State of the Blog and 2024 in Review

2024 has ended and it’s that wonderful time of the year when everyone, including this website, reflects on the previous 12 months. 2024 will mark the fourth straight year posting our “State of the Blog” following previous editions in 2021, 2022, and 2023. Feel free to read those for additional context or if you want to get a sense of how things have progressed since we started covering realignment almost exclusively in October 2020. Or maybe skip reading those if you are not a fan of novels…

2024 Stats Compared to Previous Years

The table below will provide data for the number of views, visitors, and articles we published each year from 2020 through 2024. Included are annual percentage changes for the views. The second table below will show the top 10 articles in 2024 based on view count and excludes certain links such as the home page or top-level category pages. The views were down slightly at 4%, which is a bit better than expected. The number of visitors plummeted by 24%, which is likely due to the new stats plugin implemented in 2023. Essentially, the plugin won’t count a returning visitor as a unique visitor, which makes sense but can be a privacy concern. For 2025, we’ve selected the more data privacy-oriented option that will cause the visitor count to increase. As a result, this will inflate the unique visitor count and won’t be included going forward in future “State of the Blog” posts due to the inaccuracy.

2025 Content Plans and the Yearly Rant

In our 2023 State of the Blog, we noted that the Realignment Report would end at some point in 2024. Well… that didn’t quite happen as expected and probably won’t. The main reason for keeping the twice-monthly article was to document any changes for the 2024-25 academic year as there wasn’t a running list like the “Realignment Changes for 2025 and Beyond” article. The plan for the Realignment Report was to reduce how many places each change is documented and to provide a single tracking list. As 2024 progressed, it made sense to continue using it for full membership changes, big-picture changes, and smaller realignment-related items that didn’t fit in the individual sports changes list. It’s also a place to provide some quick information and thoughts without writing a separate article.

It wouldn’t be a Sports Enthusiasts “State of the Blog” post on this website without a rant so here goes… If one were to look back at some of the standalone articles outside the “Realignment Report”, one would notice an overly negative, pessimistic tone when it comes to realignment and the NCAA. Some of the articles can come across as “love-to-hate” writing, which appeals to some but also drives other viewers away. At some point, one needs to ask themselves: if you dislike it so much, why do you continue covering it?

It’s a fair but complicated question to answer. Realignment is interesting, especially when it comes to sports outside football and basketball. The conundrum is those are the two sports that drive realignment decisions, which lead to the bizarre realignment outcomes we’ve seen. Now we’ve reached a bit of a circular argument because it’s a feedback loop going back decades as schools chase the money, leading to more realignment, which is fed by the increase in revenues (primarily from those two sports), and so on. It would be great if football decoupled from the rest of the sports where regional conferences could become en-vogue again. Alas…

There’s also the lingering uncertainty of the House settlement, the pay-for-play aspect coming to college athletics, the future of Title IX, possible legislative action, Clemson and FSU vs. the ACC, and many other minor but potentially impactful elements lurking in the shadows. Trying to make content around those everchanging aspects is difficult and, in this case, discourages writing because of how quickly everything changes. There’s no worse feeling than posting an article that becomes outdated within days or even hours. Maybe the obvious greed in college athletics has gotten to me. Or maybe it’s realignment burnout from the last 4 chaotic years starting to set in. Or maybe it’s a combination of many things.

To answer the question of why? I have a curiosity about realignment and want to know more. There are good reasons to think others want to know more too based on the previous few years. There is still a personal interest in learning more about realignment and other related aspects in the world of college athletics.

As for actual content, some planned posts for 2025 include the yearly realignment article on July 1, which will cover realignment changes for 2026 and beyond. The twice-monthly “Realignment Report” will continue as a catch-all of items related to college athletics outside the scope of realignment changes for each sport. Full membership changes will continue to be posted in the Realignment Report as a way to provide additional information. We’re on the fence about publishing the annual Division 1 softball article in May because the amount of effort that goes into it yields very few returning viewers and it falls starkly outside the realignment niche this website has turned to. However, we do have a rare non-college sports article set for April but that one was pushed back to 2025 instead of rushing it out in an unfinished state. Some new content is planned as well but let’s go into the next set of topics for context…

Ads and Monetization

In previous editions of this yearly article, we’ve talked about ads and whether this website would become monetized beyond Google Adsense. The answer has been no up to this point but we’ve never ruled it out completely. Will that change in 2025? It is unlikely to happen any time soon. Part of the new content planned for 2025, and hopefully beyond, is to do more open records requests, some of which will cost money to obtain. In turn, the readership will be provided with more informed analyses of realignment changes and that will require labor, time, and money to research. However, the paywall tap won’t be turned on straightaway simply because of some new content plans.

Starting in 2025, there will be a “soft wall” that requires people to sign up in order to read certain articles. There will be no charge and credit card information will not be required for the free sign-up. Users can then view the article after completing the sign-up form. Some articles like the twice-monthly Realignment Report will not require sign-ups to access. To be clear, there’s no guarantee a paywall will be implemented in the next few years. We’ll see how things unfold and go from there while keeping all options open – including the possibility a paywall never happens.

2025 Expectations

Last year, we noted that the views were probably trending downward in 2024 compared to 2023 due to many factors (algorithm, site changes, SEO shenanigans, etc.). We set a goal of 36,600 for the year, which would equate to an average of 100 views per day (accounting for the leap day as well). So how did we do? As noted in the first table, we slightly exceed that target for 2024. So what’s the expectation in 2025?

More of the same with an average of 100 per day as the target. There’s the likelihood that implementing a sign-up for certain articles will result in a decrease in viewership. While the sign-up process isn’t difficult, the mere presence will be enough for people to just click away, especially when some people have expectations of quick and easy access. In some cases, people won’t ever come back because of the sign-up and that’s one factor to consider when making these choices.

It can be difficult to forecast what to expect for views year-over-year for a topic like realignment because the past five years have been unparalleled with so many mega moves involving the ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, SEC, and what’s left of the Pac-12. However, those moves set off a chain reaction that is continuing today and won’t be resolved for years. We know the ACC has some schools not happy with the arrangement and the conference’s current Grant of Rights. Are there going to be more ACC changes in 2027 if there’s a legal resolution to the current predicament? What about a potential breakaway involving some schools? NCAA v. House post-settlement impacts? Federal legislation changes? There are so many possible angles with realignment, it’s hard to know which ones will come to fruition. The good thing about realignment is that it never stops but the bad thing is we never know how much it will slow down in a given year.

Combine all those factors with things outside a content creator’s control like the algorithm and it’s easy to see why people struggle to have accurate estimates. It’s not to make the numbers “look good” at the end of the year but more of a “there are a lot of interconnected aspects so here’s our best guess”.

As always, thank you for reading our annual New Year’s Day dissertation looking back on 2024. We hope you’ve enjoyed the many articles posted in 2024 (or before) and hope to see you back in 2025 whether you are just passing by or signing up for access. No one knows what realignment might provide for us this year but we’ll be here to cover whatever it is. Thanks again for your valuable time!