Paying the price

While I was away, our friends at The Greenville News made an announcement that made me laugh.

The paper is making vast changes to its online delivery, no longer allowing its content to be consumed for free on the Internet.

That's not the part that drew the chuckles; as I've said and written before, a substantial part of the current death spiral that's being experienced by the newspaper industry should be attributed to the mindless business model employed for more than a decade: Pay for our product when its in print, but hop on your computer and gobble it all up for free if you like.

I do have some major questions as to whether shifting to a pay model at this point is far too late, for two primary reasons: 1) The genie has long since left the bottle, and people will be reluctant to pay for something they've received for free for so long, and 2) The Greenville News' product has become such a shell of what it once was, has been so diminished by mammoth budget cuts over the years, that people might not see the value in paying for the content.

But good for them for at least trying. No cause for amusement there.

What is amusing is that, in terms of content and presentation, the Clemson-themed portion of The News' coverage appears to be making a turn toward looking an awful lot like Tigerillustrated and other sites that use the team-themed model.

The model that has incessantly (and publicly) drawn the ire of one Bart Wright, who happens to be the sports editor of the ... Greenville News!

Over the years, we've read column after column from Bart trashing what he calls "fanboy web sites." One of the major issues he has with these sites is their coverage of recruiting, their building up of poor, innocent little 18-year-olds who magically become adults free to be scrutinized once they step foot onto a college campus.

A major part of the Greenville News' new Clemson coverage will be the coverage of recruiting. In fact, they already have a list of recruits on their site (wonder where they found those?). And they promise to maintain a database of all future Clemson recruits (wonder where they'll find those?)

So let's figure out, under their current business model, exactly how the Greenville News' Clemson coverage can be differentiated from that of the folks at this evil "fanboy web site."

We both charge for content.

We both cover recruiting.

We both provide the public with a forum for anonymous comments (although our forum is moderated).

Hey, no offense to the Greenville News for borrowing a substantial page from a book that, you know, works. Kudos to them for being graced with the revelation that passionate fans desire to consume their news differently (and in higher quantity) than they did in, say, 1978.

But I'd be very interested to see how Mr. Wright reconciles his paper's new business model with the bitter, years-long philosophical differences he's had with said business model.

Guessing we've seen the last of his relentless, often senseless screeds against sites like ours, but who knows?

Moving right along...

Linked page 2 of this story on Jimbo Fisher yesterday, but it wasn't until yesterday afternoon that I actually read the first page.

Had some good stuff from Fisher as he tries to rebuild a stagnant program.

Fisher told fans in Broward he wants to raise money to build dorms to house all football players and to build an indoor practice facility ``so we can get a jump on the Gators and Hurricanes. They don't have those things.'' He said he's using ``the difference between my salary'' ($1.8 million annually) and Bowden's ($2.5 million) to help finance other upgrades.

``We have to do things differently,'' Fisher said. ``Are you worried about changing tradition? No, I'm not. The definition of insanity is keep doing things the same way and expecting different results. The whole infrastructure, we were behind.''

And more...

Fisher, knowing FSU's player development must improve, is taking creative steps. He is giving each player a psychological test to ``see how quickly they learn.'' He's having players use respected IMG Academy in Bradenton for training. He quadrupled the weight-room staff and split players into three categories (fat, maintain and underweight), assigned each a diet and said he requires them to eat every meal in the cafeteria.

And more...

Defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews is gone, too; successor Mark Stoops will use more varied looks with a defense that was torched in 2009. Fisher said he doesn't want assistants to stay as long as some of Bowden's did: ``I want attrition. That means people want your coaches. Sometimes, when you're at one place too long, you get complacent.''

You know, it's unwise to judge a coach on what he says in booster-club settings. And successors to legends typically don't do well.

But it's hard to think this guy is not going to turn things around in Tallahassee.

Off the beaten path a bit: Excellent story on John Wall by Eric Prisbell of The Washington Post.

David Fox of Rivals writes a feature on Oliver Purnell and his new digs at DePaul.

When DePaul first reached out to Purnell at Clemson, where he had led the Tigers to four consecutive 20-win seasons, he wasn't interested in this rebuilding job.

"When I was first contacted, I kind of pooh-poohed it," Purnell said. "DePaul did a great job of recruiting [me]. The more I looked at it, the more I realized what an outstanding opportunity it was when you look at tradition, the city of Chicago, the fact that it's a tremendous basketball school."

Clemson officials were caught by surprise. The Tigers hadn't reached Duke-North Carolina levels, but they were competitive in the ACC and had become a consistent NCAA team.

Clemson athletic director Terry Don Phillips said he was "in a little bit of shock" when Purnell left for the last-place team in the Big East. Some Clemson folks were upset that Purnell didn't inform his team about the move. Instead, the players learned through text messages or other means.

"I didn't really see any signs of him wanting to leave," Clemson guard Demontez Stitt said in April.

Longtime Birmingham sports columnist Ray Melick recently quit the newspaper industry, only to land at -- you can't make this up -- British Petroleum.


Good story in The State on Bruce Ellington (Andre's cousin), who's going with basketball despite being a pretty good football player.

How good?

Berkeley coach Jerry Brown sighs when Ellington’s sport of choice comes up. He thinks Ellington would make a great college cornerback or receiver/running back, a la Percy Harvin.

“He dominated the games in football. In basketball, he’d have some good games, but he didn’t just dominate the games like he did in football,” Brown said. “The talent’s still there in football. And it’s one-of-a-kind talent. And at 5-foot-10, your height doesn’t make as much of a difference in football.”

The best athlete Brown has coached?

“The best athlete I’ve seen,” Brown said, listing former NFL players Freddie Solomon and Stephen Davis among those who don’t stack up to Ellington.

The NCAA investigation at Michigan has cost the school half a million bucks so far, and expenses continue to mount.

Man, imagine how many support staffers they could've funded with that kind of money!

Here's a good preview of N.C. State, which comes in at No. 62 according to Pre-Snap Read.

Score one for authentic opinion: Ron Zook says the SEC is probably better than the Big Ten.

And Tommy Tuberville says the Big 12's days are numbered.

Score one for draconian muzzling of a coach: Tuberville is reprimanded by the Big 12.


LW

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