FSU National Signing Day Kudos

Yesterday's Tomahawk Nation's coverage of FSU's National Signing Day was the culmination of a years worth of hard work by our under-appreciated, strictly volunteer (as in not paid, unlike our competitors) Recruiting Staff.  These men perform this service because of their love for FSU and Tomahawk Nation, and to provide our members with what we consider to be the most accurate, most up-to-date, unbiased information and coverage of the future stars for the Seminole football team.

Just like everything I, and everyone else here at TN writes and publishes, the following are just my feelings, opinions, and thoughts.  Each author on this site is given the freedom to write about whatever is on their mind, and there are no assignments given, nor are we asked to write about a specific topic.  I only mention this fact to let our readers know that I was not asked to write and publish this piece, I am doing it because I think it is the right thing to do.  As a person who has been fortunate and lucky enough to experience some success in my professional life, I learned a long time ago that you can never say "Thank You," "Congratulations," and "job well done" enough to the people who truly deserve it.

Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to say Thank You, Congratulations, and job well done to our recruiting staff for the time, effort, and work they have been putting in for the past year, which resulted in the finished product you saw yesterday.

Your TN recruiting staff consist primarily of FSUSOM, DA-2, SWFLNole, and NoleThruandThru.  Thanks are also in order to other major contributors to our recruiting efforts such as tdchrisdavis, DKfromVA, RaysnNoles, to all of the other staff members who help make this the best site around and whose names are posted at the bottom of this page, and to our resident Basketball expert, TrueCubbie.  But mostly,  many many thanks to each and every one of you, our members, who contributes their knowledge, thoughts, comments, ideas, and opinions to Tomahawk Nation not just on the recruiting threads, but to all of the stories posted.

So getting back to our NSD coverage,  I think it went pretty damn great.  Our front page was awesome, the recruits bio's and film were there at a glance with links, the staff write ups were second to none, everything was well presented and organized, the allocated time slots for comments was a brilliant idea, the updates as LOI were received at FSU were posted in near real time, and each and everyone of our members present yesterday contributed in some positive way.

I also think we learned a few lessons that we will probably use next year, such as posting expected signing times,  listing the players whose LOI's have already been received, and important links, at the top of each hourly thread to have all pertinent information on the page you are currently viewing.  I am sure any other suggestions you may have would also be welcomed.

I would like to share some final numbers regarding our NSD coverage.

There were 3,654 comments posted on the NSD threads, however we estimate that also approximately 800-1000 comments were deleted for failure to conform to the stricter than usual policies implemented to keep our site running at full speed and capacity.  I am proud to say that only 6 members were temporarily banned for repeatedly failing to follow the more stringent rules and all have since been reinstated. Thank you all for behaving as well as can be expected on a day that for most of you must have felt like it did for me yesterday and on that very special Christmas years ago  when I woke up to find Santa had finally brought me what I really wanted, my very own Malibu Barbie Dream House and the Pink My Little Pony that made me the envy of every little girl in the neighborhood.  (TMI?)

From our Sitemeter at the bottom of the page, we learned that we had 36,728 unique visitors yesterday who came to Tomahawk Nation for the best National Signing Day coverage, and those visitors performed 129,270 page views here on our little site.  Thank you all of your loyalty.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not thank FSUncensored for putting this little dog and pony show together for our amusement, and for the hours and hours of work he puts in every week to make this, bar none, the best and the #1 FSU Sports Digital Media Site anywhere on this planet.