Happy Birthday CFC! (year in review & contest winners)

On February 12th, 2010, at 12:00 noon www.canadafootballchat.com was launched into the ‘internet world’. Looking back on the first year, a few words and phrases come to mind. Wow. Thanks. Great plays. Great players.

We want to thank everyone who has clicked on CFC, given your feedback to CFC, criticized CFC (negative & positive), contributed articles / blogs to CFC, and posted in our forums or prospect video section. Here is our review of year #1.

Our biggest challenges

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[*]Keeping up with all the great suggestions we get from our users
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[*]Keeping CFC navigable & viewer friendly, which is a challenge when you have as much content as we do
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[*]Solving the ‘internet mysteries’ i.e. Drop down menu’s not working properly, certain browsers doing ‘odd’ things (we recommend Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome for the best CFC experience)
[*]In 2010 Canada had 788 high school (senior or varsity) football teams and probably as much or more minor teams. We are up for the challenge, but we still have work to do to cover all of the country
[*]we have added a second ‘server’ because just over a week ago the site went down multiple times due to significant traffic…a good problem to have but we apologize for a few of the ‘hiccups’ we had that week
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CONTEST WINNERS

The following CFC users guessed our birthday correctly and will be receiving a ‘cfc ball cap’. We look forward to more contests like this in the future.
“Ashtonfootball”
“Burlington”
“Coach nash”
“Sam Sabourin”

SECTION REVIEW

1) News & Recruiting sections
One of our most popular sections, we have enjoyed covering every team, league, and player that we could. We have especially enjoyed the recruiting section, the contribution by most CIS programs, and hi lighting some of Canada’s best players. We get positive feedback from the CIS coaches, saying how CFC’s commit page has made it ‘more important’ to commit to a school and it has helped ‘professionalize’ the process. Players are committing earlier which is great for CIS programs.

2) Prospect Video section
CFC is the #1 place for a player to promote themselves (off the field) to CIS programs and Team Canada’s ‘young’ program. With over 2 videos added per day and CIS coaches viewing them daily, this free forum of player advertisement is working. Also, it has put an emphasis as to how important film is for a player to have.

3) Forums
CFC being a new site, it takes a while to build a ‘forum community’, but we are getting there. We thank everyone for posting in our forums, and most of all keeping the slander out of the forum section. Slander makes things look ‘mickey mouse’ and football in Canada is not that. We are all for negative or positive criticism. That is how we make things better. We look forward to some future contests rewarding our forum users.

4) Scores / Schedules
This section was launched late in the fall, but it is a preview of things to come. We at CFC are committing to reporting all the high school & minor scores from across the nation. If your league wants to use the CFC scores section to report your scores (for free) contact us.

5) FCCA
This joint venture between Football Canada & CFC has 2 aspects to it. Firstly, the online membership that allows users access to a variety of articles & videos. Secondly, the annual ‘Convention’ which I am looking forward to meeting many coaches at, from across the country.

6) CFC shop
This is just an ‘amazon’ store now but we may have something to report on this in the near future ;).

7) Events
Need to find a player camp, coaches clinic or national program? 90% are posted in the CFC events section.

8) Directory
Over 1500 football websites are listed in the CFC ‘directory’. The “Yellow pages” of football in Canada.

9) **Bottom right box
This one you may have missed so check it out. Three things show in the bottom right box (on the homepage and a few others). (1) most recent posts, articles, comments (2) past champions (3) Canadians in the CFL, NFL, NCAA…which we will be posting the 2010 lists shortly.

Our favourite developments

a) CFC high school ‘top 25’
This was fun, took a lot of work, got some great criticism, but most importantly created a ‘buzz’ around high school football in Canada. As mentioned above, 788 teams in Canada and only 120 or so in the FBS…BCS has nothing on us :).

b) CIS commit list
It is an achievement to be recruited and asked to try out for a CIS program. Players deserve to be recognized for this achievement and we are glad that we are able to promote every new player that straps on a helmet in August at a CIS program.

c) CFC newsletter
Promoting players, teams, and leagues is what CFC is all about and the newsletter has helped do this. We look forward to more great stories to tell.

d) FACEBOOK & TWITTER
Over 5000 facebook fans (just in time for our birthday) and nearly 1000 twitter followers. Thanks everyone for becoming a ‘fan’ or ‘follower’. We hope we continue to meet your expectations with our posts on both of these mediums.

What lies ahead in the future?

As always, we have some exciting things lined up just around the corner. With one year under our belt we look forward to doing what we enjoy doing…Professionalizing and publicizing the game of CANADIAN FOOTBALL, primarily at the amateur level.

Respect the Game!

Lee Barette