Deadspin on SB Nation

 On Monday, Deadspin’s Laura Wagner wrote a piece on how SB Nation operates as a company, highlighting many of the things that I felt regarding SB Nation when I left the company. It’s a long piece and I don’t know that I feel the same way about a lot of things. The gist of my feelings are that SB Nation doesn’t pay all of the folks that help make their product what it is. It takes a ton of writers, most of whom were not paid relative to the work that they did on behalf of the company and many of whom were not paid at all. I can say that I was never encouraged to pay everyone, but I made $150 per month and so that wasn’t going to go very far. I had to beg to have Travis paid, but since he was writing for VTM and Pounding the Rock (this was the year that San Antonio won their last championship . . . maybe there’s a correlation) he was worth it.

Truthfully, everyone that was ever associated with VTM was worth something, but SB Nation never felt that way. The Deadspin article states from SB Nation folks that they pay everyone now, but I don’t think that’s even possible and I sorta doubt that’s happening. There’s no way that the folks there know everyone associated with every blog. The organization of it is too huge.

My main gripes:

1. SB Nation received a ton of funding and never shared that with the writers. Ever. I think that money was used to improve video content or create video content, but not once did we, as site managers ever receive a bump as a result of any round of funding for SB Nation.

2. The writers who get a standard salary from SB Nation are essentially making their money partly off of the work of all of the writers who don’t receive anything. There is a profit margin for running a blog and I think rather than share that with the writers, it feeds the machine. Again, I’m not begrudging, I left, but it could be better I think.

3. The constant (perhaps daily or twice a day emails) regarding how and when and the type of content that needed to be produced was annoying. It felt like an employer / employee relationship.

4. They told me that I had to give up VTM’s Twitter and Facebook. I felt like we had built that up and we had earned it.

I’m past all of that. I was pissed 3 years ago, but I’m in a really happy place at this point. I like what I’m doing. SB Nation is there to make money, lots of money, I don’t begrudge them for that, but the way they ran the writers ragged, just wasn’t or isn’t fair. Life isn’t fair, I get that, but they could be more fair, I think, to the people that helped build all of those sites.

Texas Tech Volleyball

See the new squad in action this Saturday! #WreckEm

📰: https://t.co/Teyy9y33ys pic.twitter.com/MzwWvZcE8o

— TexasTech Volleyball (@TexasTechVB) August 15, 2017

Texas Tech Football

Desmon Smith one year later.

Congrats to these three.

Congrats to the 3 Red Raiders named to the Earl Campbell Award Watch List!

Read more on the award here ➡️ https://t.co/oc28TUHWcV #WreckEm pic.twitter.com/2KKPMQh4Ad

— Texas Tech Football (@TexasTechFB) August 15, 2017

Would you like some relatively good computer ranking news? Good. College Football Analytics has their own computer ranking system and these figures have Texas Tech at 45th in the nation. The figures have Oklahoma State 12th, Oklahoma 28th, TCU 31st, Baylor 42nd, Texas 44th and Kansas State 46th. The site is run by Dan Becker, who also previously ran Wide Right Natty Light.