When I was in HS we were playing in a very important football game against one of our rivals who had beaten us the previous three years.
We were behind in the game by 4 points with about 30 seconds left and we had the ball close to the 20. I played wide receiver and our route tree was pretty simplistic, meaning we only had like 4-5 routes we ran.
One of those routes was called a “V” route. Just imagine turning the V on its side and that is what the route looked like. You run hard like you are running an outside slant for about 10 yards and then you cut hard for the inside slant.
It had worked well for us earlier in the game. The safety bit on play action and by the time I broke to the inside slant, I was wide open for a TD.
So, we call the same route in this situation except this time the safety smarten up and didn’t bite. I was running right towards him, so I broke off the route and went to the corner. My QB and I were in synch and as soon as he saw me cut back to the corner, lofted a pass that Tom Brady would be proud of and I caught the winning TD.
Many hours after the game my coach who was about 189 years old and never called me by first name until I’ll graduated said this to me.
“Littal, you know we don’t allow freelancing on the routes regardless of defense, so why did you do it?”
At the wise old age 18 I looked at my 247 year old coach and said.
“I don’t know, I guess I just adjusted to the situation.”
My 382 year old coach looked at me curiously, laughed and walked away, but that has been pretty much the story of my life, I never get too high or low, just adjust to the situation at hand.
Sometimes when the safety is right there people are too scared to veer away from what they have been told what to do. It is easy to do nothing, but harder to take risks.
I have played with house money for a long time and I pay attention to what is happening around me, so it was time to adjust to the situation and make the necessary changes to BSO to make sure it is still around in the next 10 years.
Aesthetically the changes are pretty obvious, the functionally of the website especially from the mobile and tablet side is much better. That was a no brainer, since I have heard those complaints for a while and I hope you enjoy the more user-friendly experience. We reduced the amount of display ads to hopefully help with your load times and making sure the site runs very fast for you.
The bigger changes are more from a branding standpoint.
For years even though we cover more actual sports than any other independent sports blog in the country (look it up, we have covered over 100 events in 2015 from Super Bowls, NBA Finals, UFC, Boxing, Bowl Games, we have NBA beat writers and have put more minorities in press box than some mainstream media networks) I have heard people call us “LackSportsOnline” or “Black Salon Online” and etc. I always found it ironic that these people never followed on a daily basis, just caught a viral story that someone else they knew brought to their attention, but whatever the case it wasn’t lost on me while these people were hating, the actual engagement of these stories gained a lot of traction.
This isn’t anything new from BSO, anyone who has followed my career, knows I had online models doing NFL predictions back when MySpace was poppin, don’t believe me?
One of the many difficulties of being black is that some black people are more interested in celebrating your failures than studying your success. There is a huge crabs in barrel mentality, instead of working together. It is the reason why even if I have certain feelings about certain black people in the media, I am very careful with my word when discussing them.
I never see Busted Coverage, Deadspin, Big Lead and etc get the grief that I get for posting an interesting story that has nothing to do with sports.
I have never been one-dimensional or felt the need to cave into group think. I like what I like, I do what I do, regardless if that is what YOU want me to do, because doing what someone else wants you to do doesn’t pay the bills.
It also doesn’t lend itself to helping people out, If I have to post some James Harden-Khloe Kardashian stories to generate enough traffic to give me enough pulled to help my writers become a beat writer for an NBA team or cover a huge event, that is what I am going to do.
The days of trying to placate a certain part of our audience who would like nothing more for us to fail are over. There won’t be any NOT SPORTS tag or explanations of why were are doing whatever we are doing. After over 10 years in this business I don’t really owe anyone an explanation, I will continue to adjust to the situation and help people the best way I know how.
That is why BSO Entertainment was created. The majority of people like them, more importantly I like them and since I am the boss that is all that matters. I am not the same person I was 10 years ago and neither is BSO. If we both were, that wouldn’t be a good thing. I am not judging how anyone runs their sites or media career, but I’m comfortable knowing that I have worked really hard to get where I am and that over the years I have never turned down anyone who needed help.
We are now a full-fledged sports and entertainment site. There won’t be any more debates on Twitter or social media about why we do anything. If you don’t like it and express that to me on any social media platform, I am not going to respond, but I will block you to make sure you don’t see any of our material again. Consider that me doing you a favor.
Now, that I got that out-of-the-way on the fun stuff.
We are hiring and not just a few a people, but a whole bunch of people, details are coming soon. I will be moving into more of an overseer Editor-in-Chief role (more editorials and watching dogging of the media from me). I have done my time and put in my work (26k+ posts in the last six years) it is time for other people to shine.
You already know the BSO All-Stars Glenn Erby, Kel Dansby, Natasha Paul, Erika Fernandez, Luck and the alumni who have branched off to create their own sites Ashley Croft and Vashti Hurt.
It is time for some new All-Stars to come aboard, because this has never been about me, I have done enough. All I ever wanted was to have some cool stories to tell when I got old (which is coming sooner than later). My biggest fear was dying without any legacy. I might not have biggest or greatest legacy, but better than working at Burger King. I’ve done a few things and in this life that is all matters.
Secondly as I have hinted for months I will be debuting a podcast, actually let’s do that right now.
This is important to me, not because I am looking to make some money off it or I expect tons of people to listen. It will be more of a running diary of things that have happened to me over the last decade, plus I am going to have some very good guests. It will have a focus on sports, entertainment, social media and media.
Also you may have notice the BSO social media spaces are now focused more on just BSO, even though I am still running the pages, the brand stands on its own, it doesn’t need me out in the forefront anymore. If you still want to hear my rambling about life you can follow my personal page Twitter page @RobertLittal and the same for snapchat.
We are working on getting the forum up and running for live chats during major events.
So, I hope you enjoy the new site, podcast and other things we have planned for you in the upcoming year. Sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss any of the headline news.
Oh, one last thing a few years after high school, I ran into my 670 year-old High School football coach at an 7-11.
After catching up a bit, he tells me this.
“Littal we have an audible call named after you, it is called A.S., but we call it out as ASS.”
I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, so I asked him what did it mean and he said.
“If we scream out ASS it means QB or coaches seen something with the defense and the wide receivers know they have to adjust to the situation, just like you did when you caught that game winning pass.”
Always nice to know sometimes that the student can teach the teacher something.