A couple pieces of good news to share with you regarding the site:
First I'm happy to announce that our Media Row correspondent Ben Golliver is coming on board to be a full-fledged second writer at Blazersedge. Ben has solid blogging experience, a perceptive eye, and an engaging writing/conversation style. I know you will love hearing from him.
This does not mean that I'll be doing less writing. I'll still be doing all the previews, reviews, opinion pieces, and interview features you're used to. Ben will add to the coverage you receive. His main responsibilities will continue to be the in-person game coverage and feature interviewing, but he will be contributing opinion and discussion pieces as well as helping me with some of the busy-work.
This is a big step and I think a good one. It will allow me to take a vacation in the summer without having to write every night and check the blog every day. It will allow you a second distinctive-yet-wonderful perspective which will open up more and better conversations. Welcome Ben and enjoy him!
Second...one of our fine readers has come up with an automated entry form for the Jersey Contest. "Automated" means I post the questions and you just click on menus to answer and then submit. The form does all of the tallying and recording. I can't even TELL you how much work this will save me when we get it up and running.
We're to the de-bugging stage now and are confident that it will be ready to run in March. This will mean more games to play for you, as we can now play them close together without me having to spend all night scoring each time. This is a big deal! Even with the best spreadsheet we could create and me having the tabulating down to a science it's still been taking me on average an hour and a half to process each game with 120-140 people entering. That's seriously eating into the other content you're receiving. There simply isn't time to do everything.
Because this feature is going to allow more games overall I have made a decision for my own sanity to suspend the contest for a couple weeks, resuming it in March.
--All scores through the Dallas game will count and the standings remain as they are.
--Because we are playing two months in one contest there will be TWO jerseys awarded at the end of March...one to both the first and second place scorers.
--Although the form will probably not be able to keep track of "X" entries you will still be required to skip a game during the February-March period. Don't worry if you've already done so...you're at no disadvantage.
Keep in mind you won't be playing that many fewer games overall. You just won't be playing them right now and will be playing more in March.
Cross your fingers that the beta-test goes smoothly. Now back to your regularly-scheduled programming.
--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)