I have signed Gene's Page to a contract with CitadelPartners which went into effect Monday, July 9th. CitadelPartners is a sports network on the internet that will bring together the top college, recruiting, pro, high school and even outdoor websites on the internet.

As most of you know, I have stayed away from signing with a network. Until now, none of the networks allowed me to be what I have wanted to be for years, and that is to be a legitimate media entity. CitadelPartners accomplishes that goal for me. With the signing of the contract with CitadelPartners, I became a media entity in the eyes of the Southeastern Conference. I'm sure some of you are wondering what being a media entity means for Gene's Page. In the past, I have not been able to personally talk to recruits about recruiting. Now, I can. This will allow me to expand my premium site, and to a smaller extent my free site, recruiting coverage tremendously.

Joining CitadelPartners will give Gene's Page many other new features as well. I will be changing the appearance of my free and premium sites, making them more professional looking. Don't worry, the links you have always enjoyed will still be on the page. The logo will be the same, but smaller. The message boards will be similar, but with new, exciting features. We are in the process of entering the premium site usernames and passwords so that the premium site members will be able to continue to use the same username and password as they always have. Although we will not have the time to enter the usernames and passwords for everybody who is signed up for the free site message board, we hope each of you will sign up with your current username and password when the signup form becomes available. Hopefully, that will be any day now.

There will be a new, state-of-the-art chat room. We anticipate having premium site chat sessions with the likes of Max Emfinger and other network recruiting and non-recruiting personalities. You will even have some MSU-related sports network news on the premium site portion of Gene's Page that I have never had access to, but will now due to my association with CitadelPartners. Plus, there will be many other benefits too numerous to mention here.

Another benefit of signing with the network is not only will you be able to pay for the premium site by check, but many of you will be pleased to know that you will be able to pay by credit card as well.

Joining the network will have many personal advantages for me, such as not having to deal with the technical end of maintaining a website or having to deal with the financial aspect of a website.This will allow me to work on content only, which benefits the site and ultimately each of you because of the additional content.

Obviously, with all of these additional features, the cost of maintaining and operating the website will be greater, hence my premium site rate will increase. The new rate will be in the $5.95 or $6.95 per month range. Instead of having to pay a yearly amount, you will now be able to pay by month. In fact, if you are a football season fan who doesn't care about basketball or baseball, you can now subscribe for just a few months a year instead of a year. As always, if you want to subscribe for an entire year, you can also continue doing that. Because of my affiliation with CitadelPartners, the choice is yours.

As with anything new, it will take time for the transition to be completed. We anticipate having the new sites (free and premium) online within the next two weeks. I know some of you may be concerned about the changes, but just think of it as if the Gene's Page Bulldog family is moving to a newer, nicer looking, more user-friendly home. Once we all settle into our new home, I anticipate we will enjoy it even more than we have the earlier version of Gene's Page.

I am extremely excited about the future of Gene's Page and hope each of you are as well. By joining CitadelPartners, I now have all the resources to allow my page to reach its full potential.

If you have any questions, you can contact me by email at swindoll@genespage.com

Gene Swindoll