Today is a milestone for our team of writers, photographers, podcasters, and storytellers – today is the day that Spartans Illustrated becomes a reality.
Our team has been grinding for years and years – most recently at the The Only Colors website on SB Nation – and working hard to tell the stories of Michigan State University’s student-athletes to you, one of the most passionate fan bases in the country.
The newly minted Spartans Illustrated is proud to team up with Rivals.com to provide the most robust Michigan State content you will find, covering the Spartans both on and off the field, court, pitch, and rink. The name might be new, but we’ve been doing this for a long time now. Our first rule of thumb when we write, post, or create content is simple – is this something that I would want to read or watch or listen to? If it isn’t, we won’t do it.
Our commitment is to continue doing what has made us successful to this point – focusing on the content that we hope you will find interesting: an in-depth film room breakdown of the Penn State football game, an exclusive conversation with 4-star commit Jalen Thompson, a recap of last night's men's basketball game, or perhaps a photo gallery showcasing the work of our staff photographer on Senior Day in Spartan Stadium.
If you click on a piece of content that you don’t find as interesting as some of the rest, don’t worry – the next article/story/video/picture gallery will be coming right behind it – and I’m sure you’ll love it.
On Spartans Illustrated, you’ll see bylines for the following folks: Ryan O’Bleness, Kevin Knight, Paul Fanson, Matt Sheehan, Sydney Padgett, Chase Glasser, Brad LaPlante, Brendan Moore, Justin Walsh, Amani Godfrey, Sam Tyler, Zachary Manning, Moritz Wollert, Austen Flores, Colin Jankowski, Marvin Hall, Paolo Giannandrea, Verbosedutch, and myself, David Harns.
We’ll be here, every day, filling this website with content that we hope you will find informative, entertaining, and meaningful: the daily recruiting updates, the pre-game previews, the post-game recaps, and the analysis of all that happens when the Spartans enter the arena.
We will spend a lot of our time on football, basketball and hockey, for sure, but we will also make sure your feed is full of everything MSU-related that we can possibly produce for you – whether that be coverage of MSU’s Olympic sports, feature stories on current student-athletes, or the latest information on incoming recruits.
While the vast majority of our coverage will be fun to watch, read and listen to, please be assured that we won’t shy away from the difficult topics either. We have a responsibility to you, the reader, to keep you informed on all aspects of MSU Athletics. If you have a viewpoint on an MSU-related topic that you’d like to share, please reach out.
I encourage you to continue to spend time on our message boards, which haven't changed. Your username and all of your posts and comments are right where you left them. We will continue to drop inside information and interesting conversation topics in the message boards. The only change you'll notice is the premium board -- for now we’re calling it the Spartans Illustrated Premium Forum but will be running a contest soon to determine its official name moving forward.
We want to hear from you – please reach out and let us know what you want to see more of (or less of, if that’s the case) by sending us an email to SpartansIllustrated@gmail.com.
As Spartans Illustrated hits the ground running today, we look forward to what the future holds. As you root for the Spartans in all the various sports they play, we hope you will make our website your first stop for MSU coverage.
If you are new here and want access to the premium content, click here and use code SPARTANS30 for a full access 30 day trial.
Regards,
David Harns
Publisher/Owner, Spartans Illustrated
