by Russell Kammel
United Press Syndicate
The UWFFL received a stunning blow Thursday in the annual Thanksgiving Uni Watch column when Uni Watch creator Paul Lukas thanked the many contributors to the website but failed to mention the UWFFL or UWFFL founder and Uni Watch contributor Rob Holecko. Every year in Uni Watch Lukas thanks the many contributors to his site, writing Thursday, "...I’m super-duper-thankful for all the people who keep this here (sic) site running, including interns Mike Chamernik and Garrett McGrath (two great new additions to the Uni Watch family), 'Collector’s Corner' columnist Brinke Guthrie, weekend contributors Terry Duroncelet and Catherine Ryan, webmaster John Ekdahl, and of course bench coach and weekend editor Phil Hecken, by far the hardest-working and most loyal collaborator anyone could ever hope for."
The UWFFL has been a steady weekend contribution to Uni Watch since their inaugural season launched this year, but has found it's contributions buried towards the bottom of the Saturday columns every week.
UWFFL founder Rob Holecko didn't seem surprised by this latest setback. "To tell you the truth," Holecko stated late Thursday, "I'm not that surprised. I don't think it was an intentional slight. I think they just don't really consider the UWFFL, for whatever reason, a 'part' of Uni Watch. It's disappointing, but not surprising. I think they look at is as something that we contribute, but it's still 'outside' of Uni Watch, not officially sanctioned. I'm proud of the GUD, that is a separate project, and they are more than glad to want to be a part of that, but this project is specifically for Uni Watch, to be a part of Uni Watch, to grow with the community, but it doesn't really seem to be taking a hold, to be top of mind. It gets mentioned once a week, barely noticed, and then the perception is that it is forgotten until the following week."
"I mean, we see it every week, we can provide more content or less content, it doesn't matter. Whatever we do, we get literally no response from the Uni Watch community in the comments. It really makes me question the viability of the UWFFL going forward. When we launched our first game back in August we got a prominent location on the site and received nearly a thousand votes in our first game. Last week we put the Anchorage-Rapid City game in, a marquee matchup between two up and coming teams, and barely got over a hundred votes. And our regular season games off the page, where we ask people to come to our site to vote? Those get around forty, if we're lucky."
"We have great participation among the people that are actually in the league. But as an entertainment product for the Uni Watch community as a whole? I'd say for the most part we've failed."
