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Oct 14 / Zander Freund

The Verdict on Potential Foul Play in the B/RCS

Hey everyone,

Over the past few days, there have been serious concerns raised by various members of the Community regarding the rules, management of, and general fairness of the B/RCS College Football Contest.  These concerns finally reached their peak today, when site celebrity Lisa Horne published an article on the subject which soon found itself on the front page.

Before we get into the sticky details, I wanted to thank both Lisa and Gray Ghost for speaking up when something didn’t sit right with them.  These are two of our College Football Community’s most passionate contributors, and they care deeply about the integrity of the Bleacher Report network in general.

Secondly, I would also like to thank Justin Goar, who even after being accused of cheating kept his cool.  Justin was the victim of our failure as a Community staff to communicate the rules of the contest clearly to the user base.  I cannot express to him how sorry I am that he, rather than I, became the target for some people’s anger.

To clarify, Justin is without question one of the classiest gents on the site, and is in fact about to be a father.  He clearly could have done without this headache, but throughout it all he has not once tried to pin blame on others nor lost his temper.

Okay, now the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the verdict.

After careful deliberation, thought, and discussion with my partners, we are standing by the rules of the B/RCS as they were originally stated.  A copy of those rules can be found here.

When you create a contest with monetary prizes involved, you have to live with the rules you set ahead of time.  Doing anything other than that is completely unfair to the participants, not to mention illegal.

As you will notice, there is nothing in the rules that prohibits writers from using the contest as a way to recruit their friends and family to Bleacher Report.  This issue was discussed during the planning of the contest, and it was decided that this could be a great way of attracting new readership to the site.

Would I change the rules to make the voting more exclusive, if I could go back in time?  Perhaps.  Lisa, Gray Ghost, Kristofer Green, Georgia Dawg, and many others make very compelling arguments for why this recruiting voters brings an element of popularity into the contest that could interfere with the most talented writer being sent to Miami.

Then again, locking the contest out to new members seems to go against the inclusive nature of Bleacher Report as an “Open Source Sports Network.”  And isn’t that inclusiveness one of the things that makes B/R so special?

Either way, the simple fact of the matter is that I cannot travel back in time, and thus I have to live by the decision that was originally made before the contest began.

I apologize profusely if the rules were in any way miscommunicated by Trey and I in the follow-up Q&A.  I will take full responsibility for this and I am truly sorry guys—it is abundantly clear that I messed up big time.

What I was trying to get at in my initial response to the question about cheating was that we put security measures in place to ensure that votes cast in the contest were credible:

  • A user has to have been a member of B/R for a certain amount of time for their vote to count, ensuring that people can’t sign up, vote, and never return.
  • A user has to have spent a certain amount of time on an article page for their vote to count, ensuring that they actually read the piece they’re voting for.
  • Votes coming from the same IP address shall not be counted more than once, ensuring that someone can’t create impostor accounts as a way of racking up MyPicks totals.
  • Our engineering team has the full ability to audit all of the B/RCS voting data and look for abnormalities should anything seem fishy or cheating is suspected…which is exactly what was done in this case.

After doing a thorough audit of the data, we have detected no foul play thus far.  As such, no action will be taken to penalize any of the contests’ current participants.

Thanks again for all of the Creature feedback during this process.  I am truly sorry for any confusion I and the rest of our staff may have caused, and I truly hope that we can put this behind us and move forward together as a Community.

Comments are closed.

Filed under Community
  • http://cfbplace.com miamimitchdotcom

    Zander,

    Fine job on the site and as you know a big fan and appreciate the reciprocal relationship I’ve had with Bleacher and hope to continue it. I understand that this put you in a difficult spot and I think you handled the best you could with the cards you were dealt (or dealt yourself). In any event it really brings to light a bigger problem which I know is behind many of the changes within Bleacher but a “magical” answer hasn’t been found.
    Since Lisa is the one who wrote the previous article we can use her as an example as to one of the problems which is exposure for everyone. Lisa is a great writer and she is ranked as one on the front page of the college football section which lists her most recent article. When she writes an article it is usually listed in the sub categories at the bottom of the page, it is also listed in the articles on the upper left if not the top of the page and then again where she is listed as atop writer for the entire site on the very front of bleacher report and then usually in the cfb rotation on the lower left and often in the main article of the front page. Basically she gets 6 prime spaces for one article, most are lucky to get 1/6 of this exposure for 1/6 of all articles they write. I am not saying Lisa is unworthy nor is she alone in this type of exposure but how could the contest be fair to begin with when 5 or 6 writers are given this kind of edge to begin with? This is a lot of text, not separated nor edited, but I think you get my point.
    Just my 2 cents and whatever I can do to help,

    Mitch

  • Tim

    Thanks for coming to this decision quickly, Zander.

    I think this was the right move.

  • Lisa Horne

    Mitch-

    I totally agree with you! And that as why I wrote what I did. It’s a popularity contest, and I do get a lot of exposure here. It’s NOT fair to others. That is why I withdrew from the contest today.

    I was not complaining about other writers or complaining, although some may view it that way. I was trying to point out the inequality of it all.

    I hope my intent was clear. (I did mention my own connections as ones that could be an unfair advantage for recruiting votes in that article I wrote.)

    Lise

  • http://tribetimereport.blogspot.com Nino Colla

    I think you guys made the right choice. When you hold a contest like this, especially with a prize as coveted as the one you are giving out, there are a few things that you know are going to happen. 1) Not everyone is going to be happy, 2) Not everyone is going to play fair and 3) There is no way to please everyone.

    Unless you’ve worked out a system that bases it on skill or knowledge, these types of things are gonna happen. This is a site based off the people though and I think it has to be in their hands. You just have to hope they do it honestly.

  • http://www.heavywritesthepen.com Angel Navedo

    I think it’s fantastic that a site this large still holds open communication with their contributors. You didn’t see Tom on people’s MySpace pages sending out legitimate personal messages. So great job on this Zander, and thanks for clearing things up.

    I know I’m not in the college football competition, but I believe in fairness and honesty, and I love that this site is committed to it. It’s why I’ve tried to become a consistent writer since registering, and why I will continue.

  • Baby Tate

    Justin Goar’s description of his giant feet in his Bio are not the only thing big about him as he has a great heart to go with his huge writing talent.

    Let’s be thankful this misunderstanding is behind us.

    This is one of the growing pains of a site that is moving at great speed. We all have learning curves in life, I’m certain B/R will be stronger now that this has been addressed.

    Thanks to everyone’s great help in resolving this issue.

  • Kyle Knight

    Sheesh people. Grow up and think about what you are all complaining about. The underlying reason for the contest is to boost readership. The first time I ever heard of bleacherreport was when Justin mentioned it to me. I would have never visited the site otherwise. Yes, I voted for his articles. However, I read many others, including Lisa’s. I am an LSU alum and am going to be naturally biased toward articles written about LSU. Would you all suggest that BR have a contest and not advertise it? So many of you complain about fairness. That’s a load of crap. Lisa, go ahead and do your email blast to your company every week (however, I bet your IT dept. doesn’t look kindly on it) For a writer to post on a fan forum that he is writing articles about the same thing the fans on the fan forum are passionate about is a great way to boost readership on B/R in an otherwise infinite sea of information called the internet.

    I for one do not have the time nor the desire to post comments about every/any article I read (this will be my first comment). Does that mean I don’t read them? More importantly to B/R, does that mean that I didn’t see or click on the advertisements they get paid to run? I guess word of mouth would be out of the question, let alone an email or blog post.

    Maybe B/R might consider allowing people to subscribe to different authors. Sure, that would definitely take me straight to Justin’s articles, but while I am at the site, I will be exposed to other authors as well. After all Lisa, that is how I first heard of you. You would not exist to me were it not for Justin’s participation in this contest and promotion thereof.

  • Darth Dawg

    Bleacher Report has lost every sense of integrity that it has worked to gain all this time. I’m not trashing Justin, but who doesn’t know that recruiting would be against the rules. It’s common sense.

    I should have gotten 200 of my friends on here to vote for me right? They wouldn’t given a crap about anyone else’s articles, but at lease they’d vote for me, right? That’s wrong, I don’t care how you look at it.

    I’m just an honest guy that loves to read good articles. And the thought of Lisa and Gray Ghost leaving is something that makes me mad. Mad at the people in charge of BR that didn’t have the guts to do something about this earlier. Those same people that said “Cheaters will be caught” and “We have ways of finding out who’s cheating” and all that crap. It’s sad when you have to bluff on your own website.

    If Lisa and Ghost leave this site, then so do I and a lot of people I know.

  • http://alvarezgalloso.wordpress.com Roberto Alvarez-Galloso

    I would like to thank Lisa for her article. I also want to thank Zander for clarifying the issues related to the contest. Let’s put all of this behind us and concentrate on writing sports.

  • Justin Goar

    darth,

    in all honesty i never thought letting 20-25 people who are my family and friends know about the contest would be against the rules (and in fact it still wasn’t and isn’t against the rules).

    i didn’t advertise on my site, and i don’t have a list of 200 email addresses.

    i have since dropped out of the contest, but i would’ve hoped you would’ve given me a little more credit as a person.

    one of my jobs as community leader is to bring people to the site. i’m so sorry you feel the way you do as i’m sure you’re not the only one who holds this sentiment. i just thought everyone in the contest would tell their family and friends about the site and the contest.

    i don’t know what else to do but apologize.

  • Micah Green

    I would like to start off by sayin’ all of these writers in this conflict I respect very much. I don’t agree with the decision though. Justin is a great guy I’m sure of that.I thought the rules were laid out clear. I don’t think Justin wouldn’t break the rules on purpose. From what I read they were broken though. I think the B/R team should have taken away those votes in question and continued from there in the competition. I have just read somewhere that Lisa Horne is leavin’ the site and Grey Ghost is quitting the competition. That will hurt us as a community. Whereas if you had resolved it another way we would be better off. Time to get my entire school voting I guess. ;) Again I respect all three of these writers.

  • Darth Dawg

    Justin-

    I give you ton of credit. I’m sorry if it seemed like I wasn’t giving you the respect that you deserve, because you do. I tend to see things in black or white a lot of times and that’s a fault of mine.

    Now that Zander has blessed us with a “real” set of rules this late in the season, it seems that you have done no wrong…but you quit the contest anyway. This shows me that you truly care about your reputation and not some stupid plane tickets. For that I give you credit.

    I read more than I write on here. All I have is my reputation, as do you. All I have is my word, as do you. I believe you and I apologize.

  • Justin Goar

    micah,

    i promise you if you read the rules, i did not break them. i told zander my i was inviting friends to the site before the contest started. if he gave me his blessing i saw nothing wrong with it and it’s what i thought most would do. what happened was that others were led to believe something different with a separate blog post that i (as well as many others) never saw.

    my friends and family visit B/R with every article i write it’s just they never signed up before. now they are.

    anyhoo, i’m planning on staying out of the contest so hopefully there are no hard feelings.

  • Judith Reedy

    I am a Bleacher Report reader because of Justin Goar. Disclaimer: I really like the guy, and have been reading Tigerreport.com, his blog, for a few years. And his wife is one of my best friends.

    Justin has always sent his friends links to his updated JWBS columns. He began sending us links to Bleacher Report as soon as he began writing regular columns there-long before this contest started.

    I love Justin’s style of writing and appreciate his knowledge of college football. Should he have won this contest, every BR reader would have been treated to a humorous, well thought out and executed article on the National Championship game. Hey Justin, thanks for the laughs and the insight. I look forward to your up coming articles.
    Judith

  • Hank K.

    I’m fairly new to Bleacher Report, so would you guys mind telling me more about this contest? I read about the prize, and now I just want to know what to do to get it.