Site News: A Writer Says Goodbye

Published in

The Towel Rack

6 min readDec 30, 2020

This piece is something that I’ve always known that I’d someday write but even though that day is here is still isn’t easy. Starting today, I am relinquishing my role as Editor in Chief of the Towel Rack and passing the torch to Jared Rosdeutscher.

I will now step back and no longer be a regular contributor to the website that I helped build with Fletcher Keel & Jared. The past four and a half years have been great and I’m proud of the website we’ve built and the following we’ve grown over the years.

When I started writing back in 2017 WKU was coming off the Brohm era and was at the beginning of a Stansbury era. When Fletcher Keel asked me to join the team, I had no idea that I’d write for four and a half years and take over as the Editor in Chief for the last year and a half. While the Hilltoppers never won at the level we wanted to during the period it was an amazing run none the less. Over the years I got to cover and analyze 3 bowl teams, an NIT Final Four Run, some heartbreaking Conference Title losses, coaching carousels, and countless other interesting stories that your typical mid-major program doesn’t get to experience on a year to year basis.

My first piece was the Top 15 Twitter Accounts Every WKU Fan Should Follow. Seeing the piece today I laugh as most of the top accounts no longer cover the program and have moved onto other endeavors. Over the course of my time covering the program that I love I wrote 378 pieces and spent countless hours monitoring, analyzing, and thinking of fun ways to cover WKU Athletics. I’d write everything from breaking news to game recaps to recruiting news. My favorite pieces to write were thought pieces where I could deep dive into an idea and find a way to analyze the program, history, etc. in a way that Hilltopper fans couldn’t find from mainstream media outlets.

I’m now 33 years old with two kids and a demanding sales job and it gets harder each day to find the balance needed to keep the website going to the standards we’ve established over the years and stay focused on what matters most with my family. With the year coming to an end it’s time to pass the torch.

Western Kentucky Fans deserve a place like this where they can get original content that is objective and analyzes the team through a prism that you can’t get through the small local media. There are countless mid-majors that barely have a Rivals site (Places like MTSU, Marshall, Old Dominion)let alone an independent blog that is going on its fifth year in existence. I believe that despite perceptions of our fan base, we’ve got a strong following compared to most mid-majors in like conferences (MAC, CUSA, Sun Belt) and that’s because we care.

It’s ok to be all in on the Hilltoppers despite what you may hear from others. While we may not have the budget or large fan base of other schools in the area we have a great all-around program that wins a lot and is never boring. We compete with big schools and often come out with unexpected victories (Arkansas, Wisconsin, Alabama, Oklahoma State, Boston College, USC, etc).

My hope is our site has given WKU fans another place to enhance their fandom. It’s no secret that I like a large portion of our fan base am a dual-fan (Louisville in my case). Through my time on the site, I confirmed what I already knew, that it’s ok to care about the Hilltoppers on the same level if not more than those “power schools”. My hope is that all WKU fans at least put the Hilltoppers first in their hearts and cheer for them with as much vigor as they do the others. If you do you may be surprised how your allegiances shift. It’s easy to cheer for the bigger school but it’s more fun to cheer for the underdog that honestly needs you more as a fan.

My last hope is that the sports administration at WKU will have an open mind to new media. Despite our long tenure of consistent coverage, we still haven’t been credentialed by the administration even though Conference USA credentialed us back in 2019 for the CUSA tournament. Todd Stewart has done a great job of interacting with our website, including coming on the podcast but his sports information team needs to be open to more outlets. Besides us, there really are only 2 or 3 consistent places that cover the team and we’ve more than established that we are not a fly by night organization.

I want to thank everyone that I worked with over the years.

Thank you Fletcher Keel for inviting me to join the website, pushing me to improve as a writer & asking me to be the Editor in Chief after you hung it up.
Thanks to Jared Rosdeutscher for being a valuable member of the team who I could bounce ideas off of and help integrate new members into the Towel Rack team. Also thank you for taking keeping the site going.
Thanks to Devin Stewart for bringing the REDout Podcast onto the website and including me in the episodes. I had countless hours of fun talking with all of you on those shows and ranting about the Tops.
Thank you to Alex Sherfield for joining the team last year, staying consistent with your writing, and always volunteering when needed.
Thanks to Matt McCay for all of your hard work over the years. He probably wrote as much as I did and even though he’s no longer with the site, the coverage he provided was essential and took the site to the next level.
Thanks to Sam Gormley, Jake Keith, Leroy Kleimola, Hunter Peay, Bret Combest, Keith Wilcutt (Inside Diddle) & Jeff Schreiner (Hilltopper Vault), and all others that made small but significant contributions to the website.
Thanks to the new writers, Jacob Gary, Sean Paul, Wyatt Richardson & John Woods for agreeing to come on board and helping to keep the content rolling. If you’re reading this and want to join the site please reach out to Jared.
Thanks to all the fans that regularly interact with our posts and provide feedback. You are the reason we have kept this going for so long. WKU has a very solid base of hardcore fans that do a great job of informing us of stuff that we sometimes overlook.
Last thanks to my family and friends that have read, encouraged, critiqued, and put up with the website over the years.

I’m leaving the website in good hands. Jared has been with us since the beginning and he knows the balance between objectivity and homerism. It’s one thing to fire off a tweet every once in a while, It’s another thing to devote countless hours to produce content that our fans crave. I hope that our readers realize that compared to other outlets out there.

I still will plan to write occasionally when the mood strikes and will continue to update the full game libraries on the website. In the meantime, you can find me on twitter where I’ll react and rant about the team just like all the fans that follow the Towel Rack. Goodbye for now. Go Tops!

Site News: A Writer Says Goodbye

Here are my Favorite Pieces From over the years

Written by Ross Shircliffe