Posts tagged Orientation

Most of the content on The Mid-Majority during Season 9 will be created and provided by teams of six players. Each team will have up to four writers, a coordinating captain, as well as a “fantasy” mid-major baller of the team’s choosing. Teams will acquire points by amassing games and road miles, completing Amazing Race-style challenges, and statistics generated by the active player. There’s a prize at the end for the winner; more details about the game here.

Back in March, we put out a call for captains, and we had more than enough responses to fill out a league (six or eight teams). But as we tried to make clear, captainship will require about 10 hours per week (most likely including going to games), so this is definitely a season-long commitment. Lives can change over a summer, so we didn’t sign anyone up in ink or blood just then, but now that there are 50 days left until Season 9, it’s time to get serious. If you wrote in back then, we’ll be in touch to ask if you can still take part. If you’re just coming back to a college sports consciousness, there’s still time to sign up.

Captains will get to name their team, pick colors, and will have the final choice for their squads during the fantasy draft on October 31. They will also recruit writers, and mentor/challenge/encourage them to be better chronicles of sports (yes, this is a public-service teaching thing too!). Would you like to be one, or reiterate your intention? If so, kindly contact us through The Form™.

Also, reminders! If you’d like to be a part of Team Essay Season or have a Season 9 suggestion for the site, you can still do so.

The suggestion box for Season 9 is still open. One of the complaints that was submitted (more than expected) to the Season 8 suggestion box was that there was no Essay Season between November 1 and the start of play in 2011. Back when I (Kyle) wrote for the site, it was a way for me to unpack thoughts, theories, and mission statements for the upcoming basketball year. Nowadays, it makes as much sense as anything to crowdsource this part too.

This November, Essay Season will be a series of 1500-2000 word pieces about the concept of team — their creation, their internal dynamics, how fans perceive and behold them, how they break down, and the best examples of such in mid-major college basketball history. And they will be by you. With two months’ advance, we are inviting you to “apply” to write for Essay Season (or rather, be a good writer and say you want to do it). We will likely get back to you, then try to best tailor an Essay Season assignment to your particular situation.

Are you interested? Do you want to be on Team Essay Season? Let us know.

The end of back-to-school sales and the beginning of American-Style Football signals that we now have less than two months to go until Season 9 of The Mid-Majority. If you’ve been with us for any part of the past almost-decade, you know that we execute a full relaunch of the site every November 1, which always includes a lot of extra experimental bells and whistles.

This year, we will be playing our interactive team game, but there are always a lot of other things going on with the site — recent seasons have featured such things as Pixelvision, NBA alumni reports, star maps, Mid-Majority 360, and lots of other loopy techno-basketball ideas. What should we add this year? The suggestion box is open (and, of course, if you’re a Season 9 Member, we’ll pay twice as much attention to your ideas).