Here's what's next for Out of Bounds

No, I wasn't invited to the Big 12, but the newsletter is realigning.

Get ready for what will surely be the biggest* college athletics realignment news you’ll hear this week. My writing and subscriber list will soon have a new home, as I’ve agreed to contribute weekly to Matt Brown’s Extra Points newsletter, which covers off-the-field forces that shape college athletics.

(*Watch the Big Ten steal the Big 12’s expansion thunder by courting, like, Notre Dame, Oregon, Manchester United and NATO later this week.)

At Extra Points, Matt has broken news in college athletics ranging from conference expansion and realignment news in the ASUN, MEAC and WAC, to details about the return of the EA Sports College Football video game. Seeing the success of Extra Points was part of the inspiration for me launching Out of Bounds in the summer of 2020 and Extra Points is very much a spiritual cousin of Out of Bounds.

In the last 15 months of publishing Out of Bounds, I’ve published at least one newsletter every week since July 4, 2020, and I don’t plan on ending that streak anytime soon. Only now, my writing will have a new home at Extra Points and I’ll benefit from Matt’s editing and industry knowledge.

Arguably the most time-consuming part of my publishing process over the last year-plus has been serving as my own editor. Every week, I’ll read my final draft and fact check every name, title, stat, fact and quote. Some weeks I’ve had to read the final draft again, from start to finish, through the lens of “Is there any chance that anything in here could get me sued?”

In total, I might read the final version of a newsletter five, six or seven times before scheduling it to be published and eventually I start to lose the forest through the trees. This partnership will lead to a more efficient process and a stronger product.

Matt is acquiring my subscriber list as part of the agreement, so I’ll be providing Matt with my subscribers to import as free subscribers to Extra Points, which means you’ll receive two free newsletters per week. If you would not like to have your email address imported, please let me know and we’ll leave you off. If you’ve already signed up for Extra Points, you don’t have to do anything.

If you choose to upgrade to a paid subscription to Extra Points, you’ll receive access to four newsletters per week rather than two, plus you’ll have access to the Extra Points Discord channel, which is an online community where you can interact with other paying subscribers.

If you’re interested in subscribing to Extra Points, you can use the discount code “ANDY” for a 25-percent discount. At full price, subscriptions are $8 per month or $75 annually. For the sake of transparency, I’ll receive a commission if certain subscriber benchmarks are hit.

I have no immediate plans to continue publishing here at Out of Bounds in the short term, but my archives will still be available and I could always resume writing in this format at some point in the future. I’ll ask that if you’ve enjoyed reading my work in the past, there’s no need to unsubscribe (this will be the last email for an indefinite period of time) and I hope you enjoy reading Extra Points in the near future, if you’re not already a subscriber.

As always, I can be reached at andrew [dot] wittry [at] gmail [dot] com, you can follow me on Twitter or connect with me on LinkedIn, if you have any comments or feedback, story ideas or top-secret conference realignment documents you’d like to leak.

I can’t thank you all enough for reading, sharing and engaging with my work over the last 15 months and I’ll see you again in your inbox soon.