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We have hinted at this for months, and now we are able to officially announce this exciting news!
First of all, to those immediately starting to shut down and cringe, I want to be very clear:
Towel Rack is FREE!
Period.
That being said, we are opening up an opportunity for people to help fund our efforts. We have had people reach out to us asking, “How can I help you guys?” to which our response has been, “Don’t worry about it.” or “We just do this for the love of the Tops.” People ask, “What do y’all get paid to do this?” Sheepishly, we say, “Nothing.”
For nearly a decade, Towel Rack’s writers have COMPLETELY worked for free with zero compensation. Not one dollar. Any expense has been on us. Any podcast equipment, hotels to conference tournaments, licensing, fees with the state of Kentucky/federal government (which we have not had yet but will), etc., were all just paid out of our pocket.
I personally have made it my mission to make sure and tell every TTR writer and contributor “thanks” for all of the years of effort. So if you don’t like the idea, blame me, I guess. But personally, a few years ago when my kids were born, I was burnt out, pulled in a thousand directions, and I wanted to be able to travel with the Tops some. We were on a tight budget, and a little paycheck for time spent would have gone a long way to making my wife a little less fired up about how much time I spend rewatching volleyball highlights and looking up baseball slugging percentages, all for the love of the Tops.
All I’m saying is, that would have been nice then when I really needed it. Now I don’t really, really need it, but for example, I told my wife we could probably go to Huntsville for free this year, she goes, “Ok yeah ok for it. Sounds good.” A much better response than the “Hey honey, let me come up with some way to convince you for us to go to this bowl game,” conversation. So I want to do that for my staff, and that is why I’m putting a big article, probably in exchange for a few people to call us names, but express a message and explain the “why” on some developments for Towel Rack.
We truly do this because we freaking love WKU. This isn’t a money-making venture. Until now, it has been absolutely a money losing venture, and we’ve all been completely ok with that.
Put yourself in our shoes. If you could make $50 a month to pay for writing some combination of at least two of these every month: Write an article, participate in a roundtable, live tweet a major sporting event, provide insider information, confirm or deny rumors, provide recruiting trail info, provide broadcasting/journalism experience, edit others’ articles, and more, wouldn’t that feel better than doing it for free?
And before you think that you’re making us rich, do the math. We have a staff of nearly ten. If we split it say ten ways, that’s $500 we need to clear to pay our writers $50/month. That’s after $1,000-2,000 in yearly expenses to purchase podcast equipment, pay for programs to run things, and pay for traveling and credentials and giveaways. Again, is it really about making money? Lord no. Heckkk naw. It’s literally reimbursement of expenses.
We all have families. Most of us have wives. A majority have kids now. Most are in their late 20s to early 40s. This gives us an opportunity to have our wives say, “Oh ok cool that’s nice!” instead of “ohmygodnotagainyouidiotwhyareyouwastingyourtimewiththatWesterncrap?” You understand. It’s a lot to take on. I’m the head editor now. We’ve had several other head guys, at times we’ve had two at the helm, etc. Why do you think there’s so much turnover and burnout? Because it’s a whole lot to obligate yourself to an article a week plus checking in. It’s another part-time job!
Anyway, this is not a complaint session. It’s not a “woe is me” deal, either. This isn’t to illicit guilt. This is just communication.
We’ve heard you. Plenty have wanted to give and couldn’t.
So let me cast the vision. Let me explain why this matters and what an impact you can have. Then I’ll show you how you can get involved.
Towel Rack’s Impact, Reach, and Accomplishments
Quick Bullets
To date, over 2,400 articles about WKU Athletics
Nearly 80k Tweets and Retweets from Towel Rack and RedOut
Interviews with former players
Exclusive interviews with Todd Stewart
Live Tweeting all major events
Twitch sessions simulating WKU’s season on college football video games
Running the WKU Basketball Facebook board
Presence in all of the major WKU Facebook boards
Mentions on WBKO, WNKY, BGDN, and other local outlets on an annual basis
Personal accounts from inside WKU Football
Frequent conversations and Q&A’s with other opponent blogs
Deep statistical dives
Previews
Recaps
Full Coverage of WKU Athletics since 2016
The RedOut Podcast
The RedOut Podcast
For nearly all of its existence, the RedOut podcast has been either directly or loosely affiliated with regular guests from The Towel Rack. For awhile, it was Devin Stewart and his cousin, Jake Keith. Then it was Devin and Jared Rosdeutscher. Then it was some combination of Devin, Jared, Ross Shircliffe, Alex Sherfield, and myself. Now it’s Devin and me basically running the thing, and in the last little bit, we’re much closer as part of Towel Rack, although still a separate entity.
RedOut has been on the air during each athletics season since 2017, going over all WKU sports and emphasizing mostly WKU Football and Men’s Basketball. However, the show has evolved and talked much more about all sports.
RedOut is the longest running WKU podcast. It is the only WKU podcast not affiliated with anything official at WKU, completely independent, and is the only podcast willing to be completely honest about our view on WKU Athletics. We haven’t held punches at times, sometimes stirring up a hornet’s nest. We’ve been completely honest with our listeners.
In a world where a lot of the content is controlled, RedOut (and Towel Rack, too) have maintained a pretty good relationship with WKU but also have stuck to our guns and been largely respected in the WKU community.
Social Media Presence
The combination of Towel Rack and RedOut now has over 11,000 total followers on all social media
Twitter alone is the vast majority with nearly 9,000 combined followers.
Facebook accounts for another 1,500 or so followers, Instagram (new accounts) with another 500 or so, and our Substack account (transitioned from Medium several years ago) now has over 900 subscribers and grows on a weekly basis.
Live Tweeting for all major sporting events in all sports
Larger Twitter presence than all other local sports news accounts and more reach than some major WKU sports accounts
So What’s the Point?
This is not a brag session. I’m just establishing that Towel Rack is a legitimate resource for WKU Athletics. We move the needle, and plenty of people use us for their WKU news. It was awesome going to the HAF Dinner and it gets out that we’re with The Towel Rack around our few tables, and several people go, “Oh your articles in my e-mails just make our day!” How heartwarming and humbling! Thank you!
Towel Rack reaches people and speaks mainly to the hardcore WKU fan, but also to the sports fan, to opposing teams, to betters, and sometimes we provide help to WKU itself. Sometimes we write articles, tweet things, tag people in certain things that we think are important for certain WKU accounts and admin.
We always try to be WKU leaning but unbiased, try to be legitimate journalists without being arrogant jerks (often failing), try to be real, try to be honest, and try to project an image that we care about WKU and that we’re a resource for people.
If and when you give, like subscribe, share, comment, whatever, you help WKU and you help us. Please understand the impact you can make by simply interacting with us. If you’re a Topper fan, engage with the outlets that exist to love WKU. There are other good outlets, publications, talk shows, WKU admin, business, and other WKU loving allies that deserve your attention.
It’s a win for us if you consume our content. That’s what it will always be about and that will never change.
How Can You Help?
Do What You’ve Been Doing!
Like
Subscribe
Comment
Retweet
React
Quote
Share
Tag
DM
Collaborate
Give
On our articles now, we will have a button…
…that gives you info on how to get involved financially. When you click the link, it is very clear: There aren’t any major perks to giving, other than the fact that if we get some donations, we can possibly give back to the people that are helping us keep the doors open.
What it does for us, though is the real reason to give. If you love WKU, then you get why we do what we do, and you get that sometimes you’re willing to do stuff for the Tops even though it doesn’t benefit you. You give to WKU, you buy tickets, you travel, what-have-you. You give to other places. You give to church, high schools, blood drives, and political causes.
If you believe in what we do or appreciate, here’s your chance to say “thanks” and make us even more able to get better and make a bigger impact.
And if you’re wondering if this is going to get weird and we’re going to ask for money all of the time like a creepy pastor rubbing his hands and licking his lips, no. After this, we’re done talking in depth about it. This is just an awareness article. We want you to know what those weird buttons mean, and we want to be clear about the purpose.
How Can We Help Each Other?
Advertise Your Business With Towel Rack
I’m a business owner. I am part-owner and partner at Safeguard Insurance on Scottsville Rd. in Bowling Green. That’s my day job. As a business owner, I’m trying to get my business out there and turn a profit.
Could your business benefit from a social media reach of over 11,000 followers and growing?
Could your business benefit from a quarter million views on an annual basis?
Could your business benefit from sponsoring a section in the podcast, the full podcast, or sponsor some type of series?
DM us on social media or contact me and let’s talk through what we can do for each other!
Come on a Podcast
Are you a former player? Maybe you have a business or don’t. Maybe you have a special cause. Maybe you are someone people would be interested to hear from as a well known WKU fan or alum. DM us and maybe we’d like to have you on. We reserve the right to respectfully say “no thanks”. But go ahead and ask!
Maybe you’re Brandon Doughty or Forrest Lamp and want to promote your business. Gemonee Brown has been on before. Dean Tiebout. Casey Tinius. Others, as well.
We would love to have more people reaching out to us about being guests on the podcast. Maybe that can help reach some people you wouldn’t, and hey if you’re a business and you want to pay to advertise or come on, talk Toppers and mention your business, these are all possibilities.
You don’t know until you ask, and we don’t know exactly who to approach unless we think to approach you randomly out of the thousands of options we could choose from.
Let’s make it happen!
Joint Venture
Is there some way Towel Rack/RedOut and whatever organization you care about can work together? Is there a worthy charity? Is there something that benefits athletes at WKU? Are you a WKU admin? Are you an opponent blog or publication?
There are all kinds of ways that we can work together.
Join Our Staff!
A huge need right now is to have a few more people willing and able to write articles, provide content, help us manage some things, etc. We could really use someone incredibly passionate about other sports besides men’s basketball and football. It’s easier to get the staff fired up about those, but women’s sports, baseball, and other olympic sports are not something I can really get tons of people actually on board with. However, I would love to have one person be our olympic sports person.
I would love to find people that have time to write an article a week and have a few hours they can put into helping us come up with plans and do whatever we need done that week.
If you have interest in that, DM us! Comment, message, send a pigeon! We would love to expand our staff, and now we can pay you a little, too. Please do not get too fired up. We’re talking a few thousand dollars split 6-10 ways. Think of it as a few hundred dollars a year, because much more than that is not really on the table at this point.
If this section has interested you the most, talk to us about joining our team!
We Appreciate It, Y’all!
Seriously, without our followers, we are nothing. Without people tuning in, what purpose do we serve besides scratching our own itch to talk WKU amongst ourselves?
Y’all are awesome.
I also appreciate you reading all of this. I know it can be “cringe” to ask for money, but that’s not really what I’m doing.
I’ll say it again: “It’s totally fine if you never give a dime or help us out. It’s not about the money.”
We just want to let you know what’s up and the “why” we’ve added options for pay.
We’re not adding paywalls. When I started filling out the sections in Substack to collect subscriptions, it auto populated all of these “special perks” for subcribing members, like removing non-recent articles and having exclusive “paid subscription” benefits.
Forget that!
I turned all of that off. If you want to give, give! If you don’t, who cares? Carry on, Toppers!
To our subscribers, this was mainly to you. You receive these e-mails whenever we send out an article, and we appreciate your loyalty. I believe eight of you on your own had expressed interest in giving before I started crafting this article a few months ago. This was certainly for you.
We appreciate you, and even if you just consume our completely free content, so be it!
After every article we’ll have a caption with some info (see below)
GO TOPS!
Don’t you want to be connected with the only WKU outlet that provides real, unbiased (well, definitely not this article) perspective with live tweeting, breaking news, a podcast, and full-length articles? And good luck finding an outlet that provides comprehensive Lady Topper coverage. No one else does exactly what we do, and it’s all for FREE! There’s no charge for the one stop shop that is The Towel Rack!
Towel Rack is completely free and will always be free if you don’t want to give a dime. There truly is zero obligation, and there will be no guilt trip if you never contribute.
However, for those that are able or willing, if you’d like to support the Towel Rack’s efforts (like traveling with teams, credentials, podcast expenses, state/federal business licensing, administration costs, etc.)…click the button below!
Your donation is valued and appreciated. We strive to be Johnny Hilltopper’s number one resource for real information. Thanks for all that you’ve done over the years, Hilltopper fans!
GO TOPS!!!!