Moving On **UPDATED**

Hey RCP readers. This is Mike. If you’ve been paying attention to this site, which I’m sure you have, you might have noticed that I haven’t been writing much, if at all, for the Rip City Project. You may have also noticed that the site has not ceased to exist. On the contrary, in my absence, and with an influx of some fresh new talent, the Rip City Project has flourished.

Near the end of the 2012-13 season, I was given the opportunity to cover the Blazers for the Willamette Week. Those of you who live in the Portland metro area are no doubt aware of the WW. For those of you who don’t live in Portland, the Willamette Week is one of the two alternative weekly newspapers in the Rose City that cover news, culture, the arts, and sports. Because of this opportunity, I have decided to step away from the Rip City Project.

Because Fansided is such a great place for writers, and because there is an abundance of writers with an interest in writing about sports, it was not a problem at all to find people willing and able to pick up RCP when I was ready to put it down. As I said, and as you have read, David is a fantastic blogger, he has brought in some other equally fantastic bloggers, and going into this very important off-season and the season that will begin in the fall, the Rip City Project is well positioned to continue to add great insight and coverage to the Blazer blog core.

As Blazer fans and as Blazer bloggers, there is no shortage of places to get news and read and write great coverage. RCP is lucky to be in the same market as arguably one of the best run team blogs on the web (Blazersedge in case you were wondering), and it’s no accident that more than one of the top-flight bloggers got there start covering the Blazers. We have a fan base that cares and a fan base that pays attention. That makes the job of covering the Blazers both fun and challenging. It’s been my pleasure to do what I’ve done for the last few seasons through the good and the bad.

Moving forward, I will continue to write about the Blazers albeit in a different fashion. I will no longer be writing game recaps, previews, and news stories, but I will still be around writing about my favorite team and the team I know everybody in Blazer-land loves. In the future you will be able to find my stuff here, you can also follow me on twitter under my personal handle @mikeacker.

I’m not really one for long-winded farewell posts, so I’ll wrap it up by saying thanks to Coup and SJ for putting in the work that made the Rip City Project one of the great Blazer blogs on the Internet, thanks to Sean Highkin for being a great first blogging partner, and thanks to Casey Jarman for being an awesome guy and giving my name to the Willamette Week to get the whole thing going. To those of you who don’t know, Casey previously covered the Blazers for WW. He recently moved to San Francisco to work for the Believer, and pretty soon he’ll be a household name. I met Casey way back in 2008 when I was an intern with the Blazers. His writing about the team was hands down the best out there. Here’s a link to his masterful feature on Channing Frye back when Channing Frye was the only hipster in the NBA. Here’s another link to a piece from WW about Casey taking off for SF.

Hit me up on the email if you want to chat about the Blazers. mike.acker1@gmail.com

And thanks again!

**UPDATE**

One of the main reasons I put off writing a farewell post is that I won’t actually be leaving the Blazer beat. Another reason was because I knew that if I tried to thank the people who’d played a hand in my Blazer coverage, I would forget somebody. As has been pointed out to me, I forgot arguably the most important guy. Casey Holdahl, who I’m sure you all know as the guy behind the vast majority of the official team coverage for the Blazers’ website picked me to be one of his interns WAY back in 2008 and connected me with the right people in 2010 when Coup and SJ offered me one of the two spots that were opening on RCP’s staff. So Casey, thanks for everything, and sorry I forgot you!