The State of Maize n Brew

Long time no see, eh? Did you miss us?

For loyal readers of Maize n Brew, it has been a long cold winter so far. This site has a long history of producing wonderful opinion pieces, uproariously funny comedy bits, and the kind of beautiful sentimentalism that only a bunch of guys who have spent the better part of their life loving the University of Michigan can conjure, and only a bunch of readers who are similarly afflicted can appreciate.

However, the last few months have seen a gradual slowdown in the content posted on a day to day basis culminating in a January that consisted of just a handful of basketball posts.

No recruiting posts during the busiest time of the year.

No game threads for basketball.

Not even an acknowledgement that they play hockey at this school.

Rest assured, this was not our intent here at the site. Everyone who writes for Maize n Brew does it because they love watching Michigan sports, talking about Michigan sports, and writing about Michigan sports. It is a labor of love that we enjoy sharing with you.

It also is just a small part of real life, one that sometimes must take a backseat to other obligations. Unfortunately, a lot of these things came to a head at the same time for the staff at Maize n Brew, which caused the slowdown in regularly scheduled posting that you have seen over the past few months. It wasn't anyone's choice. Life is like that sometimes.

Yet there is a silver lining. Some of us who have been involved with the site in the past --- myself, the_white_tiger, Remember Bo --- and have the time to devote to it in the present were not happy seeing Maize n Brew struggling. It turns out that SBNation wasn't happy that a blog dedicated to Michigan sports was languishing (they didn't say "it's Michigan fergodsakes" but they didn't have to, we were already thinking it). It was enough to get all of us asking the same question, "what do we have to do to bring back Maize n Brew stronger than ever?"

The first thing was to expand the writing staff. The old guard will still be here. Guys like Dave, Beauford, SCM, and Kyle will be dropping by the contribute when they can. But to get MnB back we needed to fill out the writing staff to cover all different aspects of Michigan sports while consistently updating the site with fresh content.

Myself, the_white_tiger, and Remember Bo will be writing normal content like we always have, providing morning links posts, keeping up with news around Michigan and the Big Ten, and following the games themselves.

I am very pleased to announce that Maize n Brew will now be tackling recruiting analysis. Both DGDestroys and Jeff Contizano are on board to help satiate your appetite for scouting reports and recruiting news.

On top of that, we will be getting occasional contributions from three other very talented writers. Maize_in_spartyland of the site Before Visiting the Sportsbook will be dropping by once a week or so to provide an exclusive post for MnB. Fouad Egbaria of Holdin' the Rope will also be moonlighting here to contribute both football and basketball content. Steven Chun, formerly of Michigan's FanTake site will be contributing when he gets a chance as well.

Finally, Dave Ryan of SBN Detroit, HoopSpeak U and the fabulous college basketball blog Searching for Billy Edelin will be writing for the site as well as providing technical assistance and helping me out with the day to day minutiae of running the site.

I can't tell you how excited I am about this group of writers. Odds are, if you have spent any time at all around the Michigan blogosphere in the past year you will have been as blown away by these guys as I have. Our hope is that by building a large pool of talented writers, the site will be able to consistently produce the kind of awesome news, opinion, and analysis that our audience expects without placing too heavy a burden on any of the authors. This is, after all, supposed to be fun.

We have some big things planned for the future, but in the meantime you can rest assured that Maize n Brew will once again be a great place to read about and discuss all the Michigan sports you love. Go Blue!

- The Maize n Brew staff