An Announcement From KSR

Today we at KSR are excited to announce that we are entering into a new partnership agreement with 247Sports. It is an exciting moment for KSR and we believe it will help make KSR even better in the years to come. Here is the official announcement of the agreement: 247Sports is proud to announce we have signed a partnership agreement with Kentucky Sports Radio (KSR), the largest independent college sports blog in America. With power brands like KSR and The Cats' Pause working together in the Kentucky market, fans of UK football, basketball and recruiting should benefit immensely. "KSR is the undisputed champ in the Kentucky sports market," 247Sports founder and CEO Shannon Terry said. "247Sports has a war chest of talent, content and products for fans - highlighted by the industry-generated 247Sports Composite rankings and Crystal Ball prediction engine. By working together, Kentucky fans can have the best of both worlds." KSR and 247Sports will continue to operate kentuckysportsradio.com and CatsPause.com independently, but this formal partnership allows the free KSR blog and CatsPause.com's premium subscription site to complement one another and make each brand stronger. "We are very excited about the chance to partner up with 247Sports and increase what we can offer to UK and KSR fans," KentuckySportsRadio.com founder Matt Jones said. "KSR has always strived to be, and will remain, the premier free place for UK fans to gather and get their UK news in the 'most ridiculous manner possible.' But now with the resources that 247Sports can provide, especially in the way of recruiting, we think the KSR blog will only become better." KSR readers will get exclusive posts and stories from CatsPause.com recruiting writer Chris Fisher and contributions from other recruiting experts in the 247Sports network. KSR staffers like Matt Jones, Drew Franklin, Tyler Thompson and others will will be a part of CatsPause.com's message board community and will be available — along with CatsPause.com staffers Chris Fisher, Darrell Bird, Jon Hale and Josh Edwards - to interact with fans day and night to discuss all things UK. All the experts will also make 247Sports Crystal Ball predictions to help UK fans stay informed during the recruiting process. "247Sports is light years ahead of its competition in cutting edge content, and The Cats' Pause is the legendary name in the world of UK sports that is known by nearly every fan in the Big Blue Nation," Jones said. "This partnership will allow all of these entities to work together and thereby create for UK fans the best and most complete Internet coverage in college sports." So you may be asking yourself, in layman's terms what does this all mean? Well as a starting point, it is important to know that, there will be absolutely no change to the KSR Blog or KentuckySportsRadio.com. Drew and Tyler will still be full time KSR blog employees, I will still be doing all the same KSR things and the post formats and numbers will be the same as always. The one major difference is that we will now have contributions on this blog from 247Sports employees such as Chris Fisher and national recruiting analysts. In fact, in the area of recruiting, KSR will be taking a MAJOR step forward, providing even more recruiting information, specifically on the football side. It isn't a secret that we haven't focused on football recruiting here on KSR, and now you will see the type of information that is normally only found on pay sites here on KSR for free for the reader. In fact, the first of these posts by Chris Fisher will be up on the site a little bit later today. While the KSR blog will not change significantly (except to improve), we will be providing some changes for 247Sports' UK site, CatsPause.com. Drew, Tyler and I will participate in their message board community there, and it will allow us to interact with fans in ways that we haven't really been able to before. The KSR comment section doesn't really lend itself to "discussion" (except during the show thread and times to yell at each other and call each other names), so we have for years been kicking around the idea of having a place to interact and talk with KSR fans. We now will be able to do that on CatsPause.com. The message boards there are free (with the occasional "VIP" comment) and Drew, Tyler and I will be a part of them to discuss what is going on in the world of UK sports. When something relevant is discussed there, we will link it here and the hope is that many of you will come over there, register for an account (which you can do at this link) and chat with us. Its just another place to talk UK sports in a forum that we have never had here on KSR. We will also be part of their Crystal Ball prognostications and some of their discussions on the site. None of our work will be in the "VIP" section, but instead will be there for the free account holders. So why are we doing this? Simply put, 247Sports in the best overall college sports website network in the country. We believe that KSR is the best independent college sports site in the country. We want to always keep that independence but also want to give our readers access to some of the advantages that a network can bring, especially in the world of recruiting. Thus this partnership agreement allows us to do that. You will see many of the cutting edge changes created by 247Sports on this site and the amount of recruiting information will grow exponentially here, especially in the world of football. Simply put, it will make KSR even better, while retaining our independence and "most ridiculous manner possible" mindset. Our hope is that this partnership agreement will give you even more of what you want in your college sports coverage. You now will have all the benefits of the old KSR, with new coverage from the 247 employees, while also having the ability to go on the 247 site and interact and use their databases and cool products like Crystal Ball, Class Calculator and others in ways you may not have before. We think it is a win-win for both of us, and more importantly for the KSR fans. We hope you enjoy.