The Football Brainiacs

Most everyone seems to understand what the new donor board is and why it was necessary to launch it. However, perhaps we did not anticipate questions or issues a few of you might have with the new addition. As such, we may not have explained things with enough clarity.

On behalf of our founders, I will do that now.

Why we call it a “Donor” board/section and not a “Subscription”?

We borrowed the concept from the concept of a donor in the college football program world. Everyone gets to watch the OU game or the FSU game or the Alabama game, etc. But not everyone has the exact same experience or gets to see everything related to the program. Whether you watch on TV or in the stands or in the donor section, everyone is supporting the program. ALL of that support ensures the program can continue to exist. But a certain group of people choose to altruistically offer additional support. And while what the university offers in return doesn’t match what the donor offers, in gratitude for that extra assistance, the university offers them extras. Whether it’s meeting with the coaches, getting to see some of the inner workings of the program, offering them certain seats, etc. It’s an enhanced experience as a small way of saying “thank you” on behalf of the university and on behalf of the other OU fans who benefit from the donors support.

Anyone attempting to say we have gone to a strict subscription model is misinformed or being disingenuous. While a strict subscription model may occasionally provide some content for their readers, it is certainly not the norm.

As we’ve said before, our content on the main TFB page has not changed. To illustrate this, below is a screen shot of content from two weeks ago.

Here is last week’s content…

And below is the content we have posted so far this week…

As I said, the content on the main site has not changed.

And for those of you who have read the Open Posts this week (which is where we’ve ALWAYS put the bulk of our content), you are fully aware that the same substantive content has been there. And for those of you who have read this site for the many years now that we’ve been around, you know that some weeks are slower and some weeks there is more information.

Does the main TFB site get the content later than before? NO.

Again…no!

I’ll explain, but let me first say; gathering this content takes a lot of time. Even the smallest piece of content doesn’t just appear magically. It takes time, building relationships, digging, piecing things together. And outside of the few ads we run, the cost of this has been born by our writers (with their time) and partners.

So, in order to bring you high quality content for free and still maintain our regular jobs, we would gather the information at different times throughout the week and then add it to the Open Post the next day.

So, no, the main site isn’t getting the content late. We haven’t changed the content schedule. We are simply trying to provide some of the content closer to real time for our donors. In other words, they are receiving content earlier and that isn’t a semantic difference. Again, we are providing the content on the main site on the same schedule we were prior to the donor site.

Does the Donor site get some exclusive content? YES.

Like a football program, the donors are going to see some private aspects of a program that the program cannot readily share with everyone. In our case, there is certain content we were never able to share on the main board due to its sensitivity. And you’d be surprised just how sensitive a program can be. Every website that provides this information is constantly struggling with what information can be put out and what can’t be. And when you cross the line, you’re going to hear about it. But we often have to hold back a little more because we don’t have a private space. Up until now, everything was public. As such, there was some information that we simply would not post.

Today, I posted a note about Lincoln Riley that, before, may have just been a little nugget I’d know and talk about with our other guys, but wouldn’t have shared on the site. You may read it and think it’s not particularly sensitive but, having done this now for a while, we have a pretty good understanding of what is and what isn’t. And even we get it wrong sometimes. In fact, we posted some information on the main site earlier this week that made a few folks unhappy and we heard about it from our sources.

So, the donor board is getting some exclusive content; however, that content, in many cases (if not most), would not have been posted on the main site anyway due simply to how public the main site is.

And, as you would expect, there is still information that we absolutely cannot share on any site, private or public.

Additionally, part of that more sensitive information is a little more background information on a recruitment that is simply too much detail for an open online space.

Our hopes for the donor section and the site in general?

Our hope for the site in general is that, with the support of our readers and our donors, we can keep it running and growing.

Our hope for the donor section is that we can show our gratitude to those who take an extra step to support, not just us, but the thousands of readers who receive our content daily, by offering them an enhanced user and content experience that we wouldn’t be able to provide otherwise.

The traffic this week has only increased so it’s clear most people understand all of the above and have continued to benefit from the content we provide, we hope this clarifies things for the few folks that were seeking it.