What Happened at STS

My goodbye post "Tiger Trails to You" only tells a small piece of the story, and really didn't address the true issue why we were forced to leave SBNation. Since I have decided to forego legal action at this time, and have yet to decide if I want to continue writing about Clemson, I thought it prudent to get the story out there so that people could see the truth for themselves.

The issue at hand is the FY13 Budget post, and that was the only issue. Keep in mind that Clemson's budget is public since they are a public school, as is IPTAYs. You can request this info and they must give it to you, or you fan file a FOIA request and get just about anything. FOIA requests are more formal and require a small fee so they can collect the data. In the past, I have directly emailed Katie Hill, former CFO/Assistant AD under Terry Don Phillips, for the IPTAY and Athletic AUP budgets. She provided them freely. I have even quoted her responses in a previous post, and received no feedback at all, good or bad, from either SBNation or Clemson for doing so. The last post where we quoted her remains in the archives.

 This year, with Hill now retired, we got a bit of a run-around from Clemson. I had another writer email them and try to get the information while I worked on position reviews, and apparently he couldn't do it. He did eventually get the AUP but no one would give him IPTAY's figures. So, with the budget post now beyond due, I went to her replacement myself, Graham Neff, for the information. I then quickly got a response and another from Travis Furbee on the publicly available IPTAY membership total. I did not identify myself as a writer for STS, I figured that since the email address is "Shakinthesouthland@gmail" and my display name being "DrB" that he'd know, the AD reads the site anyway and they do know my name. All that I did was ask for the budget figures, then thanked him for his time and help. I compared the budget to a previous budget and found some oddities which I asked him to clarify, just as I'd done before with Hill. He gave me a reasonable explanation, told me he was happy to help and that Clemson wanted to become more transparent about money.

I decided that since his response was totally factual that it'd be better to quote him rather than paraphrase his response, so that is what I did. I thanked him in the article and published it. Nothing derogatory was said to him or about him or anyone else in the post.

Apparently the SID felt otherwise. They called SBNation and complained that I had somehow misrepresented myself by not identifying myself as a member of SBNation Media. Well the thought never occurred to me to mention it in an email, since I consider myself a blogger and not a member of the media. I thought, since they read the site anyway, especially Bourret, that the display name and email address were identification enough. Besides, its public information. They'd have to give it to me if I made them do it, even Neff's emails can be subject to FOIA in certain instances. And it is not illegal to not identify yourself, reporters do that all the time.

In talking with my counsel, if anything illegal was done, SBNation would've taken down the post immediately. Copyright violations are taken down for this reason. Yet, the post remains up.

Then I got an email from Matt Brown and Luke Zimmerman, the SBNCollege managers, asking for a phone exchange. They called me and told me that Clemson had gone directly to them, complaining that I had misrepresented myself in the exchange with the AD. Apparently they had spoken to "several Clemson administrators" - why several? I see no grounds for a Clemson suit if the information is public and I published it faithfully and without a single derogatory comment to anyone. I could've filed an FOIA request and gotten it all the hard way. Luke then intimated that Clemson would somehow restrict their ability to do business by cutting off access throughout the conference and used it as justification to release me from contract.

Where would you get that idea from a factual quote of an Assistant AD, unless Clemson somehow pressured them into something? It does not add up. If it was as simple as it should be, I could've written an apology to Neff and filed FOIA from now on.

You can see something is very clearly wrong here. Many commenters from other fanbases have suggested in the comments that they played a role in removing us; absolutely not the case. Other users were never once brought up. As recently as April 17, after I fired Ryan Kantor and Mark Gordon for insubordination (only later did I find out that Kantor tried to stab us in the back), both Matt and Luke agreed with my administrative decisions as site manager and sympathized with our banishment of trolls. I have always moderated STS as a Clemson site, and had given short leash for opposing fans who would love nothing more than stir things up. None of that was even part of the discussion here.

Then others will say its lack of traffic growth, but that is not the case either. Traffic does not grow at the (unsustainable) rate of 20-50% year/year as it once did, but I have the monthly traffic figures and we rank midpack in the ACC and generally near the top during football season.

I do believe, after talking with my attorney, that if they had basically told me that "Clemson made us do..." that I'd have grounds for a suit against both Clemson and SBNation, but of course they did not say so in those words. It was all done via phone. There is no paper/email trail to request between Clemson and SBNation.

Then after the fact, they demanded access to my Twitter and FB accounts, created by myself to my own email address. They said they'd pay for them "to avoid hard feelings", but then said their legal dept would take them if I refused. A bully tactic; obviously I refused. They backed down at that.

Then they said the contract stipulates no notice, but that is not what the one I have here says. My lawyer will work this for free if I choose to pursue something, but there is no money in it.

It would be easier to accept this ordeal if there was any notice given to SBNation bloggers about etiquette in these situations with respective schools/franchises. SBN never gave me one. They made up the rules after the fact and then punished us according to those ex post facto rules.

The only people who make money off SBN articles are the computer programmers who built the sites and management. All the writers who make up the sites get very little. Its almost like the NCAA vs. O'Bannon. Essentially slave labor and someone else gets rich off it. I can't retain good writers because I can't pay them fairly for their time, and yet SBNation constantly bugs you in emails about writing 2 posts a day. Seriously, its to the level of once weekly in the email chains we received. If you want the content to grow beyond the usual bullshit that you push in your emails to me guys, then give me funding to attract and retain talented and dedicated writers.

They even tell you "Oh we'll give you $50-100 if you average 2 a day!". Yeah ok. I bill the government more than that in an hour for my day job. SBNation wants a Cadillac for Kia money. Break down my time spent writing simply football film reviews and you'd get a rate of pennies per hour.

So that is where we stand. FF and I both wanted to hand the site over to someone worthy and were waiting for that writer to emerge. None of the staff has intimate knowledge of the game, or have even played it, and none has my level of analytical skills to go with that knowledge. We wanted to retire and write as we felt, instead of being forced to write weekly year-round.
Now, with my belief that my own school, that I love more than anything except family, turned against me, I just don't know if my heart is in it.