Team Fizz senior staffer Craig Hoffman has accepted a job to host a daily sports talk show, handle play-by-play for football and basketball, and DJ at 1320 KLWN and 105.9 KISS-FM in Lawrence, Kansas. The Fizz¬†family wishes him all the best in his new, exciting endeavors. Here’s his personal free throw as time expires.

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To label¬†The Fizz¬†a blog is the ultimate understatement. Not¬†because being a blog in 2012 is anything to sneeze at. Sure there are¬†still stereotypical bloggers detailing World of¬†Warcraft’s updates from version 10.2.3 to 10.2.4 that fixed the cheat code¬†on level 74. But in the realm of¬†sports media, blogs have become a force. Not only are there traditional sites¬†like our friends in the Syracuse blogosphere that do phenomenal work, but major media entities¬†like ESPN are relying on blogs. TrueHoop is a must read for NBA fans, and it’s most definitely a¬†blog. I’m 100% positive Henry Abbot isn’t writing from his¬†mom’s basement.

What I believe makes The Fizz unique is the varied types of content we produce on multiple platforms. We have a weekly radio show. We have produced a full scale TV episode, and other short videos from fields and arenas. We have hosted live chats for our readers during big recruiting showcases. We are in regular contact with the newsmakers, and have broken stories like a traditional news outlet. We have also been the last ones out of the media room at the NCAA tournament (to get that last free soda in).

Orange Fizz certainly started as a blog, but in the past four years has¬†grown to do all those things and more. There is no question the¬†driving force behind that is D.A. He was (and still is) the mad¬†scientist, and I enjoyed being in the lab with him. The reason was simple: I’m¬†just as nuts as he is and was stupid enough to say “yes” whenever he¬†said “let’s try this.”

I could write about D.A. for days but just know the guy is brilliant. He knows how to push your buttons¬†to make you better. He knows how to play situations to keep us out of¬†hot water, and get us out of it when we’ve already moronically dived in¬†head first. He’s the best mentor a young guy like me could ask for¬†and for that I can’t thank him enough. It takes a special kind of¬†person to want to give back to his school when he’s working in a top¬†10 market. It takes a whole other kind of person to let one of those¬†students working for him stay on his couch and drive him crazy for a week during the NCAA¬†tournament.

My journey with The Fizz started with the Pinstripe Bowl and then drove full force into Ishaq-mania and my first FizzMas. I had the pleasure of building exhaustive¬†x’s and o’s breakdowns during hoops season, hosting a¬†summer of FizzCasts from enemy territory in Connecticut, and helping launch Fizz Radio on the Score 1260. I also was able to cover the Big East Tournament and travel to Pittsburgh and Boston for SU’s NCAA tourney run.

As more and more of you clicked and commented, we were able explore more of the things you wanted to hear about. In the digital media age we live, this is how it should be. We need you to keep helping us do our job better.

Thanks for following. Thanks for reading.¬†Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching. I can’t tell you how much¬†I’ve enjoyed doing what we do and sharing it with an incredibly¬†intelligent, passionate and loyal Orange fan base.

Keep following. Keep reading. Keep listening. Keep watching. The Fizz¬†isn’t going anywhere and it’s only getting better.

Posted: Craig Hoffman