Since its inception in 2003,
D1Baseball.com has been a go-to site for college baseball schedules, standings, historical data and more. Offering the sport’s only aggregated scoreboard on its home page, it has developed a rock-solid reputation for providing in-depth college baseball content on the national stage.
This past November the site announced its intentions for aggressive expansion into news coverage of the sport with the hiring of two of the most well-respected writers in the industry: Aaron Fitt, former National Writer for
Baseball America, and Kendall Rogers, former Managing Editor of College Baseball at Perfect Game.
“I can’t tell you how excited I am to be part of this great team that is rebuilding D1Baseball into the internet’s premier destination for college baseball,” said Fitt. “We have been blown away by the support we have received from the college baseball community. Coaches, sports information directors, players and fans all seem very excited about our plan to build a one-stop shop for college baseball, and that reception has been energizing.”
Fitt spent the past decade with
Baseball America, focusing on long-form feature writing, team analysis and draft coverage. He has three years of experience covering college baseball in Southern California and has also covered ten College World Series. The Massachusetts native graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill and will be based in North Carolina.
Rogers has covered the sport for 13 years, including a dozen College World Series. Prior to his stint at Perfect Game, the Texas native worked with
Rivals.com and Yahoo! Sports. Rogers, a Texas A&M grad, will be based in the lone star state. “It has been a long but rewarding journey,” he said. “I’ve been lucky enough to work for some great people along the way to get here, and it all started with a tiny Big 12 Baseball blog back when I was about 18 or 19 years old. It’s been gratifying and rewarding, and I’m just happy to be in a new venture that I feel like has the potential to not only be successful, but more importantly, help transform college baseball into a new and exciting age.”
Fitt and Rogers have both observed significant changes in their occupations. “College Baseball media coverage has fluctuated for both the good and bad since I’ve been covering it,” Rogers added. “We’ve had some great ambassadors bow out of the sport, and we’ve had some new ones come in. The great thing about this new venture is that I’ve always had a lot of respect for the job Aaron Fitt has done. He’s a terrific part of this sport, and I’m ecstatic to be doing this new endeavor with him being a major part of it. Unlike some sports, we are good friends who only want to help grow the sport. So it’s a common goal.”
“When I started at
Baseball America in 2004, the college baseball landscape was so different,” added Fitt. “There were very few prominent national outlets devoted to covering college baseball. But as anyone who has been to TD Ameritrade Park can attest, the game has grown quickly in the last decade and the demand for college baseball information has intensified. When we started incorporating more elements into our coverage — multimedia components like podcasts and video, and of course social media — our readers really responded. I have enjoyed the increased interaction with readers that social media have facilitated, and I hope to continue developing relationships with readers in the future at D1Baseball.”
The redesign and content additions are slated to launch this month, and will boast several new features, including in-depth news coverage, rankings and analysis, multimedia content, daily RPI updates, message boards, interactive elements and more. Longtime webmaster Cynthia Mills will continue to oversee the scoreboard, standings and schedule pages that have been the staple of the site for the last decade.
“I think the possibilities at D1Baseball.com are endless,” Rogers adds. “Essentially, we want to become the ‘only-stop shop’ needed for the diehard and casual college baseball fan alike.”
You can follow all the progress of the new
D1Baseball.com online and at D1Baseball’s Facebook page,
http://www.facebook.com/d1baseball