How You Can Join Our Merry Crew at Team Speed Kills, If You're Inclined

Many of you, we hope, are long-time readers. And some of you are likely relatively new. We would like to think that we manage to keep you informed and entertained about the SEC and what the goings-on in the conference mean, but we are not full-time professionals. And as such, we're sure that we occasionally fall short.

You can help. We're always looking for new writers to help us grow this site and turn it into the source for analysis of the SEC. We have a style all our own, but we're always open to new voices and new ways of doing things. And you might be just the kind of person who can bring some of those new things to Team Speed Kills.

What are we looking for?

The better way to put this might be "who?" -- and the answer is, just about anybody who can reliably and intelligently write about what's going on in the SEC. But let's get a bit more specific.

• You can do this on at least a weekly basis. That doesn't mean that you'll be kicked out if you miss a week, but this is our expectation for most of the people that become contributors. Twice a week is even better, and anything more you can provide is golden -- but we want to be honest about the commitment level up front, and once a week is pretty much our bottom-line expectation.
• You can write. The normal stuff -- forming complete sentences, having your thoughts flow smoothly from one paragraph to the next, etc. Don't underestimate yourself if you can do that (and our comments section suggest that most of our readers can); it's not universal.
• You love SEC sports. But then, if you don't, why are you reading this site?

We also have some specific preferences / needs it would be nice to fill.

• Crootin'. This is an area where someone can come in on this site and kind of chart their own path (within reason). Year2 and I -- mostly Year2 -- make an effort at this every once in a while, but neither of us are what you can really consider recruitniks. TSK is likely never going to be able to cover every SEC school's recruiting class at a granular level, but we would like to keep tabs on the biggest recruits, which schools are up or down, etc.
• SEC West fans. I love watching SEC West football, and I'm sure Year2 and Christopher (cmnkm5, for the uninitiated) agree. But we're not fans from SEC West schools, and we have a sneaking suspicion that the difference matters -- that perhaps we miss the nuance in something. We're not asking for someone to take over an "SEC West beat" -- just to write the kind of analysis you've come to expect here at TSK, and see if you can put a new spin on something.
• Basketball and baseball. Year2 and Christopher try to handle basketball, and I try to do baseball, but there's room for us to beef up both areas. Nobody is constrained to writing about one thing here; you can come on board to help with basketball and also write about football or baseball. And we'd love to have someone who can handle, say, track and field. But we're always looking to improve our coverage in the two sports that are still important but aren't the football giant.

So, what do you get out of it?

Experience and the opportunity to write about something you're passionate about and have others read and comment on it. That's more rewarding than you might think. (Hint: If you're thinking about doing anything that requires you to work with the written word, writing more only makes you better.)

Money? If you go above and beyond -- like, taking over the recruiting duties and going gangbusters with it -- there could be some financial payoff in the not-too-distant future. But we don't want to give anyone false hope: If your reason for doing this is to make money, it's probably not for you. Site managers make very (very) modest stipends for doing this, so nobody's getting rich here. We all have day jobs. On the other hand, we're not going to exploit you. The bigger the role you have in the site, the more likely it is that you'll see some monetary payoff.

How do you "apply"?

First, please hit up either myself (garnetandblackattack @ gmail.com) or Year2 (year2.blog @ gmail.com) and let us know you're interested.

Then, start posting with FanPosts for a couple of weeks -- we can bump those to the front page. Prove that you can keep up the pace for two or three weeks, and we'll likely add you to the masthead. (If you've got several writing samples that prove you're a reliable writer, we might be able to skip this step.)

We love doing this, and we think anyone who enjoys writing and is passionate about the SEC will love it, too. So who's game?