Cream: a college football Substack coming soon!
College football musings, essays, opinions, and love letters from the desk of Terry Horstman
Hey friends,
I am not going to let the suits win without a fight! By ‘suits’ I am of course referring to the bad men who are destroying college football, and by ‘fight,’ I of course mean without writing my ass off about this silly, hilarious, quirky, and wild sport I have always loved.
This college football season is already primed to be unlike any we’ve ever seen before. The last season under the Power 5/Group of 5 alignment we’ve become accustom to over the last decade. It’s a season that already feels deeply personal and important and I plan to be here to cover every minute of this season and beyond.
‘Cream,’ which of course is a nod to Wu-Tang Clan and acknowledges the ‘Cash Rules Everything Around Me’ nature of college football, will have an Oregon State lens, but I won’t hesitate to zoom out on the national scale of college football. Here’s an overview of what I’m envisioning for written content for this first season of ‘Cream.’
Free written content during the season:
Weekly piece of 1,000 words or more on Oregon State football (year round), the Monday Morning Tail Slap
That’s 52,000 words a year on Oregon State football
Pac 12 Funeral Procession: weekly piece on the long march towards laying this bird to rest
Letters from Big Ten country
Paid written content during the season:
At least four additional written pieces throughout the week during the season:
One weekly big picture college football piece
One weekly deep dive Oregon State sidebar piece
Game I’m most looking forward to watching this week
Way-too-early potential bowl game opponents for Oregon State
The paid tier will start at $10/month or $100/year. We’ll take a look at adding more tiers as we build out more content streams, but know there will always be multiple free posts every week, offseason included.
There will of course be opportunities to add video content and maybe even some podcasting content with my Belligerent Beavs guys (please listen to our pod if you don’t already). I also plan to produce this from well beyond the confines of my writing nook and cover some live games. I already have plans to be in attendance for the Minnesota vs. Nebraska game in Minneapolis on August 31, and will also be in Corvallis for the opening of brand new Reser Stadium with Oregon State vs. UC-Davis.
I plan to officially kick this thing off on Monday, August 28 with the fist ever Monday Morning Tail Slap.
College football is amazing. What’s happening to it is sad. The suits can take my favorite team’s conference away, but they can never take away the millions of amazing stories that happen in this sport every year or the need for these stories to be told. As long as we recognize that, college football still has a soul.
“Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum”
You can’t spell ‘Chop Em,’ without ‘hope.’
Go Beavs! Chop Em!
Sincerely,
Terry Horstman