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SoCalHoops Internet Sports News

Rivals.com:  What's Happening & How
To Get In When It's Down--(Apr. 26, 2001)

Rivals is going down. Rivals is staying up.  Rivals is being sold.  Rivals has filed bankruptcy.   Hey, we don't know what the heck is really going on over there, and neither evidently does anyone else.   But we were told that there are NO MORE engineers working for Rivals. At least that's what evidently has been happening there for the past few days.  Sources indicate that when all the former employees at Rivals were informed a few weeks ago that the company would cease operations, that a few dedicated engineers elected to stay on until things got sorted out, keeping the embattled network "on the air" so to speak.  Well, evidently in the past few days, there's been some sort of a power struggle over who these two or three engineers would eventually work for, and as a part of the power struggle, they too walked out.

Previously, as bugs and problems arose on the Rivals network, they would normally be routinely dealt with by a phalanx of engineers.  But without any techies who know how the whole thing works, small problems can quickly spiral into huge website instabilities, and Rivals apparently reached that point yesterday.    The entire "front-page" portion of their network and thus the "front pages" of all of their sites were inaccessible for the past two days.   The network was brought back to life last night, but we have no idea whether that's temporary, permanent, or somewhere in between. 

The Rivals message boards, which is really where everyone communicates on that network anyway, remained accessible.  But unless you had the message boards individually bookmarked, it was impossible to get in.  Now we have no idea how much longer any of the Rivals' message boards will remain open.   So yesterday, we hunted around a bit and tried to find the links to most of the message boards.  It was a daunting task, and we only managed to make it through about 1/3 of the entire network.  But what we found out in the process about Rivals was interesting.  Most of the news has been posted on the various message boards by the "publishers" of the individual sites. 

On the old USF site, someone posted an e-mail purporting to be from "Rivals".   Here's what it said: 

An e-mail from Rivals...."You are undoubtedly aware that the site has been down most of the day. We are continuing to work as hard as we can to fix the problem, and expect to have the site up sometime tomorrow (Thursday). These are difficult circumstances for all of us; we are extremely sorry for the outage and are keenly aware of the importance of keeping the site up while we conclude an agreement to transfer the hosting responsibilities to another entity. We expect to make an announcement in that regard later this week."

Now that wasn't too illuminating, so we hunted around and found more.  On one of the boards, we can't remember which one, we found perhaps the beginning point for any story on what is happening with the Rivals network and what may happen to it in the future. 

"NASHVILLE--April 20, 2001--AllianceSports [AllianceSports.com] announced today that it has executed an agreement to acquire or license certain assets of Rival Networks, Inc., known throughout the internet and sports industries as Rivals.com. Rivals built a network of more than 600 sports-related sites into the stickiest sports site on the Internet, generating up to 30 million daily page views. The agreement covers Rivals.com's trademarks and trade names, marketing materials, and selected hardware, software source code, databases, and content. The transaction also involves certain assets sold by AllianceSports to Rivals.com in January 2000. The transaction has been approved by the boards of directors of both AllianceSports and Rivals.com. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Rivals.com will continue operations of the existing Rivals.com network of sites as arrangements are made for the transition of the Rivals' network to AllianceSports."

Ok, so far so good.  That's pretty interesting stuff.   How are the minions among the "publishers" taking the news?  What are they doing about relocating their sites, staying, going back to independence, or just plain shutting down?  Here's what we discovered from a smattering of Rivals-based sites:

From the Rivals Michigan site's operator:

"After Rivals announced that it was shutting down, we received assurances that our site would stay up -- from the management team retained to sell the company's assets, from the founder of the company who is trying to form a business to keep the network going and from a group of former Rivals employees who are buying Rivals' assets and building a new, but smaller, network.  It appears that the founder, who left Rivals last summer, has the support of the site's engineers. When the decision was made to sell the assets to the former employees, he took the engineers with him, shutting down the front page and premium plus sections of the site. While the message board is still up, we do not know how long this will last. We are working to have a new content location as quickly as possible (possibly tomorrow) and a backup plan for the message board."

From the Michigan State "Spartan Central.com" site:

Trevor Barnes [SpartanCentral publisher] has a bomb shelter built for our message boards in case the apocalypse hits. Go to spartantailgate.com if and when this rivals.com thing ever blows up.  There has been a coup at Rivals.com. The guy who founded Rivals.com - but was later fired - has assembled a crack staff of techies and others. They are in the process of acquiring the assets and trying to make a go of it again. A lot of the other site publishers are sore at the whole rivals.com experience because they got screwed in the premium site project. However, we at Spartan Magazine resisted joining the premium site project because we already had a premium content program of our own, in Spartan Plus email. Thus, we didn't lose any money on the deal, and we aren't sore at rivals.com. Thus we're riding it out for now.  Rivals.com did a lot of work to gain some name recognition for SpartanMag.com and we're sticking with it for a while.  But bookmark the bomb shelter just in case.

From the Syracuse Board publishers:

Jim Heckman, the founder of Rivals, and Alliance Sports are currently fighting over Rival's dead body. Alliance seems to have won, however - things could change. What does that mean for us? Heckman had asked that all of the publishers wait until last Friday before deciding what they wanted to do. Last Friday came, and Alliance announced they had bought up Rival's assets.  The plan is to listen to Alliance Sports, but returning to independence is the most likely outcome. I wouldn't doubt it at all if whoever buys up Rival's assets decides to have someone run this site as is, but under a different name. Good luck to them. The tentative moving day is this Friday. There are scripts set up on two different servers, just incase the first one can't handle the load. Assuming we leave Rivals - please be a little patient with the new servers. It may take a few days to work out the bugs.  And remember - if things get shut off here, use "www.syracusefan.com" as the backup url. If things get shut off without notice, it may take me a little while to set up the forwarding. You may want to bookmark the url linked to below:
SyracuseHoops.com/ SyracuseFan.com
Thanks

From the University of Central Florida Site:

Guys,
While the transition takes place from the old Rivals Network to Alliance Sports, all of the sites were supposed to continue operating as normally. However, all of the employees were laid off when the announcement was made and the 2 engineers being retained to keep the sites going quit last Friday. And now the sites have crashed. Hopefully they will fix things soon-- this is a message I just received from the CEO of Rivals. As far as UCFSports.com goes, I am still considering several options.
==================
You are undoubtedly aware that the site has been down most of the day. We are continuing to work as hard as we can to fix the problem, and expect to
have the site up sometime tomorrow. These are difficult circumstances for all of us; we are extremely sorry for the outage and are keenly aware of the importance of keeping the site up while we conclude an agreement to transfer the hosting responsibilities to another entity. We expect to make an announcement in that regard later this week. Should you have specific questions, please send email to [e-mail deleted]. Thank you for your understanding.
Saul Gamoran
Chief Executive Officer

From the Boston College site, Eagle Action:

Folks, it looks like the Fat Lady is finally singing for Rivals.com. Effective NOW, Eagle Action is ending its relationship with the former Rivals.com network and moving to a new location at: www.allsports.com/ncaa/bostoncollege. Cut and paste the address and be sure to change your bookmarks. At our new site, you'll find stories, message boards, and access to our premium content service -- same stuff, different location.  I think you'll be pleased with the new message boards. And allsports will shortly be announcing a deal which will allow them to match, if not exceed, the access to up-to-date sports text and images which was available via the Rivals site. I apologize for the necessity of making this change, and I look forward to seeing all of you at the new site.
Mike Rutstein. Publisher
Eagle Action

Note: those of you who subscribed to our Premium Plus service through Rivals.com will automatically have their subscriptions transferred to what we now call our Inside Info service, which is accessed through the allsports site. However, when your old PP subscription lapses, you will have to go through the registration procedure for Inside Info. Having done this once, you will then be renewed automatically for as long you want to receive the Inside Info service. We expect the Inside Info service to become operational over the weekend. Please be patient as we sort out the technical details and MANUALLY re-enter all our existing subscribers along with their passwords.

From Idaho Insight:

Over the last year and a half, Andrew and I have had a great deal of enjoyment publishing this site. Many of you have become more than just names on the message board. Neither of us is going to pursue another web address to try to keep this going. If any of you want to try, drop me a line if you want any help or suggestions. I know that you will end up somewhere, and I'll undoubtedly drop by from time to time. Until then, and forever . . . GO VANDALS!!
I. J. Longeteig
Andrew Longeteig
Your Publishers

More to the point, from Temple "OwlScoop.com":

With the dissolution of Rivals.com, this site is now dormant effective April 25, 2001. OwlScoop.com has left the Rivals.com network and can still be reached by entering the URL: HTTP://WWW.OWLSCOOP.COM. Please update your bookmarks accordingly.

From Louisville CardinalSports.com:

Our new Louisville SportsReport boards will be located at the locally-based Louisville.com site, hopefully as soon as next week. Actually, we can use the existing Louisville Cardinal Sports forum on the Louisville.com site right now. To do so, you can go to that front page, click on Louisville Forum (under the word EXCHANGE), register as a new user, then post on the Cardinal Sports forum. Guided by LSR's Jason Puckett, we'll start servicing that site, too, but will also keep up with cardinalsports.com as long as it stays up...and NO ONE knows how long that will be. - Our entire new site will be part of the Louisville.com site, and we'll likely also have a presence on Kentucky.com. I may get more news on the national scene at our College Sports Publishers Assoc. convention in Atlanta this weekend. We'll keep you posted. Thanks for hanging in there with us. - Ron Steiner, Editor and Publisher

From the Arkansas State "TribalGrounds.com" site:

We recently relocated this site to TribalGrounds.com.   We were approached by several different groups but felt that returning to our roots as independent site was the best option for this site and the Indian family. Recently AllianceSports has announced it has acquired many of the assets of Rivals. The contracts between Rivals and publishers such as us are non-assignable so this site was not purchased nor did they purchase the right to use the name TribalGrounds, our domain name TribalGrounds.com, our photos or our stories. We have been told that Alliance will accept current Rivals members but we will not seek such membership. Please join us at our new home.

From the Boneyard.com (UConn):

Jim Heckman, the founder of Rivals, and Alliance Sports are currently fighting over Rival's dead body. Alliance seems to have won, however - things could change. What does that mean for us? Heckman had asked that all of the publishers wait until last Friday before deciding what they wanted to do. Last Friday came, and Alliance announced they had bought up Rival's assets.  The plan is to listen to Alliance Sports, but returning to independence is the most likely outcome. I wouldn't doubt it at all if whoever buys up Rival's assets decides to have someone run the uconn site as is, but under a different name. Good luck to them. The tentative moving day is this Friday. There are scripts set up on two different servers, just incase the first one can't handle the load. Assuming we leave Rivals - please be a little patient with the new servers. It may take a few days to work out the bugs. And remember - if things get shut off here, use "the-boneyard.org" as the backup url.

Thanks

From VUSports (Villanova):

Basically, we intend to have a message board up and running immediately upon the shut-down of Rivals. You can find this new message board system at: this location. This new message board will be a "stop-gap" until we find a more permanent solution. Since Peter and I are both very busy through June 1, this stop-gap might be for 60 days or so. Unfortunately, the VUsports.com domain name will not be functional immediately so we are going to provide a somewhat difficult URL. But, don't worry this one will be remain standing! After we get the stop-gap running, Pete and I are going to consider a number of options: * Move back to a pre-Rivals situation where Pete hosts the site from his own server and we develop all the HTML from scratch. This will be very similar to the initial site. * Use a third-party provider to host the site. The look and the feel of the site will likely resemble the intial vusports.com, but Pete and I will not host it. * Partner with other rivals publishers to create a more low-scale rivals type site. There are many great publishers out there and if we join hands, it might create a great site. Whatever the end result, VUsports.com will still be the best site for Villanova Information. Further, we appreciate your patience during this transition period. In the mean-time, please register on the breaking-news database so we can email you with information of breaking news. Again, thanks for your understanding in these matters.

Ok, so there is a general feeling of insecurity.  The network has been down for days at a time right now.  We don't know whether the outtage which occurred this week is indeed temporary, or will turn permanent quickly.  Again, the message board portion of Rivals seems to be a bit more stable than the rest of the site.  We're not software engineering-types, and can't explain why or if that is so, but we do know that if the network goes dead again and you want to find a favorite site, you'll need to have the message board section of the site in question bookmarked, so you can get in "the back door" so to speak.

So we thought we'd help, and at the same time give at least an overview of what is currently happening at some (but by no means all) of the Rivals' college and recruiting websites, whether they are up, down, staying, going, or indifferent to the whole mess.

So we've created a handy little (actually it kept getting larger than we intended) grid below.   If you click on a link below, it may or may not work.  What we've tried to do is provide direct links for those current and soon-to-be-former Rivals sites that were still accessible today,  to keep you all in touch with your favorite sites.   If we've found a link to a new/temporary home, we've listed that too.    We've also listed e-mail addresses of the administrators where we know them, so if you want to find out where their new or temporary sites are, you can just e-mail them directly.    Rivals as we knew it was an interesting experiment while it lasted.  It may not be dead either.  Some or all of the sites may yet resurface as part of a package deal, but with the main site now going down at seemingly more regular intervals, and access to the "stories" part of the Rivals sites sometimes not possible for days at a stretch, we thought you'd enjoy knowing how to get in or where else to go for your "daily fix".   Hope this helps. 

Old Rivals Site/Message Board New/Temporary Sites & Alternate Sites e-mail contacts
Stanford Bootboard (Hoops) Bootleg Board (temporary site) thebootleg@excite.com
Arizona State Message Board Unknown  
BRO Message Forum Unknown tpier@aol.com
Auburn Boards Unknown  
North Carolina North Carolina (new board)
Inside Carolina.com (looks just like the old Rivals site)
 
Superbears (Cal) None  
CatTracks (Arizona) CatTracks.net (DNS not updated yet)  
eDucks (Oregon) No new site yet  
BeaverSportsCentral (Oregon State) No new site yet  
WeAreSC.com (USC) No new site yet (but BibbyBaby is still there!)  
Washington Husky Forum No new site  
Cougfan.com (Wash. State) Cougfan.com (new site)--Message Board  
HoopPlanet (women's Pac.Northwest) No new site yet  
Oregon Preps No new site yet  
Washington Preps (no forum available) No new site yet  
Idaho Sports Site State of Idaho All Sports Message Boards
SportsGang Message Boards
 
UNLV RebelNet Forums These two don't appear to be offshoots of the
Rivals site, but they are good: RebelTruth
& Big John's Rebel Basketball
 
Long Beach State 49'er Board No new site yet  
Breaking Waves Forum (Pepperdine) No new site yet  
Gonzaga Bark Zone No new site yet  
Pilot Central (Portland) No new site yet  
St. Mary's Gael Board No new site yet (and not much activity on old one)  
U of San Diego Fan Talk ToreroSports.com torerofans@hotmail.com
Dons Central (USF) Sho's Temporary Message Board  
Santa Clara Bronco Board No new site yet  
Montana Grizzly Basketball No new site yet  
Florida State Boards (multiple) It's all football anyway. . .  
Michigan Central The Wolverine.com scoman@comanpub.com
RockyTop Sports Forum (Tennessee) Unknown  
Georgia Dawg Pound No activity on old site, no new site  
Kansas State Forums Unknown  
BuckeyeSportsBulletin OhioState Forums BuckeyeSportsBulletin Alternate Board  
LSU Tiger Basketball Board Unknown  
Penn State B&W Forums Reportedly staying with Alliance Sports  
Colorado RamLine Central Forum RamNation.com  
Texas A&M Forum Unknown (no activity to speak of anyway)  
Michigan State Spartan Central SpartanTailgate.com  
Southern Miss Eagle Talk Unknown  
Purdue Central Does the world need more Indiana sites? Check
Peegs' links for more than enough on other Indiana/Purdue sites
Purdue Central Backup Board
boilerneub@aol.com
BulldogBlitz (Missiouri State) Unknown  
Georgia Tech Forums Unknown  
Iowa Basketball Unknown  
Supercocks.com (Gamecocks) Unknown  
Syracuse Forums SyracuseHoops.com/ SyracuseFan.com  
NC State Wolfpack Forums No new site yet, but you can get on an e-mail list by
responding to zeke at the addresses shown
zekencsu@yahoo.com
wtnyncsu@yahoo.com
Marshall Thundering Herd We have no idea. . . something called the "Grapevine?"  
Colorado BuffStampede.com Nothing that we could locate  
Alabama Message Board No new hoops boards or sites; lots of football movement  
SuperMizzou (Missouri) Nothing we know about  
UK Chat Hoops (Kentucky) These guys are really thorough. . .
www.kentuckysportsreport.net
www.kentuckysportsreport.com
www.wildcatchat.com
kentuckysportsreport@yahoo.com
MiamiOhio RedHawkTalk Not sure. . . there are a couple of messages with some bad
new links to other sites.  Couldn't get them to come up
 
The Hawg Lounge (Arkansas) Coming soon. . . clayhog@swbell.net
University of Central Florida Boards Backup Board  

Tulane WaveFans Board

No idea. . . but something's happening there. . .  
Texas Tech Board Deader than a door nail. . . nothing happening  
Toledo Rockets Forum See for yourself . . . we couldn't find anything  
LoboLand.com (New Mexico) I won't even suggest the alternative. . this one is still funny
while it's still up.
 
AirForce Academy Board We didn't see any new site links  
Bobcat Central (Ohio) Bobcat Attack  
Louisiana Tech Boards Didn't see any new board info mentioned  
GoWyoGo.com (Wyoming) Nothing new on any new sites  
Wake Forest Deamon Deacons Didn't see anything of recent vintage  
West Virginia Central Some talk about moving, but no links yet  
Northwestern Boards (Wildcat Central) Nothing new on the hoops board re: new site.
You can try the new Big Ten Fans Message forum though
rstetson@capps-assoc.com
Rice Owl Forum Try the new WAC Top Webs or Owlzone  
Virginia Tech Forums Very quiet over there . . . nothing on a new site  
Cinncinati Bearcat Basketball Forum Try the BearCats Den--looks good  
SMU Gameday.com Not sure the name will stay with Rivals/Alliance,
or transfer to new DNS but in the meantime, three new possibilities: mustangmaniacs.com, ponyfans.com and smumustangs.com
 
Eastern Carolina Forums We didn't see anything about new sites or boards there.  
Vandy Central (Vanderbilt) Nothing new there  
Utah State TrueAggies Board True Aggies 2 Mail stuff to Jared
Miami (Fla) Canes Board Nothing about a new board or new site  
Nevada Wolfpack Forum Nothing about any new site  
Pitt Panther BB Forum Pretty dead there  
Jayhawk Insider (Kansas) This board died before Rivals did  
Sooner Forums (Ok.) Nothing new there  
Duke Central

No new site from these guys, but a message posted says: Call 1-900-820-6700 for regular ACC Recruiting Updates by Warren Wilkins and Kurt O'Neill"

Duke@celsion.com
GopherHole (Minnesota) No new site mentioned there. . .  
Louisiana-Monroe Forum A message says "only the dead come here". . . and so it seems, but no new forum either  
Maryland TerrapinTimes looks like it's going away, but no mention of a new board.  
Ball State Board Not much activity either. No new board mentioned here.  
Eastern Michigan Board The original board isn't worth visiting, what makes us think we'd want to visit a replacement?  
Baylor Bear Boards Several boards here, lots of messages,   but no mention of any new ones  
Boston College Board Site sports a message that says: "Visit allsports.com/ncaa/bostoncollege"  
Bowling Green Board "Ay Ziggy Zoomba?"  Some newish messages, but nothing on a new site.  
Indiana Forums The Rivals Indiana stuff was never matched by Peegs, etc, and other independents.
They're all still there.
 
Tulsa Hurricane Tracker No mention of any new site.  
UTEP Miner Diggings There's mention of a new board, but couldn't get this link to work and besides, it looks like football anyway.  
Idaho Insight Vandal Central The publishers won't be setting up shop anywhere. They are going to fold  
Hawaii Rainbow & Hawaii Sports Network Change the bookmarks to http://www.hawaiisportsnetwork.com  and   http://www.rainbowsportsnetwork.com and delete any reference to Rivals.  These sites were independent before and they will return to independence.

 

 
Houston Cougars Den "Nothing left but beer and bones."   Not much happening here.  
Temple OwlScoop.com Entire site has moved to OwlScoop.com.  Change your bookmarks, but there's still some activity on the old site.  
UAB Blazer Sports (main site, no forums left) The publishers say there will be a new site.   No link yet.  E-mail them for details and to be notified when the new site is up. cmac@mindspring.com
Kent State Forums No mention of any new site.  Everyone there seems oblivious to the demise.  
Army Sports Forum New forum is located here:  ArmySports.com.    
North Texas Forums The MeanGreenReport has a Fallback Board in place.  
U of Akron Super Zips No mention of any new sites or new boards.  
Louisville CardinalSports.com www.louisvillesportsreport.com is still under construction.  
Fighting Illini Blue&Orange If they're moving, no one is saying anything about it yet.  
Central Michigan Fire Up Chips No mention of any new sites or boards from these guys.  
Northern Illinois Link to The New Huskynation .  Right now the new site is mostly football though.  
RutgersFan.com http://www.rutgersfan.org will get you access to the new site and message board.  
Arkansas State Forums The entire site has now moved to TribalGrounds.com.  Good luck to them, as they've elected not to join Alliance Sports' group.  
Utah UteRunner.com They acknowledge problems at their site, but no new boards or new links to a replacement site.  At least not yet.  
New Mexico State Aggie Mania This site died more than a year ago, and Rivals has been looking for a "publisher" since before June, 2000.  The board works, but AggieZone.com seems to be more alive.  
Eastern Kentucky Don't even bother.  There's no one monitoring the current board. It's awful.  
Fresno State Bark Board The site has not really been updated in quite a while. No new links to another replacement either.  
San Jose State SpartaFan.com The message boards are still active. No new link to another site yet, but this site was around as SpartanFans.com in 1995 and it promises to be around after Rivals goes away.  
StudentSports.com This entire site and the boards will be moving.   We're not sure about the link, but you can count on it that they will take their marbles and go back to http://www.StudentSports.tv  
UConn Boneyard The tentative moving day is this Friday. http://www.the-boneyard.org is the new backup url.  
Murray State SuperRacer They have no more forum, and the site itself hasn't been updated since February. It's gone.  
Eastern Illinois There's a forum, but barely. Main site not updated since February.  
Youngstown State Site has never had a publisher, and never any articles. A message board, but last posting was in March. . . dormant.  
Furman Paladin Papers The main site hasn't been updated since October, 2000.  Nothing on the board either.  
Citadel BulldogBites Main site hasn't been updated in 6 months; nothing on the boards.  
MiddleTennessee Board New Blue Raider Message Board is at Delphi's "communities"  
Eastern Tennessee
BucaneerBible.com
No new specific ETSU site, but there is a new site which covers teams from the entire Southern Conference called SoConHoops.com . . .maybe we'll have to sue them over the name (just kidding).  New site looks good.  
Northwestern State The Pit Adios.  
William & Mary (The Tribe) You'll have to search for any replacement.  
Northern Iowa The board works, but they've never had anyone writing stories. It probably won't last.  
Creighton Board A new message board can be found here: http://members4.boardhost.com/JaysFans/  
ISU Sycamore Sports No news on any new forum.  
Portland State The board is dead and no one has posted anything in a long, long time.  
UT Chatanooga Another site with no recent activity. No plans to move, because there's nothing to move.  
Western Illinois Leathernecks RockyBulldog.com's publisher has bid the site farewell. It does not look like it will move anywhere, and unless someone picks it up, it's goodbye.  
SW Missouri State BearMania Nothing new here. Dormant.  
Weber State TopCat The main site has been dormant since August, 2000, and the board is almost dead too.  Prediction: It's not moving anywhere because there's nothing to move.  
Idaho State BengalSports Try the ESPN / Idaho State Message Board or the new ISUBengalSports board at Delphi.   
Nicholls State What did Gertrude Stein say? There's no "there" there. . .  
ColgateRaiders.com There's no indication of any other new boards springing up.  
Troy State Noise Catchy name for the site, no?  Wonder why it never took off. . . Oh, but they still have a message board called "Moron's Corner".   
Eastern Washington No new boards, no new site. Old one is almost dormant, and has been since last fall.  
James Madison Dukes Try CAAHoops.com for news on the entire CAA conference and message boards.  
Sam Houston State It's all football anyway. . . .no new sites.  
Appalachian State This site's been dormant for a loooonnnng time.  
Villanova Message Boards New VUSports.com message boards here at this location. The site will spin off from Rivals and live on.  

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