From Fitz:
As a young sports journalist, a 1986 graduate of Kansas State, I dreamed big. Who doesn’t? It quickly became clear, however, that all I wanted to do was report on K-State sports. In 1995, I launched a K-State sports magazine for the Wichita Eagle. In 1998, my wife, Becky, and I created our own K-State magazine, and a few months later, launched a K-State website, which was a founding site of the Rivals.com network.
Since then, there’s never been a doubt what I wanted to do for the rest of my professional life.
Covering Kansas State sports is my life’s work. I guess you could say it’s my calling. Going back to my days at the K-State student newspaper, The Collegian, I’ve now been chronicling the Wildcats for more than 30 years.
From day one, our company’s motto has been straightforward: “For K-Staters, By K-Staters.” That hasn’t changed. We have always sought to provide K-State fans with the type of coverage they deserve.
Today our company, Spirit Street Publishing, Inc., is proud to announce that our website, GoPowercat.com, is joining the CBS family as the first site signed since CBS Interactive purchased Scout.com and merged it with its already strong 247Sports Network.
To be clear, we still own the domain GoPowercat.com, but the site is now a member of the 247Sports Network. If you have previously signed up at GPC, you actually are paying Rivals/Yahoo and now must follow us to our new home at 247Sports to receive GoPowercat.com content. Your existing subscription will not transfer to our new network. The good news is that CBS Interactive is investing heavily to provide K-State fans with an excellent experience, and thus, 247Sports is offering a great deal to encourage K-State fans to immediately make the move.
We trust that you want to continue to access the proven coverage you’ve always received from GoPowercat, and that’s why this decision was not taken lightly. I know what this move means for our company and for our longtime and loyal customers, who are now invited to follow us to our new home. Yes, we are still GoPowercat, but being part of the 247Sports Network will make us a better version of ourselves.
I take great pride in being a founding site on the Rivals.com network and that GoPowercat.com has been on the forefront of online sports coverage for nearly 20 years, but it’s that need to stay in front of a shifting market that led to this decision.
The new 247Sports Network is now the leader in school-specific coverage and offers publishers such as myself the best tools to succeed in a competitive market. In addition, 247 offers K-State fans the type of subscriber experience they deserve.
The reasons for the change are easy to explain: Better technology, better engineering, better market awareness, better leadership, better recruiting coverage, better customer service. This network will be a superior way to deliver Kansas State sports coverage to our passionate customers, and you will immediately notice the difference.
It has been hard for me to hide my displeasure with the stagnant environment that has existed at Rivals under its corporate leadership. A sports network such as Rivals has never seemed important to Yahoo, but it’s important to me, and it’s important to our family of subscribers.
And, most notably, it’s important to CBS Interactive, because leading the effort at 247Sports is the brightest in the business, my friend Shannon Terry. He built Rivals into what it was at its best and then did the same with 247. He does this work because he loves it, and his market foresight is unmatched. His leadership of the 247 team under the greater CBS umbrella was critical in my decision to join the network. His belief in the intelligent leadership of CBS Interactive, its understanding of this specific industry and its depth of media reach and knowledge will be a refreshing change.
This top-down expectation of excellence has always existed within our culture at GoPowercat.com. Thus, it's important to note that the long-standing members of our staff and the young talent who have aided in our coverage have all stayed with the GoPowercat team despite efforts from Rivals to hire them away to compete with GPC.
Included in that team is my associate editor, D. Scott Fritchen, who I consider to be the finest long-form sports feature writer currently working anywhere in sports writing. Rising star Riley Gates is still with us, as is his father, Brian, who helps oversee the daily content on the site, and so is Ryan Wallace, the nation's expert in K-State football recruiting.
In addition, Zac Carlson is joining our staff full-time to coordinate both our video and social media efforts, and, of course, former K-State safety Marcus Watts continues as our football analyst. There are plenty of others, and I have included a list of our staff members, full- and part-time, at the bottom of this letter. Every single one of them is a K-Stater interested in providing elite K-State sports coverage.
Plus, the 247Sports national recruiting staff is much more invested in covering Kansas State recruiting. The combination of the Scout and 247 recruiting staffs into one team creates an unmatched force in the game. Subscribers will immediately notice a greater attention to detail and a national analyst presence on our message boards. Bottom line: Kansas State matters to this national recruiting staff in a way fans have not previously experienced.
Know this, I would not have made this decision if it wasn’t best for everyone associated with GoPowercat.com, most importantly our passionate customers, current and future. I believe CBSi and 247 offer us the best vehicle to provide K-State fans the multimedia access they crave.
We cover K-State. That’s what we do. Telling K-State stories has never been, nor will it ever be, a fallback position in our careers. It is our career. It is our calling. I trust you will join all of us at GoPowercat.com as we merge into the 247Sports Network.
