe just one: what the hell happened here?Those of you who were visiting the IlliniBoard three years ago probably remember the hectic night when the site became available on the Scout network (then known as The Insiders). I didn't want our new visitors to feel left out of the chaos that ensued on that glorious night, the last night of the twenty-four-hour kegger that was IlliniBoard, so three years later I'm once again screwing up the daily routines of thousands of crazed Illinois fans by leaving the Scout network.Over the last six years, IlliniBoard has grown from a core group of about 100 posters to the current 15,000 people registered to post on the board. And that number doesn't even include the people who are not registered but visit the site to read the opinions of other Illinois fans and learn more about their favorite team. The site has evolved in ways I never anticipated.That evolution is actually what got me thinking about leaving the Scout network. Over the last three years, I have grown to dislike following recruiting to the point that I don't even bother anymore. As someone running a site devoted to dishing the latest recruiting scoops, I didn't feel that I was doing what needed to be done. Actually, I don't think I will ever have the motivation to do that. Breaking away from recruiting gives me the perfect opportunity to bring the IlliniBoard back to what it started out as: a place to discuss the on-court and on-field happenings of the Fighting Illini men's basketball and football teams.So, what does this new focus mean to the site's visitors? Well, for one thing, IlliniBoard is not going to cover recruiting much, if at all. Sure, when someone like Regis Benn commits to Illinois, I am sure there will be a short story that says he committed. But the site will not be covering the day-in and day-out recruiting sagas that change as quickly and dramatically as the direction of the wind in Chicago. I have watched too many of these dramas play out to be one more person to add fuel to the fire. I would rather talk about the players on the court, so that is what I will focus on. If you are interested in a site that reports on Illinois' recruiting efforts in depth, I suggest that you continue to visit the site on the Scout network, as they will be providing all the recruiting coverage you want to read.I would like to reiterate one thing, this isn't a negative reflection on Scout. On the contrary, they have been accomodating through this process, and as a company where many of the executives have built communities themselves understand the reasons behind why we made this move. My experience with Scout was a positive one, and I do encourage you to continue to visit the Illinois site on Scout for all of your recruiting info needs, I just didn't get into this business to cover recruiting.IlliniBoard will still have the three traditional boards that you have grown to either love, hate, or love to hate: the IlliniBoard.com Hoops Fan Forum, the IlliniBoard.com Football Fan Forum, and IlliniBoard2: The Deuce. Old-schoolers who go to the forums may notice that the boards looks eerily familiar, even down to the logos. I am hoping this blast from the past will bring back some more intelligent and focused discussions on Illinois sports, in contrast to the discussions that have been typical of the IlliniBoard.com message boards for the last few years. I love talking about basketball and football, and even the crazy topics that end up on the Deuce, and that is what I want the IlliniBoard to be about again: talking basketball, football, and all other topics in between.This switch in the board is a change for everyone involved. I am making this change because in the long run, I think it is how I can continue to make IlliniBoard.com the best fan site on the Internet. Finally making this decision a month ago has rejuvenated me, giving me the energy to create an even better site for all Illinois fans, including those who post daily on the message board and those who have never posted a message. I think I had lost sight of the fact that the majority of the site's visitors read the board but never post, and it had become difficult for them to weed through the crap to find the information they actually wanted to know. My hope is that now the site's visitors who read daily and never post will be able to access information more quickly and read more discussions that are relevant to the topics at hand.From now on, many things will be different, but many things will also remain the same. The Daily News Links aren't going anywhere, but in the near future they will be improved as I update them to make them more robust. The message boards aren't going anywhere, and I hope that as I see the need for new features and changes to the boards I will be able to make changes at a much quicker pace. The front page stories aren't going anywhere because I am a pretty vain person who assumes everyone wants to know my opinion on Illinois sports.When all is said and done, I am hoping this change brings about one thing for the IlliniBoard: to make it a fun place for me to run, which in turn will make it a fun place for all of you to visit
