The problem with this series, quite simply, is that it sucks.\u00a0 The first one, I’m okay with; I think I did a very good job on the Big Sky writeup.\u00a0 Compare it (specifically) to the Colonial writeup, and I think you can clearly see all the problems I’m about to outline after the jump.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My other side project, which I’ve been working on since some of you were still in diapers,\u00a0 is compiling a lot of the info that’s getting included in the Get to Know series, and the vast majority of what I’ve been including in there is just better presented as simple tables and lists.\u00a0 (Indeed, I’m wikifying it all in order to present it precisely that way.)\u00a0 It’s sort of the same problem I had when I started doing the recap\/precaps, where I decided that it was simply easier, logical, and cleaner to list scores and games and then comment on them rather than trying to figure out how to incorporate “Podunk State at Wisteria College” over and over again and make it not look repetitive.\u00a0 (Let’s see, I’ve used “visits”, “travels to”, “heads to”, “takes a trip to”, “invades”, and from the other direction “hosts”, “entertains”, “welcomes”… yeah, you get the idea.)\u00a0 I figure if it’s going to be repetitive, it should just be repetitive as sidebars outside the bounds of trying to, you know, actually write something.<\/p>\n
And then there’s the research component.\u00a0 Specifically, that last entry on the Empire 8?\u00a0 Some of it was total crap, because instead of researching the information the way I would if I were compiling it for data purposes, I was just trying to breeze through in order to hammer out an article.\u00a0 Honestly, never mind the fact that I sat there re-reading it afterward and started screaming at myself for being an utter fucking HACK, I think that’s going about shit backwards; I should be doing the research for its own purpose, then basing the article off it, rather than trying to hurry-up research in order to write an article on which I’ve self-imposed a ridiculous deadline.\u00a0 It’s one thing to say I want to write an article on the Camera Obscura Conference and have it done by next week, and spend four days compiling research; it’s another to say I need to write two articles today and, oh, by the way, they’re both on conferences I haven’t gathered all the data for yet, so I need to go do that first.<\/p>\n
Another part of the “problem” was that I f0und myself tossing tidbits into the recap posts (for example, “Coach So-and-So is going for his 200th win” or whatever).\u00a0 Well, if I can include stuff like that in recaps off-the-cuff without having to spend hours researching the entire conference, then that actually fulfills the objective I had set out for the Get to Know series in the first place.\u00a0 When I started that series, I wasn’t intending it to just be a bunch of crap about all-time records and a list of championships and whatnot.\u00a0 It was meant, as I said in the initial offering, to give you the flavor<\/em> of the conference; point out recognizable figures associated with the league, give you an idea of who hates who, illustrate who the conference powers and doormats are.\u00a0 (For instance, a Get to Know on SEC football would talk about Bear Bryant and General Neyland and Vince Dooley and Billy Cannon and Pat Sullivan and Peyton Manning and TWLOCP and the third Saturday in October and the Egg Bowl (and Clean, Old Fashioned Hate to touch on non-conference rivalries) and Oh, LOL Vandy.\u00a0 Sure, it might mention Alabama has won 18 conference championships and shared three others, but damnit, it seemed like it was getting to the point where that was the focus of the things.<\/p>\n So, I don’t need the Get to Know series at all, right?\u00a0 No, that’s not right — but what it does<\/em> mean is that most of what I wanted to get into Get to Know can simply be folded in to conference previews.\u00a0 And that, in a nutshell, is the problem here; had I started this blog in July, none of this would have been problematic or repetitive.<\/p>\n Of course, that begs the question of whether I can actually slog through 96 basketball conference previews before it gets too deep into the season.\u00a0 I think I just gave myself an aneurysm.<\/p>\n So, for now the series is suspended.\u00a0 I think I’ll still try to do<\/em> it, once I can create a format to my liking, but on a far more relaxed schedule.\u00a0 That said, if you think I’m making a Very Big Mistake here, by all means let me know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The problem with this series, quite simply, is that it sucks.\u00a0 The first one, I’m okay with; I think I did a very good job on the Big Sky writeup.\u00a0 Compare it (specifically) to the Colonial writeup, and I think you can clearly see all the problems I’m about to outline after the jump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-get-to-know-a-conference","category-non-specific-babble"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p185sV-1K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jonfmorse.com\/tog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}