Articles for TFP

Site Discussion
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So, at least from a quick poll, it looks like people like the idea of the site being the current forum + more content. Which just means we need… more content.

I’m going to setup a general content system with a fancy front-end shortly, and integrate it a bit with the forum - so articles will sit on www.thefanpub.com and the forum will still be at forum.thefanpub.com but comments on articles can use the forum software and I’ll try to keep it pretty integrated. But with user groups and such, people can still retain privacy controls for things they’d prefer to be seen only by select circles.

There should be more to it than just articles (and podcasts perhaps?), for starters organising more events for UK NFL fans would be cool too, so that should be something else we can include in the site. Ideally having it all quite user-driven, but we need to make it a place users want to come to first.

So with articles in mind - is anyone up for writing some regular articles for the site? Focused primarily around fantasy football, with some other topics also fitting the general theme (NFL, NFL in the UK, daily fantasy, NFL gambling). By regular I mean as much as you want, but ideally monthly, fortnightly or weekly.

Someone might want to take ownership of certain regular articles - e.g. weekly power rankings (teams or players by position), weekly match-ups - or do more editorial stuff. We could do consensus selections for some of them. Bare in mind that Aug - Jan would be the busier months.

It sprung to mind that @Outsiders68 and @JonCartwright were sure to be up for some of those articles, and I can see @Dean and @Alan_Feelers already having quite in-depth research on weekly match-ups! @bluelionman could always write an anti-tipster blog!

So, what do you get out of all of this? Well, we get to build a bigger community of UK NFL fans (and more people to join in with new fantasy leagues and games!), get to organise more/bigger/better meet-ups, create a more active forum… and site contributors can if they desire own a real share of The Fan Pub. It’ll probably just mean owning x% of 0, but if there’s enough interest I can register TFP as a UK Ltd and issue shares to co-creators. Possibly a pointless exercise, but for those that want it, it could mean genuinely owning a piece of the site.

PS - Anyone want to take control of the @thefanpub Twitter account? I keep forgetting to use it!

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I’m more than happy to post the articles I write for the Chiefs site on here too. Obviously several have a KC slant but I also eg wrote a season preview the last couple of years.
And something like the stuff I have been posting recently in the Magic Numbers thread on here could be turned into an article quite easily.
…and I may be able to think up other things to put on here

…oh and no thanks for the twitter account. I am already an admin for the Chiefs UK fan club account and rarely remember to post stuff on there as it is!

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Adam - Happy to do a weekly “Against The Spread” column. I’ll be submitting the Vegas lines handicap plus the Spreadex numbers (assuming they are playing the game again). Quite a few forumites posted their top five picks each week which I’m sure we can continue to do and perhaps drive people to the site, especially if one or two posters start to show a healthy win/loss ratio.

As you know we’ll be submitting an TFP entry which may generate a bit of interest, shame I didn’t use the site name last season.

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Yeah, those kinds of articles would be awesome. We definitely have the right people for good daily fantasy/betting analysis articles, and those kinds of articles are quite handy - easy to read at a glance (not a wall of text) and usually sparks a debate.

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I think it sounds good Adam, I’m just wondering how I could best add value but the concept of having the TFP as a central location for written and video bloggers on US sports is one direction that could be very successful.

While I dont know it all I think I have a lot to pass on in terms of play types, play books, tactics and the mental side of the game which I could possibly spin up into tablet based diagrams. It could be useful as more and more fans are just coming to the game in the UK. This is a long standing idea I have had.

Alternatively I could be interested in posting a pre tournament review for each week of the PGA tour, aiming at providing fantasy golf clues and tipping. While golf is not a US born sport the PGA tour is by some way the most coveted tour throughout the year and is one of the most £££ loaded weekly markets in sports.

Whoever does what, its important that if people do something that they feel they can deliver to an ok std.

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yep - as an avid ATS bettor, I search and read anything and everything during an NFL game week. I’m always looking for other articles to corroborate my picks or turn me off a bet if I’m unsure. I know we need to site to appeal to non-gambling NFL fans, but to grow the site you are going to need revenue and the big bucks will be sponsors who are looking to promote the next big thing in sports betting - DAILY FANTASY

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A Scot’s (Beginners) guide to the NFL could be a pretty interesting series :wink:

If we’re targeting Fantasy NFL / Daily Fantasy / NFL gambling (all with a UK slant), I think the Daily Fantasy players might be the overlap between fantasy NFL fans and NFL gamblers, so the mix might work well. I think most of our audience is of drinking and gambling age anyway (a lot of UK NFL fans from the 80s/90s).

At the end of it all, I don’t want to end up recreating The Bleacher Report (although they’re hugely successful), but our own content would still be a good way to pull in users and generate discussion.

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I’m not sure how much I can contribute but in terms of content I think there could be a section that challenges some of the things we have in the game now - from the simple why both teams aren’t allowed a drive in OT if one scorES A TD on the opening drive or why yards aren’t credited to QB and receiver on pass interference etc to challenging the current QB rating or a better extra
Point(s) system - maybe call it Game changers or something like that…

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More than happy to get involved how you’d like :smile:

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Awesome :blush:

I’ll probably get the new site front-end up in March (aiming to be before the NFL Draft, and I don’t think I’m going to get anything done life-wise in Feb unless I do it all over an impatient weekend, which is actually possibly). Might be cool to have at least a handful of articles ready to go from Day 1, so I’ll contact some of you about that between now and then.

Articles could either be written solo or collaboratively written via a private section on the forum or shared Google Docs - things like consensus picks (or in the off season, draft picks!) would be suited to that.

Could look into doing some interviews too, once the site’s up and running.

I’ve already got an Ltd, but that’s from my contracting days, so I might look into setting up a separate company for TFP if necessary - pretty much a painless process, just the annual accounts to take care of, but only really worth doing for shared ownership reasons, and I need to look into issues around libel and user data storage for Ltds (but actually such things are probably riskier for individuals without limited liability).

Kind of a shame I’m not still contracting, as transferring tax free money between companies is a pretty nice perk!

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I am a terrible manager of time but I do love to chat - wish I was more skilled to be able to make good video podcasts but article wise I can chip in with stories now and again (if they wouldn’t bore people) about my NFL back-packing days and experiences encountered while following my beloved Lions!

I been trying to get a podcast from about 10 years ago when I was interviewed by some guys in Detroit who did podcasts on all sorts back then and was amazed about how I came to be a big fan of the Lions and actually in the D following them. So they had me on there show for an episode to ask me. Alas it’s no longer online and the guys who did it the lap-top it was on got fried so looks like it’s been lost to the either. :cry:

Lastly not really an article but I currently run a fantasy game by e-mail and post the rules/player list here in the fantasy games thread - was wondering if the site could have some kind of NFL fantasy game to attract people to the forum - as NFLUK does?

I know I really miss the one game I found b/r ran in 2014 and was really sad they did not bring it back in 2015! It was very different to all the others I’d ever come across and I think a game that’s niche could really work if plugged for driving traffic to the site - just a question if they stick around to look at other things or just play the game is another matter.

Also I wonder if there could be a prediction game that’s also different to all the ones currently out there?
Right now most you pick a winner and that’s it… but how about if we had one where not only do you pick the winner but guess the margin/score to?
Perhaps have a sliding scale points wise - say for instance the Super Bowl - I say Panthers by 7 - so if Denver win I get zero - but if Panthers win by 10 I get 1 point for correct winner - if they win by 7 I get 10 points for exactly guessing the margin… 5 points if 1 out (so if they win by 6 or 8) and 3 points if 2 out (so if they won by 9 or 5). Just ideas but possibly to hard to do things like this - am just brainstorming and thinking out loud.

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I definitely think a podcast - perhaps hosted by you and Sean or something like that - could be great. Could always start it off done remotely via Skype, and work up to doing them on location together perhaps as video too (though if you’re doing them each week you wouldn’t want to travel too far).

If we got you setup to begin with, wouldn’t be too complicated to keep doing, just the time involved each week to record it.

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I’m all up for it and would make the time - shame the radio show guy has never come here (Zone Coverage Radio Show) and alas I haven’t listed to his show in a while as before games when he goes live I have found I am busy with other things - either watching soccer or setting my line ups or following Brads NFL props so just not tuned in at the right time to listen live.

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That might be tricky, though depends exactly on the game. Trying to get my NFL Manager game to a state of reasonableness has pretty much scared me away from taking on really complex sports management games, and that didn’t even touch on real data or money.

This I can probably setup. Initially I was going to do something vaguely similar - user generated NFL quizzes (bit like that “can you spot the real logos” thing), so those kind of things could work well.

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Status update on the new site stuff:

I’ve got a new dedicated server bought and setup this week. At some point I need to transfer the DNS servers to point www.thefanpub.com to the new server, but ideally this should be a seamless switch that no one notices. Did want to do it this weekend, but mildly concerned that if something did go wrong, it’d be on Super Bowl weekend, so might delay it a few days.

Have a new frontend design and backend content system ready to go, but will keep the new design relatively minimal at first until there’s enough content to flesh it out and fully define the sections (I guess initially it’s just various categories of articles and the hope of a podcast).

Also been looking into either setting up an Ltd with a group of co-owners defined by shares, or a good old hippy co-op (think FC United) where anyone can become a member and all members are equal. Probably go the Ltd route as initially it means I can setup everything I need to myself, then allocate co-owners (rather than needing to take a vote on every decision made or requiring multiple signatures for things). But all that might not really be required from day one, still, it would be nice to actually have at some point so dedicated members can really own a chunk of this thing.

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All sounds good Adam

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Guys, if any of you have articles you’d like to appear on the new site at launch, please get them over to me some way (you can email adamphilbin@gmail.com ). Might be worth us setting up a thread for collaboratively writing/reviewing articles on this forum, but can sort that out as necessary.

Once I can find a couple of free evenings inbetween nappy changing, I’ll get the new site setup. Have the bulk of it ready and waiting to go already, just need to do some design customisations and get some actual content in for launch - otherwise it’d just be a load of empty pages!

So heads up @Dean @JonCartwright @Outsiders68 @bluelionman @Alan_Feelers @CitrusPlayer @NFLGirlUK @Shani @UkDetroit3Lions

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Just sent over mini podcast

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Bump on this (thanks for the mini-podcasts you sent over Sean!). Tech & Design wise the new site is ready to go online more or less whenever now, but it’s pretty void of content currently so I’ll have to start writing some stuff for it during the coming weeks or waiting for more article submissions :blush:

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Apologies Adam - I have been slow at replying on here but promise I will find time to do an article of some sort on here - may find time over the Easter weekend to research and write something

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