I know there are a lot of questions here this morning. I understand. The questions are valid.
Chase Parham has been a huge part of this site since May 2009, when I hired him in part because there was no way one person could do what I was doing for longer than the 14 months I’d done it.
Hiring him was a master stroke on my part. It led to unparalleled baseball coverage, a daily podcast that has now existed for some 13-plus years and one of my most cherished friendships. This site, once an afterthought in this market, became the undisputed (at least by anyone with a degree of objectivity) market leader.
Why is he leaving now? I’ll leave those answers for him and his post below.
However, today is the end of an era, at least to a degree and I find myself in a reflective mood.
We have done what so many said wouldn’t work; we covered the beat objectively and treated this site as a news outlet. It was the only way I knew how to do journalism, so I stuck to my roots. When competitors kissed Houston Nutt’s ass for access in 2011, we wrote about the school’s need to move on. When other outlets focused on an unnecessarily punitive NCAA penalty, we warned fans about what was coming, noting it was, per sources who proved to be accurate, a brutal punishment. In 2017 and again in 2019, when other outlets wrote and said what they felt would grant them the most access to the program, this site advocated for Lane Kiffin — because we believed the then-Florida Atlantic coach would be a perfect fit at Ole Miss. Years later, this site — along with MPW Digital — basically campaigned for Ole Miss to hire Chris Beard. That’s not a victory lap here on a Tuesday morning. It’s simply a statement of facts.
It’s always been the irony here. While our competitors have said this site — and me, in particular, is “bad for Ole Miss,” this site has always taken an objective look at things and advocated for what it believes would be in the program’s collective best interest. I believe our track record speaks for itself.
Still, the truth is I can’t give everyone all the answers this morning. I have a contract with Yahoo that I’m honoring, and that limits what I believe I can say.
So I’ll simply say this: I’m happy for Chase and Brian Rippee and Tyler Siskey for their new opportunity. They’re all great friends, and I’m excited for them. As for what this means for RebelGrove, it means I have a lot of work to do. I’m heading to Hoover tomorrow for Ole Miss baseball. I’ll be covering recruiting in June, SEC Media Days in Atlanta in July. I’ll still be producing 10 Weekend Thoughts and The Mailbag each week. My contract with Yahoo has a start date and an end date, and right now I’m in the “dash.”
I plan to honor that commitment as long as Yahoo does. Rivals has been good to me. I feel I’ve returned the favor.
I take great pride in my work and that won’t change with today’s developments. By the way, many have asked what this means for MPW Digital. In short: Nothing. Chase and I will continue to livestream and podcast BlueSky Live and Tyler and I will continue to livestream and podcast McCready & Siskey. I’m taping a podcast with Josh Hendrickson and Ike Felson later today. Chase and I will podcast from Hoover on Thursday, hopefully joined by our friend and partner, Jeffrey Wright. We’ll talk SEC baseball, NFL and more. It’s what we do. That won’t change. MPW Digital has been, is and hopefully will always be a private entity. We built it ourselves and we’re incredibly proud of what it’s become.
I do beg some patience and understanding this summer. My life has some commitments that were made prior to this development, and things are going to get complicated at times. My son, Carson, graduates from Oxford High School Friday. He has college orientation coming up in early June. My niece, Morgan, is getting married in my hometown of Ruston, La., in June, and we have a family vacation scheduled for a week later. Carson goes off to college in early August. There will be days when I’m not enough, but I promise I’ll do my best. I do beg some patience from time to time.
There’s no point in saying nothing is changing. That would be a lie, and my brand — for better or worse — is telling things as they are.
That said, there’s a lot I simply can’t say. I don’t take your business for granted, and I’ll work as hard as I can to give you your money’s worth here at RebelGrove.
I do have a farewell message from Chase. He sent it to me last night. It’s included below.
“There was one phone call that changed my career.
It was spring 2009, and I was floundering as the co-publisher of the ESPN site covering Ole Miss athletics – a college try of an operation that Ty Allushuski and I had big dreams for but lacked the capital, experience and market share. Neal McCready and I had been on the same beat as competitors for a year, and we’d become friends through our mutual struggles chasing the Ole Miss Spirit and trying to establish different kinds of communities.
I called Neal after an Ole Miss basketball game. I was walking to my car – broke, exhausted and about to turn toward a couple job offers in a different but related field. I asked him if there was any chance I could come aboard at Rivals.com. He was a one-man band in Oxford with Dave Childers working for the site but living in Atlanta, and the extra local manpower intrigued him. He told me “It’ll be peanuts but let me see if it’s possible.”
It was indeed peanuts at first, but it was a chip and a chair, and from the first story I published on the site – a feature on David Renfroe, by the way – it’s been the job that’s changed my life and career. We’ve spent 16 years building the largest and most active team site in the Ole Miss market, and launched MPW Digital, the most downloaded podcast network in Mississippi. He also became a friend, a sounding board and an exceptional co-worker.
Rivals.com is where I’ve grown up and made so many friends and acquaintances. The community embraced me through the hell of losing my son, Clark, and my father in 2015, and we all got through the pandemic together – bringing entertainment and information and distraction to those months. I’ve celebrated with you through access bowls and NCAA Tournaments and chronicled many baseball wins including the national title.
People make a community, and all of you at RebelGrove.com combine to create a special place. It’s a bit like a big family reunion with crazy cousins and uncles at times, but every day people care about each other and are there for the same reasons – using your discretionary time to visit the online town square.
As you’ll see on the internet, my time at Rivals.com is over as of today. It’s not a light decision, and there are things I can’t yet say. Related, I’m sorry about the timing; it couldn’t be avoided for reasons I can’t discuss. I’ll be on MPW Digital with Neal at 8 a.m., and we’ll talk about the Rebels. Until next time, know that this site and these pages are special. They’ve provided me with so much, and I hope as we all move forward, the work and camaraderie have meant something to you all, as well.”
Chase Parham has been a huge part of this site since May 2009, when I hired him in part because there was no way one person could do what I was doing for longer than the 14 months I’d done it.
Hiring him was a master stroke on my part. It led to unparalleled baseball coverage, a daily podcast that has now existed for some 13-plus years and one of my most cherished friendships. This site, once an afterthought in this market, became the undisputed (at least by anyone with a degree of objectivity) market leader.
Why is he leaving now? I’ll leave those answers for him and his post below.
However, today is the end of an era, at least to a degree and I find myself in a reflective mood.
We have done what so many said wouldn’t work; we covered the beat objectively and treated this site as a news outlet. It was the only way I knew how to do journalism, so I stuck to my roots. When competitors kissed Houston Nutt’s ass for access in 2011, we wrote about the school’s need to move on. When other outlets focused on an unnecessarily punitive NCAA penalty, we warned fans about what was coming, noting it was, per sources who proved to be accurate, a brutal punishment. In 2017 and again in 2019, when other outlets wrote and said what they felt would grant them the most access to the program, this site advocated for Lane Kiffin — because we believed the then-Florida Atlantic coach would be a perfect fit at Ole Miss. Years later, this site — along with MPW Digital — basically campaigned for Ole Miss to hire Chris Beard. That’s not a victory lap here on a Tuesday morning. It’s simply a statement of facts.
It’s always been the irony here. While our competitors have said this site — and me, in particular, is “bad for Ole Miss,” this site has always taken an objective look at things and advocated for what it believes would be in the program’s collective best interest. I believe our track record speaks for itself.
Still, the truth is I can’t give everyone all the answers this morning. I have a contract with Yahoo that I’m honoring, and that limits what I believe I can say.
So I’ll simply say this: I’m happy for Chase and Brian Rippee and Tyler Siskey for their new opportunity. They’re all great friends, and I’m excited for them. As for what this means for RebelGrove, it means I have a lot of work to do. I’m heading to Hoover tomorrow for Ole Miss baseball. I’ll be covering recruiting in June, SEC Media Days in Atlanta in July. I’ll still be producing 10 Weekend Thoughts and The Mailbag each week. My contract with Yahoo has a start date and an end date, and right now I’m in the “dash.”
I plan to honor that commitment as long as Yahoo does. Rivals has been good to me. I feel I’ve returned the favor.
I take great pride in my work and that won’t change with today’s developments. By the way, many have asked what this means for MPW Digital. In short: Nothing. Chase and I will continue to livestream and podcast BlueSky Live and Tyler and I will continue to livestream and podcast McCready & Siskey. I’m taping a podcast with Josh Hendrickson and Ike Felson later today. Chase and I will podcast from Hoover on Thursday, hopefully joined by our friend and partner, Jeffrey Wright. We’ll talk SEC baseball, NFL and more. It’s what we do. That won’t change. MPW Digital has been, is and hopefully will always be a private entity. We built it ourselves and we’re incredibly proud of what it’s become.
I do beg some patience and understanding this summer. My life has some commitments that were made prior to this development, and things are going to get complicated at times. My son, Carson, graduates from Oxford High School Friday. He has college orientation coming up in early June. My niece, Morgan, is getting married in my hometown of Ruston, La., in June, and we have a family vacation scheduled for a week later. Carson goes off to college in early August. There will be days when I’m not enough, but I promise I’ll do my best. I do beg some patience from time to time.
There’s no point in saying nothing is changing. That would be a lie, and my brand — for better or worse — is telling things as they are.
That said, there’s a lot I simply can’t say. I don’t take your business for granted, and I’ll work as hard as I can to give you your money’s worth here at RebelGrove.
I do have a farewell message from Chase. He sent it to me last night. It’s included below.
“There was one phone call that changed my career.
It was spring 2009, and I was floundering as the co-publisher of the ESPN site covering Ole Miss athletics – a college try of an operation that Ty Allushuski and I had big dreams for but lacked the capital, experience and market share. Neal McCready and I had been on the same beat as competitors for a year, and we’d become friends through our mutual struggles chasing the Ole Miss Spirit and trying to establish different kinds of communities.
I called Neal after an Ole Miss basketball game. I was walking to my car – broke, exhausted and about to turn toward a couple job offers in a different but related field. I asked him if there was any chance I could come aboard at Rivals.com. He was a one-man band in Oxford with Dave Childers working for the site but living in Atlanta, and the extra local manpower intrigued him. He told me “It’ll be peanuts but let me see if it’s possible.”
It was indeed peanuts at first, but it was a chip and a chair, and from the first story I published on the site – a feature on David Renfroe, by the way – it’s been the job that’s changed my life and career. We’ve spent 16 years building the largest and most active team site in the Ole Miss market, and launched MPW Digital, the most downloaded podcast network in Mississippi. He also became a friend, a sounding board and an exceptional co-worker.
Rivals.com is where I’ve grown up and made so many friends and acquaintances. The community embraced me through the hell of losing my son, Clark, and my father in 2015, and we all got through the pandemic together – bringing entertainment and information and distraction to those months. I’ve celebrated with you through access bowls and NCAA Tournaments and chronicled many baseball wins including the national title.
People make a community, and all of you at RebelGrove.com combine to create a special place. It’s a bit like a big family reunion with crazy cousins and uncles at times, but every day people care about each other and are there for the same reasons – using your discretionary time to visit the online town square.
As you’ll see on the internet, my time at Rivals.com is over as of today. It’s not a light decision, and there are things I can’t yet say. Related, I’m sorry about the timing; it couldn’t be avoided for reasons I can’t discuss. I’ll be on MPW Digital with Neal at 8 a.m., and we’ll talk about the Rebels. Until next time, know that this site and these pages are special. They’ve provided me with so much, and I hope as we all move forward, the work and camaraderie have meant something to you all, as well.”
