Meta: HTTV Hoops Edition?
During the drubbing of Nebraska tonight, I started pondering - has the Blog ever considered creating a Hail to the Victors magazine for the basketball team?
Between this special season (and the greater Beilein era in general), the Blog’s increasingly improving quality/quantity of hoops content, and the growing popularity and accessibility of advanced college basketball statistics (namely Kenpom and Torvik), this season has been incredibly fun to follow. Moreover, the team of writers here offers an objective and informative view of the sport that I am not sure exists anywhere else.
It would certainly be interesting to read a preseason preview that also included recruiting overview, history, player interviews, x’s and o’s, etc. It’d also be cool to see the Blog collaborate with other writers, perhaps Dylan Burkhardt at UMHoops (covering Michigan, Big Ten) and Bart Torvik (Wisconsin, Big Ten, national landscape through the eyes of his rating system).
Your first customer is right here!
February 28th, 2019 at 9:40 PM ^
Someone will have to help out with the details, but there was a combined hoops/hockey edition about four or five years ago.
February 28th, 2019 at 9:41 PM ^
We did a hoops/hockey one after the FF in 2013. We rolled it together with the football one and I think we only broke even on it--tough to tell given how we did it--and it was a lot of work to only break even.
If there's interest we could do a separate kickstarter for it.
February 28th, 2019 at 9:43 PM ^
Thanks, Brian---- knew I could count on you! (And yes, I bought it and still have it here somewhere, boxed up with my football HTTVs and football programs)
February 28th, 2019 at 9:52 PM ^
It had Mitch McGary on the cover, in happier times before the NCAA decided that weed was worse than, good lord, a laundry list of other offenses that don't get a guy banned for a year.
February 28th, 2019 at 9:54 PM ^
Thanks, Brian. I’m certainly not experienced in the economics of publishing a magazine, but I would have to believe that the blog has attracted more and more basketball fans over the years.
The examples/ideas I laid out above coupled with the team returning so much production next season, I’d imagine there would be quite a bit of popularity among the community about possibility of a HTTV Hoops edition.
February 28th, 2019 at 10:49 PM ^
Interest here!
As much as I enjoy flipping through the print edition I'm guessing interest would be nearly as high in a digital only version assuming your margins would be better there (or if you just don't want to deal with printing/shipping logistics during football season).
Hopefully you'll just get the money cannon pointed at it but just a thought.
February 28th, 2019 at 10:58 PM ^
Agree with Owen on a digital only version if that will hold costs down (although wasn't there an issue with copyright for a certain school that can go to hell?). Unfortunately, the timing can't be great for those whose would provide content as it sits right on top of football season.
February 28th, 2019 at 11:32 PM ^
I would love an HTTV National Championship edition.
I did buy the hoops/hockey edition. Mitch on the front cover and Mac Bennett on the back
I still have boxes of the 2013 Hockey-Hoops Edition we did. It almost killed me because it bled into football season, and it barely broke even, which means I did it for free.
If you'd still like to buy a copy the old articles in it are good.
I actually still have mine and I did read it again recently just for amusement. It seems like so many seasons ago, but it isn't really that much time. College athletics is interesting like that, however.
Yeah, my initial thought on the timing would be that it's horribly conflicted with football season. Well, if you're going to do it right, anyway! You could always offset it by completing the work - everything but publication - during the summer. But that would lead to numerous errors during the many months between completion and actual publication, so that's got to be a non-starter. Seems to me that more help would need to be hired to offer both a comprehensive bball HTTV and the level of football content we've grown accustomed to.
But the part about working for free? If it broke even, then you (Brian) managed to pay all of the expenses associated with it, which includes your pay. So it wasn't done for free - you (the Blog) just didn't earn any money on it. That's a technical quibble, though - I agree with you and Brian that doing that much work for zero profit is not worth the effort.
I'm in. Pretend I know how to post the take my money GIF.
Definitely interested.