It seems that they’re moving to more of a personality approach similar like Citius but opposite of the old days, but with that being said for better or for worse.
Anyone with any inside info about what's going on with Milesplit?
Cory Mull has moved on. Something in his last post made it sound like the terms of his departure weren't great?
Results have started to take days - sometimes even weeks - to get uploaded into their database.
I was surprised to see Milesplit 50 articles even come out this year, but the volume of national-level content seems to have dropped significantly.
At the local level, I've noticed that there seems to be far less content in many places as well. Not that MS had a nationwide footprint before, but everything I'm seeing certainly makes it seem like this is a company that is regressing. Which would be a bummer. At its best, Milesplit is a bit wonky and elementary, but at least they have the voice to support our sport. At its worst, though...they have data and results and scheduling hostage and if they go down, the sport will take a hit.
Am I imagining all of this?
The problems they had and have are easily solvable.
Because Texas has a full time editor. Most of the states have part time editors which are paid peanuts. They all have other full time jobs and responsibilities. The handful of states that do really well on coverage is because Flo pays someone a full time livable wage.
It would be interesting to see a breakdown of who the majority of Milesplit subscribers are and where they spend the most time on the site. I've always assumed most subscribers are parents or high school athletes that are mostly interested in local coverage? If that's the case then it would seem like a mistake to go to a regional/national model for their coverage. Does the typical subscriber care if some star athlete three states over is putting up nationally ranked marks? It seems doubtful. I'm guessing the vast majority of subscribers are interested in seeing how they or their kid stack up against the local competition.
For me I could care less about the "coverage", I subscribe to have access to the rankings reports, see athlete's individual stats and to run virtual meets (which have been broken on and off for several years now), but coaches are probably a different use case than a typically subscriber. Most of the "articles" the last 5-6 years have been nothing but rankings reports that any subscriber could have run themselves anyway. So for me I'd rather see Flosports invest in:
1. A few more data geeks to make sure their data is accurate for each state.
2. Another developer or two to fix the bugs and enhance the capabilities of their reporting tools and virtual meet capabilities.
Milesplit used to be a place with meet previews, meet recaps, athlete and coach interviews, and message boards. It had personality and heart. Today, Milesplit is a place with endless lists of names and numbers, which are meaningless during XC season. It’s crazy to think that high school coverage was better 20 years ago.
If you\'ve watched any kind of video feature over the last five years, Bryan Deibel has had his hands on it. Here\'s a farewell column on the impact he made.
I refused Milesplit a long time ago and rolled out a solution for my own home state.
I think when you get a person with a passion for distance running and technology, you get the "real thing" (i.e. in depth, creative coverage).
To the person who mentioned endless lists on milesplit -- yes. There was a journalist in my home state who talked about these endless lists and said it was best to pick a better cutoff point so we dont overload readers. In cross country especially, 15:17 on a pancake course versus 15:46 on a beast of a course with mud can be equal. So yeah, ordering by xc PR is meaningless in a leaderboard list.
even last year not as many HS results were getting uploaded, many big XC and track meets missing. our local coverage is still good because of William Grundy and Alex Chambliss.
In addition to interviews, Grundy posts things like times lists, list of most improved runners, top returning teams/individuals, an article about “that person” or “that team” going to do something special, and he also posts an article everytime a Texas runner (top guy, midpack JV, college) passes away.
He keeps up with everything that has to do with Texas running
It looks like milesplit is going to regional editors instead of having an editor for each state. Maybe states like Texas will continue to have their own editors it's hard to say. I don't think most of the state editors like Reyes were full time and this new western region editor is a full time position so it might mean better coverage?
So what this means is that within your particular state the Western Slope and other nether regions will be forgotten. Long gone are the days of Alan Versaw
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