Everything you need to know about TRL, this community, and what sets us apart from every other ‘Bama site around.
After many months, many sleepless nights, many flights to Dallas, many rounds of fundraising, almost $20,000 dollars, and more headaches than I care to mention, as we promised to you back in November, the Thin Red Line is here.
- We were built on a few simple promises to our readers, and we shall endeavor to never break them in bad faith nor without some very valid reason.
- Free speech means free speech for everyone, for everything — not merely preferred speech or preferred politics or preferred policies. Sports necessarily cross over into other parts of society, and as we’ve seen this past decade: funding parity, the scope of executive power, women’s athletics, trans athletes, state entanglement in for-profit sport endeavors, etc. This is your place more than ours. We’re just idiots with a typewriter. You will put the skin on these bones.
- Basic membership and most content will always be free to the extent we’re not losing our ass. Yes, there will be paid options, merch sales, and we are hardly shy about passing the hat. But you can create an account, create your own blog on the site, customize your avatar, engage in chat and messaging options, comment on all articles, and drop some gifs and dank memes. The Internet was built on anarchy and freedom — we’re not here to nickel and dime you to death, nor to make extra money from the (lucrative) ad market; and as long as blood courses through these veins, TRL never will be. All we ask is that you follow our social media accounts, and engage with us here from time to time — share our work: word of mouth, social media, email. Every little bit of promotion helps as we get off the ground. That’s a damn good trade for hundreds of hours of free content, yes?
- We will not waste your time. We will provide you with cool, high-quality content in as succinct and as entertaining a fashion as we are able. Just as your voice matters, your time matters.
For the complete TRL mission statement, and some Gump Deep-diving into 100-year old ”Bama lore, check out our original post over Thanksgiving, “What is the Thin Red Line?” Even the most hard-bitten Alabama die-hard will learn something about the Tide and Alabama’s unique place in college football and CFB history — there is one Main Character for the sport, and it resides in Tuscaloosa.
These our are three sacrosanct promises to you. Hold us to them. #GumpSoHard
https://medium.com/@ThinRedLine/why-thin-red-line-662567d8cd36: Welcome to the Thin Red Line. Bigger. Better. Bama.Now that you’re here, take a look around, as we’re under construction. The site isn’t 100% a go just yet, but she is good enough to start posting here. The website is importing articles from the old Medium site to whet your whistle (and in case you missed some of our better early work. The entire site won’t be carried over, just the top 80-100 articles. Be on the look out for those.
Also, until as such time as I can configure a newsletter / RSS option, posts will be crosslinked to Medium for a brief amount of time (just to remind you, more than anything, and you’ll receive notice of that through Medium. This just seemed the best way to fill that information gap for the time being.).
GIFS
1. First off, because you’re going to ask immediately — yes you can post gifs in the comments. There is not an integrated feature in the comments (we actually had to pay extra for threaded comments based on users). But WordPress owns Tenor, and they are the largest repository of GIFs in the world. You can find anything you want there.
Inserting GIFs from there is very simple:
First, find your GIF. Like this man cutting veg.
NEXT, Scroll down to the bottom sharing options, and click the “code” icon immediately to the left of the black flag. That will copy the embed code for the Tenor gif you’ve selected.
Index and contact info
I know what you’re already thinking: “Where in the heck can I send Erik some dick pics, mean emails, glitter bombs. And, importantly, where do I find an index for all the sections of Thin Red Line? I want to read 11 basketball recruiting stories.“
Say less, boss man. We’ve got you covered.Go to the main landing page of the website: thinredlinesports.com, scroll to the bottom — there you’ll find complete contact information for us, as well a complete index of the dozen main sections that comprise TRL.
User Interface and Features
2. Want to know who we are? We’re not anonymous — you can find us (and a lot more information about the site), as well as our very loose “terms of service” on the Masthead / TOS page. In fact, that is our repository for damn near all TRL related information, and we recommend you read it at least once.
3. Want to know how to support the site until such time as we roll out membership tiers? (Or, hell, want to give even beyond that — we always accept donations). Yup, the Masthead page.
4, You can also find contact information for our web developer there. We went out of our way to give Leo some publicity there, because he has been a dream to work with in the midst of a very stressful personal and professional time, easily putting up with incessant changes, our demanding nature, and the evolution of the site. We could have easily been charged double and it would have been worth it. You can find him on the Masthead/TOS as well.
6. The top of every page includes links to frequently accessed pages — you’ll never get lost looking for a log-in screen or trying to find the menu for football stories.
7. No surprise here: you need to sign up to create a username, leave comments, and access other features in the site — like integrated chat, which is coming. Easy peasy though. We collect almost no information from you (name and email address is it), do not retain any information (remotely or on-site), and certainly will never sell any. You can find a log-in screens under the Membership Tab. That is also where you would create your profile, and eventually sign up (hopefully) for paid membership tier.
8.TRL’s profile system is the beating heart of the user experience. We ground-built it for maximum flexibility and site integration, and it is of this we are most proud. You obviously create user names, custom avatars and leave comments, but we did more than that — each and every one of you can create your own group, invite members, create friend networks, engage in select chat options (sort of like a Discord server), and even write your own blogs to share (or not) as you choose. And, as with old RBR back in the 2000s, we gladly accept user submissions (we welcome them even); we have absolutely no problem bumping you and your content to the front page or sharing the glory, such as it is. We’re building this together. You could even end up on staff — every single one of us, and every non-founding admin and contributor at SBN began that way. Hell, I even launched the careers of mainstay Gumps like Stephen Smith. Alex Lewis, and Clint Lamb. Today’s shitpost could be tomorrow’s paycheck.
But it begins with putting a community back into the community. Too many places have lost site of what made websites special: You. We have not.
And that’s just the stuff that you can do today. Even more ambitious features will be rolling out over the coming weeks. We know you’re going to love them, including infographics, polls, photospreads, and more.
So get signed up, reserve that username, share some dank memes, find some friends, draft your own blog article, send us a submission to erik@tflfootball.com. (I could use the help, TBH). We’re also creating all of the social media accounts now: follow those and say hi when you get a chance. And, yes, we always accept donations, especially since we are working on an ad-free honor system until such time as membership tiers and perks are worked out.
But, above all — this is my personal plea to you: engage with your fellow readers and the content, share the site, share the content, and let’s finish knocking down the rest of the rotten edifice that passes for sports journalism in the year of our Nate Oats 2026.
The old world has died; all that remains is to stand in the breach. We are ready to do so. Join us.
