Launch Day! Buckeye Insiders Is About To Go Live!

The day we've been waiting for is finally (almost) here! Buckeye Insiders, the new Ohio State fan community is set to launch Wednesday, July 8 at Noon Eastern. 

Who is a part of the new site? How is it going to be different? How can you be a part of it all?

In this episode of the Buckeyes TomOrrow Morning podcast, Tony Gerdeman of BuckeyeInsiders.com joins host Tom Orr to talk about everything you need to know to be a part of the big launch day. 

Today's show is presented by Jeff Ruby's Columbus, the award-winning, upscale steakhouse in Downtown Columbus, named one of the Top 50 steakhouses in America by Food Network. Just go to JeffRuby.com/Columbus to check out the menu and make a reservation today.

Speaker 1: Welcome to Buckeyes tomorrow morning for Wednesday, July eighth. I'm

your host, Tom Olworthy ball State game in fifty nine days,

the game against Michigan in one hundred and forty three days.

Our friends at Jeff Ruby's Columbus proudly offering nationally acclaimed

USDA prime steaks, seafood and sushi, and peckable service, live entertainment,

and an attention to detail that is simply unmatched. Just

go to Jeffruby dot com slash Columbus to check out

the menu and make a reservation. Today. All right, we

are going to add one more date to that countdown

that we start the show with the website Buckeyeinsiders dot com.

It is going to be launching today Wednesday, July eighth,

twenty twenty six, at noon Eastern, give or take. When

you hear the tornado siren, that will be your signal

to go to their computer, race to the computer and

sign up at Buckeye Insiders dot com. Today I'm joined

by Tony Gerdaman coincidentally of Buckeye Insiders dot com. Tony,

it has been a minute. We've been working on this

for a little while. Hellelujah, the day is here.

Speaker 2: Yeah, and thank you to the state of Ohio for

honoring the launch with the sirens. It was that was

the most difficult thing to coordinate, you know, just that

amount of eighty eight counties. That's a lot all of

the towns in those counties. But thank you to first responders.

Speaker 1: And the sirens and the fireworks over the weekend were

a nice touch. Were like, you hold it for Wednesday.

They said, no, we'll have the sirens the fireworks. Wait

happened the weekend before. We said, fair enough, that's fine.

We're in a celebratory mood too. And I guess let's

start with who all is going to be part of

Buckeye Insiders dot com. Because it is you, it is me.

But we have a really really fun group and some

folks that I think a lot of people are going

to know and who I think mostly love.

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and certainly some people that you do know.

For the people who are familiar with the x's and o's,

you'll know Ross Fulton. He is back with us. Ross

Fulton knows doing the x's and o's, breaking things down

with Tom Allat on the Buckeye Tomorrow Morning podcast, doing this,

doing the breakdowns, video breakdowns of opponents and future oponents,

past opponents, and things like that. He's not the only

x's and o's scheme insider we're calling them. That's Michael Pettitt.

He's been around, we've worked with him before, and he

should be familiar to most of you as well. He

does a lot of similar things, breaking things down, making us,

as Tom says, a smarter football person, smarter football fan.

Those two guys are gonna set the level for what

we want to do in the x's and o's and

scheme and making people smarter. Juck Maletty, it will be

our recruiting insider. You guys know him from previous stops

and he's he's been doing YouTube for a while and

has built up a very large following. Talks with recruits,

talks with parents, talks with coaches, and he can talk

and he's going to be around constantly. He and I

started a podcast recently called The Time and Change Will

Shirley Show where we discussed the past, present, and future

of Ohio State football and various different topics. So he's around. Tom.

One of our oldest friends, Marcus Hartman from such places

as Buckeye Sports bulletin the Dayton Daily News. He will

be with us. He will be our basketball insider, covering

men's and women's basketball and certainly football as well. And

he's always got some strong opinions and he's informed, and

he is we've traveled with him, we've never gotten to

work with them, although I consider a lot of us

on the beach kind of co workers by proxy, but

going to be good to finally get to work with

Marcus on a regular basis.

Speaker 1: And a lot of the staffing decisions that we made

were made based on conversations we've had with members of

other sites that we've worked at, people who we just

interact with on YouTube, been in on social media, where

it's like, you know, we're not doing this for us,

we're doing this for you. What do you want? What

are you looking for out of a website? And we

got a lot of positive feedback on the on the

recruiting stuff, obviously, and Juck does a phenomenal job with that.

He has a really really dedicated following on YouTube already,

and this is the first time he's been a part

of a site like this in terms of being like

a real, like main core writer. So we think he's

going to be doing a phenomenal job on that front.

But the scheme stuff, we get a lot of positive

feedback on that on YouTube, and there are always questions

thereways people asking questions in the YouTube comments and you

can have some comments some conversation there, but a lot

of that is much better is just let's have a

scheme chat day when our two scheme insiders will be

there and you want to ask questions, They'll answer your questions.

You want to ask follow up questions. To answer your

follow up questions, they'll have you and we can have

shows that tie in with all those kind of stuff.

We got all sorts of fun stuff planned with those

two guys, incorporating them a little more into pre and

postgame coverage this fall. There's a lot of stuff coming

on that front. And then basketball. We constantly have people

saying why don't you cover more basketball? Why why do

you not? And the answer is because football is a

kind of full time, all consuming, three hundred and sixty

five day a year thing in Columbus, Ohio, and so

that chews up a lot of time and we just

frankly find ourselves not getting over to basketball stuff quite

as often as we'd like to, And so we said,

you know, we wanted to work with Marcus. Marcus covers

basketball quite a bit, and we said, you know, we

might be able to solve two things at once here

and we could maybe make this work. And we were

delighted to have him say yes to that. And we

have I think you and I and he have already

been over for three basketball practices and another media availability,

and so we've already covered more basketball this year than

we did for the vast majority of last year. So

and this is also looking like it's going to be

a really really interesting basketball team where you've got to

murray buying them back. You've got John Mobley back, you

brought in some intriguing transfers, You've brought in a couple

five star freshmen. It's like, baby, you may have a

Stugo in there. So that's going to be potentially a

really really interesting uh season for the for the for

the men's basketball team, women's basketball team as well, And

we're going to have much much deeper coverage there. But

you know, that's that's kind of the coverage side of things.

But I think one of the things that we have

found over the years is really the heart of all

of these sites is the community. And we had a

lot of people at our last stop who were talking

about the fact that, you know, the boy it was

it was a really fun community and it was and

it was something people really just enjoyed being a part

of and people were respectful and it was and we're

trying to take that and we're trying to do way

more of that kind of community building and community sort

of focus at this new site.

Speaker 2: Yeah, very much so. And I think for the people

that were with us, they saw the work that we

put in with the community and being there on a

daily basis and the interaction and the feedback, and you

just you become friends with all of these different people,

and it's something that it's a rewarding thing for one thing,

but also you also want to reward people for being

around it. And we've got various different plans that we

want to do, whether it's you know, giveaways, contest things

like that where we're just thanks, thanks for being with us,

thanks for entrusting us, thanks for hanging out, Thanks for

making my day a little bit easier. Like two thirty man,

I'm trying to like I'm falling asleep at my desk

and if there's somebody there on the message board to

talk to, that's great and I appreciate that. But yeah,

I think the community aspect and I thought we did

a really really good job. We had and I'm not

just saying me and you like we the community did

a really good job of maintaining decorum and a turbulent

time known as a college football season and also as

a college football off season and as a signing day

where there's many reasons to be upset. But I think

for the most part, things went pretty well and that's

a good baseline. But then, like you said, we want

to improve upon that, and I think we will.

Speaker 1: Yeah, And you can sort of take that online community

and turn it into a real life community, and that's

something that we found over the years quite a bit

where we'll go travel. When we were at Big ten

Media Days last year out Las Vegas, we had member

had dinner with a member when we were flying back

from Oregon. We had in twenty twenty four, we had

a member come up to us at the airport. It

was like, oh, yeah, let's go grab lunch. Let's sure,

why not, and we have we had lunch with a

member out in Washington last year. Like, but what we

want to do is we want to do way more

of that stuff. And that's one of the things that

we're really trying to incorporate here is more live events

and sort of trying to be intentional with that and

what does that look like? And the answer is, well,

that's kind of up to you, because one of the

things we're gonna be asking our members to do that

this first week. This is a little bit of an

incentive to sign up during this first week is fill

out a survey like what do you want? Like, again,

this is not for us, This is not a website

for us. This is a website for you. So you

want to tell us, Hey, I want you to cover

more women's hockey. Okay, well that's fine. If enough people

want us to cover more women's hockey, I'm all for

covering more women's hockey. You want us to cover more

baseball or softball? Like, yeah, sure, great, Like tell us

what you want, we'll cover more of it. But also,

what do you want to do? Do you guys want

to go have a tailgate party before certain home games

this year and the lot next to the stadium, you know,

guess what we can probably do that. You want to

have a get together at one of the away games

this year, great, like tell us which way games you'll

be at and we'll do that. What do you what

kind of prizes do you want? What do you what

kind of this? The whole theme here is community and

continuing to build that community, because one of the things

that I've noticed is when you know people in real life,

you're a lot more civil to them online. That's one

of those things where we as a society, and we're

not going to solve all of society's ills here at

this website, but maybe some of them.

Speaker 2: You can.

Speaker 1: You can be just looking at your phone and yelling

at people online, and that's certainly one way to go

through life. But you can, you know, make friends online

and then meet them in real life and do fun

stuff with them and enjoy shared experiences like Hey, you're

an Ohio State football fan. I'm an Ohio State football fan.

Speaker 2: Hooray.

Speaker 1: Let's go experience an Ohio State football game together, or

a tailgate party, or go to top golf or go to

a Toledo Mudhens game. I don't care again, you tell

us what do you want to do? You tell us

and we can. We can and make a lot of

that stuff happen. So that's all going to be part

of a process. We have a lot of different ideas,

but I think right now we are very much in

a listening mode. A you tell us what you want

to do, and we can probably make it happen.

Speaker 2: Yeah. What I don't want to do is do a

bunch of stuff that I think people want and they don't.

You know, That's that's kind of some waste and effort.

Speaker 1: So if no, don't vote for Tony's clarinet concert, no

matter how hard he tries to push you into it.

Speaker 2: Well, that's how I was going to solve one of

society's ills. But now you've already said no to that.

But you know what, just hear me. Just play the

demo tape. Would you just listen to it and see

if that changes your mind.

Speaker 1: His album is called Never Had One Lesson.

Speaker 2: Anyway, the community all of that, Yes, let us know

what you want, because frankly, I want to know in

terms of where should we put our resources. That's one

of the main things is where should the resources go?

How much focus should we be doing on something or

like I had never thought of this, This is a

great idea. How do other people feel about it? This

is your opportunity to complain to the manager before you've

even gotten served, basically, and don't you want to do that?

And again? And then you know, we're talking about all

of these different things that people can do. We're fine

with the introverts as well. If you just want to read,

if you just want to listen and watch and you know, lurk,

that's all fine as well. But I think as you

go there's the interaction is always great, whether it's just

online or it's in person, or it's however, we're willing

to meet you wherever, figuratively but sometimes also literally.

Speaker 1: And if you would like to be a part of

this site, we would love to have you there. Membership

eleven ninety nine per month. If you want to do

the monthly right month, try out for month, try out

for a month, like we think you're probably gonna enjoy it.

And that first month is going to include big ten

media days. We're going to try and do some kind

of an in person event in that first month as well.

And then if you want to sign up for an

annual subscription, you kind of know us already you know

what you're getting, and you'd say, I'm in for a year.

That's one nineteen ninety nine a year, and so you

can do the math that's you get two months free

just by signing up for the annual membership instead of

the annual instead of the monthly. So anything else before

we wrap things up and people start setting their countdowns, like,

go ahead, set your watch just in case you don't

hear the siren. Set an alarm on your phone for

like like eleven fifty eight, so that you know, if

you are one of those people that really wants to

complain to the manager, you can get in line early

enough and get the user named Karen like it may

that is a possibility that you can still get that

that is still available the last time I checked. So

anything else that you want to add.

Speaker 2: I would say, this is a launch, and sometimes there

can be issues with a bunch of people coming in

all at once, so please please be patient. Don't don't

start with aggression, just maybe start with understanding that eventually

leads to aggression. But I'll say things should be fine,

but bear with us if they're not. We're all excited

about this and we want to make it right. And

so if if there are some hiccups along the way,

please you know, we know that we're going to try

to make it right. We're gonna do everything we can

to do that because we're going to have all of

the hands behind the scenes are going to be on

deck waiting to go.

Speaker 1: And if you have any issues, you can email Tom

at Buckeye Insiders dot com or Tony at Buckeye Insiders

dot com. Just shoot us an email. We will help

walk you through whatever whatever the issue is. If you

have questions, we're happy to answer questions. You name it,

We're there. We're there for you. We'll be there for

you at Buckeye Insiders dot com starting Wednesday at noon.

We cannot wait. And thanks again to our friends at

jeff Ruby's Columbus Award winning upscale steakhouse in downtown Columbus,

name one of the top fifty steakhouses in America by

Food Network. Just go to Jeffrey dot com slash Columbus

to check out the menu and make a reservation today.

That will do it for today. Thank you guys all

for joining us. Have a great day. We'll see you

on the website and then we'll see you tomorrow,