We've had some staff turnover at As For Football in recent months, and that's fine. Rob has been stepping away for a while now. He'll be taking command fairly soon, so we've been working to transition to a place where we can continue to operate the business without him for a good long time now. It's tough because Rob built a good amount of our infrastructure personally. But we're -- slowly -- getting there. I'm finally starting to feel like I understand how all the behind-the-scenes stuff works, to the point where I've lately been putting some of my own touches on a few of our fundamental operations.
Meanwhile, John, our former Social Media Director, has been out for a while now. We're actually hoping that he comes back next year, but my man is leaving the Army, and if you've never done that before, well, it's harder than it looks.
What can you do? I'm just trying to give the guy as much time and space as he needs.
Now, though, AFF is left with some legacy systems that specifically reference folks who aren't here anymore. For example, we just (finally) re-launched the reformatted College Football Roundtable podcast this week. I was really pleased with the show itself, but the existing artwork referenced me, Jordan, Rob, and John, as did the opening sounder.
We'll fix this sounder -- and the Army Football Show intro sounder -- at some point before football season starts, but I really wanted to relaunch the show with new artwork. It's a branding thing. Half these guys aren't even on the show anymore, and oh by the way, we've completely changed the show's format, too. I wanted to relaunch the show with a look that better represented what it actually is.
We do this kind of work in
Canva. My wife has a premium account, but my account and AFF's accounts are both free. And honestly, the free accounts are fine, save that the stock photo selection is relatively small. Almost all the free "football" pics I found were actually for soccer. Because of course they were.
After some back and forth with the guys, we settled on this:
I really liked this shot. I think it's beautifully composed, though I washed the colors out a little, too, hopefully making it feel something like a memory when you look at it. Regardless, I thought the composition as a whole was on theme for the new show. We see an empty stadium with a single groundskeeper making the place ready for a game. That's kind of what we're trying to do with the new show, get you ready for the week in college football. That's all good. This is the theme.
The problem?
It's a soccer stadium. Because of course it is; all the free stock photos were soccer photos. This one is in Barcelona, apparently. Two people caught the mistake that I know of -- Rob, right when I showed it to him, and my classmate Alex via Instagram.
I haven't decided if or when we're going to fix it. I really like this photo. But if we do fix it, it'll probably be after the spring FCS football season is over. Hell, half the point of covering the spring season is just to work the kinks out of the new show. This was an unexpected kink, but it's not one that's exactly shocking.
By the way, we pulled in a few dozen listeners with the new show yesterday, and I was really pleased with that. It's a brand new thing covering FCS football that's being shown exclusively on ESPN+. Honestly, getting a few dozen folks to care about that was about what we expected.
If you listened to the show, please please please tell me what you thought. We're still developing ideas, so now's your chance to have some input. Thanks! And tell me what you think of that cover photo, too.
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