Welcome to a landmark day in the brief history of our website.
In a mere five weeks, we have created a new website dedicated to covering University of Virginia athletics in a fashion we believe Wahoo Nation will appreciate. We truly appreciate your support and hope you will help spread the word to all your fellow Hoos.
We have transitioned from a startup business and website, which was free during the month of July – perhaps the most challenging month of the year in terms of coverage of collegiate sports – to a pay site beginning today, Aug. 1.
Certainly we welcome advertisers to support our business. We are thankful to Roy Wheeler Realty for having faith in us and becoming our first sponsor, something we will never forget. We are hoping to announce another sponsor in the coming days.
It is a new and thrilling time to be covering Virginia athletics. The school will welcome a new president in James E. Ryan, and Bronco Mendenhall’s third season as head football coach is upon us.
It is also exciting that the age of digital journalism is upon us and we want to be on the cutting edge of that journey. We can bring you news of your Wahoos instantaneously, but we will also deliver you features, opinionated columns and analysis, good old-fashioned story telling and much more.
We will also bring you some of your old favorites such as “Scattershooting Around the ACC,” each week, just as you were accustomed to during the past 36 years of my writing. We’ll have new features, too, including “Hootie’s Way Back Machine,” where I will journey back in time to a significant moment in UVa sports history and deliver you a fresh perspective. We will also have a weekly notes piece on Cavaliers Olympic sports news, timely game coverage and features on the most significant moments of those sports, but with a heavy emphasis on football and basketball.
We’ll also bring you “Where Are They Now,” catching up with Wahoos of old, and a weekly “Hootie’s Happy Hour,” where fans can ask questions during a chat session about Virginia athletics.
We will eventually have our own podcasts and videos, and if you want to catch me on radio shows around the state, ACC, and nation, we have an “audio” menu choice under “previous posts” you can tap on.
We will keep you abreast of important information about UVa athletics, the ACC, and national college sports via our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram accounts.
JerryRatcliffe.com wants to be your main source for UVa athletics coverage, a one-stop shopping plaza for true Wahoos.
Someone on Twitter recently asked, isn’t that egotistical to name your website after yourself? I replied, it’s not about ego. It’s about branding. I’ve built a brand, built a relationship, built trust with Virginia sports fans over the past three decades. It’s about name recognition, not ego.
We are proud of our product and believe you will be, too.
Business partner Dave Scarangella, a former sportswriter and marketing whiz, will contribute to the site as well as Scott Ratcliffe, who has several years of experience covering UVa as a correspondent for several major newspapers from Philadelphia to Miami. I will be a constant presence on the site and you know what you’ll get from me.
I want to thank each and every one of you for subscribing to our site. We can’t do it properly without you and your friends, and our sponsors. Thank you for helping me reinvent myself.
We are a five-week miracle of sorts, and as they say in the movies, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.