Ira Schoffel: Another opportunity to redefine FSU sports coverage

With our second daughter due any day, I had to make the difficult decision to skip Florida State’s Sugar Bowl game against Georgia following the 2002 season. Instead of getting to cover the game and enjoy a few days in the Big Easy, I instead stayed behind and worked on my labor cheerleading skills as my wife waited for the big day.

At the time, I was managing editor of The Osceola, a weekly print publication that covered FSU, and we had established a partnership with Warchant.com just a few months earlier. In the early days of the deal, we posted some of our articles on Warchant, but we didn’t get too involved with the message boards. We would read them and post comments from time to time, but we didn’t immerse ourselves into it that first season.

A couple of days before the game, there were rumors about changes on the Seminoles’ coaching staff, and our Tribal Council message board was abuzz about this coach and that coach coming on board. After talking to a high-level source in the athletics department, I was able to definitively post that a particular coach was not going to be joining the FSU staff. But several of the long-time posters were quick to question my information and doubt my credibility.

I had no board cred!

That was a new experience for someone who primarily worked at newspapers for the previous 10 years, but I quickly realized that the Tribal Council was its own living, breathing community. And no matter how many stripes I had earned as a journalist, none of that meant anything to many of the people who lived on that message board. They had developed their own hierarchy of relevance and importance among the posters, and if I wanted to have a voice, I needed to prove myself just like anybody else. So beginning that day, I got just as active on our boards as any of the most fervent posters.

That feels like a lifetime ago.

At the time, Warchant wasn’t the 800-pound gorilla that it is today. Back then, Gene Williams was basically a one-man show, having ditched his budding law career to start a website covering his greatest sports passion, the Florida State Seminoles. He took the photos; he called recruits; he and a few volunteer contributors wrote the articles from practices and games.

It’s almost unfathomable what Warchant has become since then. (And that our second daughter is now a sophomore at FSU!)

In 2014, after I had served as sports editor and the lead columnist for the Tallahassee Democrat for about five years, Gene hired me to come back to Warchant as managing editor. Not long after that, we started recruiting Corey Clark to join us as our senior writer, and he finally came on board in late 2017 to join me and longtime recruiting analyst Michael Langston. Corey, who grew up a fan of the Seminoles and took my place as the main sports columnist at the Democrat, brings not only tremendous insight into FSU sports but also his own unique sense of humor.

Next we added Aslan Hajivandi as our director of digital media, which was another huge addition because he not only is an FSU grad, but because he had been a sports anchor and videographer for several TV stations, as well as an afternoon talk show host. He has been the backbone of our rapidly growing YouTube channel, cranking out highlights from practices and daily interviews, along with sensational long-form pieces such as this feature on FSU’s offseason workout program. Corey and Aslan also co-host the daily podcast, “Wake Up Warchant.”

Last summer, we had our latest expansion, adding popular sports talk show host Jeff Cameron and his longtime producer, Tom Lang, to the staff. Along with teaming up every weekday for The Jeff Cameron Show, which airs in Tallahassee on 93.3-FM and on our YouTube channel, they also contribute to our daily coverage by hosting video segments and offering their analysis for articles. Tom also is our Director of Original Content. We also hired reporter Austin Cox, who also grew up in Tallahassee and graduated from FSU, as an additional reporter for team coverage and recruiting.

And with Corey, Jeff and me on board, Warchant became the home of “Seminole Headlines,” a weekly show/podcast that has been on the Tallahassee airwaves for more than a decade.

In what feels like the blink of an eye, Warchant has evolved from Gene’s one-man show to a team of eight — a team that boasts more than 100 years of experience covering Florida State athletics.

Like other sites you might be familiar with, there will be articles and columns. Recruiting interviews and Hot Boards. Practice and game coverage for FSU football, basketball and baseball, along with other Seminole sports as interest warrants. But on top of that, we have an extremely robust offering of video coverage and podcast programming, along with the ability and resources to provide live, interactive shows with fans whenever breaking news happens.

As FSU prepares to kick off another football season later this month, we have some new special treats in store, including a live game watch-along feature with former Florida State wide receiver Dominic Robinson and other members of our staff. Plus more new features will be announced in the coming days.

But as I learned 20 years ago, the real strength of Warchant is our community. From the Tribal Council to the Premium Recruiting Board to the Club Level and every forum in between, we have an amazing gathering of die-hard FSU fans who come together each day to share their love — and their frustrations — for Seminole sports.

If you love Florida State too, we sure hope you’ll jump on board with this incredible special offer of a full year’s subscription for just $1. You’ll get access to all of our content, you’ll become a subscriber to the On3 network, you’ll get to interact directly with our staff on the message boards and in various other platforms, and you’ll get it all for a buck.

There has never been better and more comprehensive coverage of FSU athletics than you will find at Warchant.com. And there has never been a better time to join than right now.

Contact Warchant managing editor Ira Schoffel at [email protected], and follow @iraschoffel on Twitter.