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Today marks the first day of fall camp for the Iowa Hawkeyes. We’re a week away from Media Day and Kid’s Day shortly thereafter. And we’re only four weeks away from the first Friday night in months where we will wake up to Hawkeye Football. In preparation, we’ve got some exciting updates for you here at The Pants.
For starters, you may have noticed some subtle changes over the last few weeks. Maybe not. That’s been mostly by design. For the last six weeks or so, we’ve been transitioning site manager duties from Ben and Max to me.
As you’ll recall, Max is going to be sticking around, but exclusively as a podcaster. Ben is also sticking around and will remain involved in some of the day-to-day, but will also be doing more writing. And me? Well, I don’t really know what the hell I'm doing.
I can tell you what I’m not doing and that’s make wholesale changes to the site. I’m not going to pivot to video or turn this into a recruiting website (no really). I’m not going to totally change the tone of the postings and I’m not going to push some vision for the site onto the staff. The fact that we’re roughly six weeks in and I imagine most of you haven’t noticed a difference should be evidence I’m sincere.
What I do hope to do is continue to build on the great community you all have helped to create. The people who read this site every day, who interact with us on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments and elsewhere are the ones who make the site great. Which is why we’re working to continue to build out features on the platform that we think you’ll find useful and enjoyable.
That starts right here on site, where you’ll notice some new features under the “More” dropdown along the top ribbon.
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That should bring you a set of options to choose from, including the “Library” dropdown. Clicking the dropdown will open up a series of new features we’ve added to the site recently.
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There isn’t anything terribly special here, but you will find an updated roster for the football team, as well as a scholarship distribution chart and the most recent depth chart. We’ll update these as new information becomes available so you can get to them quickly and conveniently.
We’ll work to keep adding here. For instance, you should expect all the features rolled out for the football season to be mirrored for basketball. You can also expect a new recruiting hub in the near future where you can find information about current commitments, remaining needs and top prospects.
Beyond the site itself, we’re continuing to expand the ways we can get you all information. I’m quite certain you already follow us on Twitter and Facebook, but now’s a good time to go ahead and hit the follow button if you’re an Instagram user. While the site is certainly best for full details, social media is a great place to stay up to date on gameday, learn interesting tidbits (did you know Minnesota hasn’t won in Iowa City in 20 years? fun right?) and catch some humor (not from me, of course, but I promise our other writers are witty).
Finally, in that same vein, we are looking to expand into more video and audio. It’s all a work in progress, but there will be plenty of video on our YouTube channel all season. And we’re growing our podcast platform to give you more content.
That’s already begun with the addition of SpoCo Radio to the feed. Of course, The Pants Party isn’t going anywhere. And as we get into the season, we’ll have instant reactions and more. You can stay up to date and have new episodes of all our new content delivered directly to your mobile device by subscribing wherever you get your podcasts.
If there are other features or content you’d like to see added either to the site or on another platform, we want your feedback! As I said, this site is great because of you all. Your engagement is what drives the community and we’re here to serve you, so please speak up and be heard.