KUSports.com Site Review

From KUSports.com

1- Who owns and runs the site?
The site is owned and run by the Lawrence Journal-World and 6News, the newspaper and television station in Lawrence, Kansas. An interesting note: The 6News website and KUSports.com are copyrighted by both the newspaper and the television station, but the newspaper’s site is only copyrighted by the newspaper. It seems to me that the newspaper is a bigger, more popular media outlet in the area.

2- Who is the site aimed at?
The site is aimed at a lot of different populations. One of the biggest of the groups is current and prospective students, and even alumnae and members of the community who like to follow the school’s sports teams. Also, people from outside the area can follow their teams and even post on the available message boards. Anyone who missed a game that they wanted to see can go to the site and watch the game at a later time.

3- Identify and describe the coolest feature on the site.
I really like the feature that allows you to get messages sent to your cell phone to keep you updated about what is going on in a game if you can’t be there in person and can’t wait to find out what’s happening.

4- The pros of the site:
I think that one of the biggest pros of this site is the interactive features it offers. There are message boards where you can communicate with other people about the teams and current events. At the bottom of the page, there is a box on the left side of the page where the site posts a good comment posted on the message boards. Underneath the comment, the site gives two links to either reply to the post or go directly to the boards to read other comments.
Also at the bottom of the page, the site gives a daily poll. Today’s question asks, “Who had a better rant? Colorado coach Dan Hawkins' response to an anonymous letter from one of his players' parents or Mark Mangino's calling out of the BCS following KU's heartbreaking loss to Texas in 2004.”
Next to the poll, the site also gives the public a place to “Grade the ‘Hawks,” where people can go to grade a team’s recent performances and see what other people think. I think that’s a really neat feature that I’ve never seen anywhere else. It gives the public the ability to have their say about how they think their team is doing.
Another great feature is called “’Hawk’s Forecaster,” where the public can go and predict how the team will fare in their next game, “from who will win, to which KU freshman will score the most points.” If you get it right, you’ll get a free t-shirt, and something I think is more important to most of the people posting there, the bragging rights.
The site also lists all of the current stories that people are talking about, and stories from “around the Big 12 and college sports.” There’s a huge amount of multimedia stories listed on the site, and even podcasts with press conferences and ESPN shows that talk about KU sports. The site lists blogs and other columns that the public might find interesting.
One of the more interesting things I found on the site is the listing of all of the students that have ever been recruited for professional teams in both the NBA and the NFL, and current students that are being recruited. I think this is a big pro for the site because it does show what kind of players the school attracts for their teams.

5- Cons of the site:
If there is any con to the site, I think it is that there is so much information available on the site. When someone is looking for something specific, there is a lot of information that they have to pick through just to get to it.

Overall, the site is really great for fans of the KU sports teams because it is focused on them and on any ways that the site can help them keep up with their favorite college’s teams.