It’s been a memorable couple of weeks for us. Four of the five highest days of site traffic have come in the past eight days. On Wednesday, perhaps the zaniest day of any offseason in NFL history, a record 1.179 million unique visitors came to the site.
In the past, I’ve thanked each of you for helping us generate numbers I never could have imagined or expected. Today, I need to properly thank and recognize the folks who help us set the table with compelling content for you to enjoy, complain about, or both.
For starters, we’re thrilled and proud to announce that the longest-tenured writer in PFT history whose name doesn’t rhyme with a certain 100-year-old cookie has become our first-ever Managing Editor. Michael David Smith joined us on a part-time basis in March 2007, contributing significantly to PFT and our sister site, CFT. After a brief departure during his full-time employment with AOL Fanhouse (they signed him to an offer sheet that we had the cap room but, pre-NBC, not the cash to match), MDS returned to PFT on a part-time basis in September 2009.
MDS has now become a full-time member of the team, and he’s officially in charge of the day-to-day operations. (Which means I’d better get my act together.)
As you know, MDS consistently produces quality work, without exception. He works hard and he works fast and he is one of the most easygoing and even-keeled guys I’ve ever met. It’s a privilege to have him in such a key role.
We’re also happy to announce that long-time part-time contributor Josh Alper will have a more prominent role in producing content, as will Evan Silva, whose tireless efforts within the past 10 days did not go unnoticed by me -- and hopefully not by you. Also, Adam Levitan and Chris Wesseling of Rotoworld helped out with the daily one-liners last week, and you may see more from them as time goes by.
The changes were sparked by the fact that Gregg Rosenthal, long-time Rotoworld editor who began contributing to PFT upon the launch of the NBC partnership, recently left the NBC family for NFL.com.
“I’ve read PFT every day since late in 2003, when I started my job at Rotoworld,” Rosenthal said last week via email. “I will continue to read PFT every day now that I’m leaving. For the last three years, I was lucky enough to write for my favorite site while rarely wearing pants.”
Rosenthal also had a message for PFT Planet generally: “Thanks for making fun of my age, pointing out my typos, and telling me that I look like Kevin Arnold.”
Gregg, thanks for your many contributions and for always being a good sport, and for eventually learning to dish it out along with gracefully taking it. We’ll miss you.
But at the same time the train must keep rolling. After 10 years, PFT has now become something that will thrive even after I’m no longer involved with it. Which hopefully won’t happen until I’m at least six or seven times as old as Rosenthal looks.
Finally, I know what some of you are thinking. If PFT is a writer down, there may be an opening. This isn’t a call for submissions or inquiries. We already have explored several possible additions, and we may explore more. Fortunately, that’s one of the many administrative burdens that NBC takes off our plate.
Given the explosion of football-related developments this month, our plate is already more than full. And we’ll do our best to keep your plate full for those moments when you have an opportunity to dial us up and see what’s happening with the greatest sport in the world.
PFT remains at its core a small operation, and as a wise man recently suggested I’ll never lose the hard-headed “start-up” mentality that helped launch it in 2001. We know we wouldn’t be here without you, and we thank you for including us in your daily routine.