Welcome to The Osceola: A letter from publisher Jerry Kutz

The Osceola staff is honored to have been selected by Rivals to serve this Florida State community, a community I’ve been impressed with over the years.

Much respect to Gene, Ira, Corey and their team for building this community, one we will work very hard to serve.

I know. We have some big shoes to fill. But at the end of the day, you make the community. Your passion. Your investment of time to read, or listen, and to discuss your passion with our writers and each other.

Please excuse me but I just heard a ghost of Jimbo past when I wrote that line “you make the community (the community doesn’t make you).”

It is true. Your passion is what makes the community and it is our passion for Florida State that led us to say yes when Rivals asked if we’d be interested in living here.

If you notice, I’ve used the term community a lot already. I hope you’ll excuse me if I use the term a lot more times in expressing our vision for the site.

You’ll also notice we haven’t made physical changes to the site. The reason we haven’t is out of respect to each of you who have chosen to live in this community. I’m sure there are aspects of the site you love, maybe some you’d like to see changed, and others you’d like to see go away. We’ll do a formal survey later but how about taking a moment to send me an email today letting me know your thoughts on how we can best serve you and this community.

Let me introduce you to TheOsceola.com staff before I tell you about me.

Our core staff includes Bob Ferrante, our managing editor, who has been a Florida State beat writer for years and the editorial backbone of our staff. Patrick Burnham, our football writer and recruiting editor, started with The Osceola back in 1985 when he was in high school and his dad, Wally, became FSU’s linebackers coach. Patrick worked in football operations, including as a graduate assistant at South Carolina and in high school relations (recruiting) at South Florida and with two professional teams. Charles Fishbein, who owns Elite Scouting Services, works hand in hand with our staff on recruiting coverage and evaluations. Fish has been selling his recruiting services to college coaches for more than 20 years. Ariya Massoudi recently joined us to enhance our video-podcasting capacity. Ariya has worked for Seminole Productions and for the ACC Network. And at 12:01 am on August 1, we officially added Curt Weiler, who has been a beat writer for the Tallahassee Democrat.

In addition to our core staff, I’m really excited to fulfill a lifetime goal to include former players in our coverage. We’re excited to have established relationships with Charlie Ward, Kez McCorvey, Leroy Smith, Mark Salva and Kirk Carruthers to share what they are seeing on our video podcasts. Each of those guys have played the game at a very high level and have also coached the game. We'll likely sneak a few more in throughout the fall. We think you’ll enjoy hearing their uniquely qualified perspectives on the game we love while catching up with them.

Ok, a bit about me.

I’m clearly the oldest guy on the beat, having covered FSU sports for 40 years now. Age, they say, makes me wise but I’ll leave that for you to decide.

I have seen a thing or two. This past week at an FSU practice I was chatting with Jeff Culhane and when he heard I’d covered FSU both as a writer and as an athletic administrator for the better part of his life, he jokingly said, “You must know where all the bodies are buried.”

Truth be known…

All you need to know about me is that I love people and I particularly love people who love Florida State University.

Ask the people who know me.

If you love FSU, then I love you.

I don’t know what it is about this place and these people but whatever it is turns me on.

In 1982 a couple of friends of mine and I started The Osceola, which came long before Al Gore invented the Internet and these sites existed. Why did we do it? You may relate to the answer. I was living in Orlando in 1980 and FSU had just beat No. 3 Nebraska. I was excited to read about the victory when I woke up on Sunday morning but when I got to the curb and opened the Orlando Sentinel, I had to hunt for any coverage at all. The 12 inch story was buried under the fold and written by an AP writer because the Sentinel didn’t cover the game. Instead, they sent their beat writers to Gainesville to double up on coverage of UF’s game against some nobody.

I tell you that to tell you this: I get it. I know what our coverage means to those of you who cannot see it for yourselves. It’s not like we’re surgeons or educators but being your eyes and ears has always mattered to me.

When you live in Tallahassee it’s easy to take Florida State for granted. It’s “out there,’’ a local colloquialism I’ve spent a lifetime trying to understand. I love living in Tallahassee, don’t get me wrong, but as a Seminole storyteller, or as an FSU administrator, I have always tried to think like the 28-year-old me who lived in Central Florida, who was starved for any shred of FSU news, and made the five-hour drive to every home game and as many away games as my wife would let me.

But enough about me. I think you get the point, I’m passionate about the Seminoles and happy to make my home in your community. Please let us know what we can do for you. We're looking forward to learning more about you and your thoughts on how we can add to our community. My email address is jkutz@theosceola.com.