A brief explanation of the blog for anonymous

Someone has taken the time to come to the blog today and posted three comments complaining about the fact it focuses on Florida specific subjects frequently. I assume they have found the site from Twitter, although I don't know that for sure. I've never discussed the existence of this site on Columbia radio, because it's not targeted to Columbia listeners. As such, I thought it might be a good idea to restate what my purpose is in writing the blog.

I started this as a way to maintain my connection with my Gainesville radio audience when I left for South Carolina. I worked there for around a decade, and lived in the state for about 98 percent of my life to that point. I make no apologies about those facts. The person who wrote today's comments seems to feel once I crossed the state line I am obligated not only to talk about South Carolina related subjects on the air, but also to renounce any interests beyond that on the internet. Sorry, no.

This blog's readership comes from around the country - and apparently a couple of Canadian folks. It tends to be be between 200-250 daily, with spikes in readership here or there that I assume come as the result of getting linked somewhere. I appreciate you being interested enough in what I have to say to take the time to drop by. It's not called Heath's Gator blog or Heath's College Football blog or anything else like that for a reason. It's not focused on a single topic, it's about whatever happens to be on my mind other than anything political, just like the radio show was. Since the original readership base for the blog was my Gainesville audience, I'm going to tell them what I think when something I would be talking about there is newsworthy.

The other thing that seems to have angered this anonymous person is my work for fightingators.com in a paid capacity. I have no idea if they've read my articles for the site or not. Some of them are available if you do a google news search. If you read them you'll see they're coverage of games and analysis on things like the NFL draft. You won't find one "Go Gators" in there anywhere. Regardless, they seem to believe it proves I'm a passionate Gator fan to still be writing for the site even though I now live and work in Columbia. I signed a contract with Fightin Gators while I worked in Gainesville. When I moved to Columbia, it still had and still does have time remaining on it. They want me to continue to write for them and pay me to do so. Anonymous, you're welcome to believe I should give away a not insignificant chunk of my income and walk out on a valid contract just to make you happy but I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you on that.

If you're wondering why I don't write similar articles for a Gamecock site, the reason is because Fightin Gators is a Scout site. 107.5 the Game, the station I work for in Columbia, has a pre-existing relationship with the Rivals site here. At times some of my articles for Fightin Gators have appeared on GamecockAnthem.com, Scout's SC focused site, but I can't write specifically for them due to the radio station situation. If at some point contractual relationships change and there's a way for me to write about Gamecock athletics and get paid for it I'll be perfectly willing to do that too.

I hope that's cleared things up for Anonymous or any other visitor to the site. One final thing: I do this because I want to, certainly not because I have to. I haven't tried to monetize it in any way, nor am I planning to. If you visit and conclude my blog's not to your liking, I'd encourage you to go ahead and visit some of the other parts of the vast internet that are more enjoyable for you rather than choose to be a jerk here.