Your Best 11: College Football Lead Writer, Dan Rubenstein

Writing and producing college football content is my fourth favorite thing to do in life behind napping, eating sandwiches, and rocketing down (intermediate) water slides. Unfortunately for me, Bleacher Report wisely refused to let me do any of these things for them professionally, so I opted to accept an offer from the site to do No. 4.

Since you’re reading this, you’re either a regular Bleacher Report reader or you’ve managed to follow a link to this page to see where I’ll be writing. It should also be noted that if you’ve reached this point while trying to find a link to a FREE KIM KARDASHIAN SEX TAPE, I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong place.

(That one was for the SEO guys in the back.)

Be warned—in my advanced age, I’ve grown more and more apathetic toward extreme opinion, so if you can’t stand Bleacher Report or my writing, I probably won’t respond with nearly the passion and enthusiasm you’re used to. Also, YOU CAN ALL CHOKE AND DIE.

To be fair, I don’t feel the need to defend the work or the business model of my new home, but in the short time I’ve spent with the people that run the company, I’ve learned:

Four Sexy Underreported Bleacher Report Facts

1.     The developers and programmers are almost entirely young, driven, and own degrees from prestigious schools. They’re probably scanning your hard drive as we speak and laughing in binary.

2.     Said employees have used their powers to figure out ways to produce a ton of daily sports content for the public instead of using their time to disable major international gaming networks. This is a good thing.

3.     The editors and content managers are now basically giant bouncers guarding a club and the sportswriters are, well, sportswriters trying to get into a club. In this case, though, the bouncers are kind enough to be constructive and say things like, “Hey, maybe wear nicer shoes and bring some girls. Let’s get this figured out so we can get you in the club.” This all makes sense in my head, I swear.

4.     They have a ping-pong table in their office. I don’t exactly know how this speaks to the quality of Bleacher Report, but despite two early subpar games against Josh Zerkle, I feel like I have a good shot of finding my name pretty high in the eventual Bleacher Report Power Rankings.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’ll quickly tell you about what I’m going to do here, beyond quietly feeding my insatiable need for table tennis acceptance. I’ll be the guy exclusively writing about college football stories in a way that will probably make you think I’m a little bit off. This is because I’m a little bit off.

I tend to fall into traps where, for example, I try to figure out which players I suspect of being cyborgs (Justin Blackmon, in a good way) and which coaches I’m positive are cyborgs (Luke Fickell, less so). Just indulge me, and the payoff is that I’ll eventually get lazy and sink to levels where I’ll just claim that some walk-on linebacker with a 3.2 GPA is doing it “the right way” and teams who run the most rudimentary offenses play “real football.” This should happen by mid-October at the absolute latest.

Also, I should disclose that I’m a graduate of the University of Oregon, and per the contract I signed upon graduation, I’m legally obligated to send random readers customized Nikes every so often to curry good favor.

Beyond my writing plans and empty promises of free footwear, it became quickly clear that Bleacher Report was simply the right place to be a little weird with my college football coverage. I’ve always put in the work (mostly for free) behind what I believe are quality ideas until I’ve been able to convince somebody to let me continue doing so professionally. In hiring me and the other new writers (and whatever Dan Levy is), it seems like another Web victory for those that are willing to be life interns for a little while in order to chase something bigger.

I’ll now step down from my soapbox.

If nothing else, I’m looking forward to a great season (and beyond) with everyone at Bleacher Report. Expect hundreds of words at a time, pictures, videos and, of course, unfounded allegations that certain players and coaches contain both human and robotic tendencies.

Who knows, maybe this whole thing will push college football up to No. 3...

You can find my first article at Your Best 11 on Thursday, Aug. 25th.

Your Best 11 plans to add contributing writers.