An Unacknowledged or Classified Association

INTRODUCING: An Unacknowledged or Classified Association

Back in the summer of 2023, I had a hunch…

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2 years ago · 2 comments · Jack Reid

The newsletter will chronicle my investigation into the first International Monetary Fund official ever to be positively linked to the Central Intelligence Agency. That man was my grandfather, Jay H. Reid, Director of Information, who worked at the Fund from 1948 to 1980.

Here is a taste of what the project is all about:

This investigation is aimed at uncovering what the government hopes to keep secret about its relationship with Jay Reid.

In particular, I seek to answer the following questions:

• Did Jay work in intelligence or plans (also known as covert operations)?

• Was the IMF his target or his cover?

• Who else was in his CIA-affiliated network?

• Who were the decision makers?

• What, precisely was he working on?

• What were the end results?

There is a reason why Jay’s relationship with the CIA remains classified more than four decades after he retired from the IMF, and nearly 20 years after his death.

As you will discover, Jay Reid was a node that connected numerous strands of highly sensitive activities, both foreign and domestic.

An Unacknowledged or Classified Association is an entirely free newsletter, and I hope you will consider subscribing. The more people who are aware of, and following developments in the case, the more leverage I will have in my ongoing battle with the federal government over disclosure of relevant documents.

Thanks for your continued support. I’ll be back in your inboxes soon with a piece on NIL valuation!

For about a year, I published one to two articles per week while experimenting with content, article length, analytics tools, and visuals.

From all the number crunching, I was pretty confident that Tech would field a much improved team in Brent Pry’s second year. I wanted to up the newsletter’s game too.

So, for the second iteration, I made a number of upgrades, launched the podcast, and increased the content volume.

By the end of the season, I felt like I had taken the initial model about as far as I could.

Enter, the third era, or epoch, if we’re being fancy.

What’s to come in 2024

I mentioned in Sunday’s audit article that I published more than 93,000 (print article) words last year.

For the first eight months of 2023, all content was free. In September I launched a paid tier.

During the course of the season, the regular cadence was three free posts for every one paid post. Moving forward, the reverse will be true. The podcast will remain open to everyone and I will publish between two and four free articles each month.

All of the other content will require a paid subscription. And speaking of content, there will be changes there, too.

As you can see on the website, there are now more sections in the header pane:

• Commerce - everything money related; from NIL and the evolving forms of player compensation to coaching salaries, facility upgrades, and the team’s impact on the local economy

• Front Office - roster management is more complex than ever, with high school and community college (juco) recruiting, the transfer portal, and academics all relevant to the product that Tech puts on the field each year

• Games - detailed statistical analyses of Virginia Tech games

• History - past isn’t always prologue, but it is sometimes, and Virginia Tech has a rich, if not widely known, history when it comes to football

• Legal - analysis of relevant federal, state, and local legislation, as well as legal cases with the potential to impact the program

• Markets - competition for players, coaches, support staff, and even teams (in the case of conferences), in addition to an increased focus on betting markets

• Models - their design, specs, training protocol, testing and actual results

• News - updates about the newsletter and website

• Players - breakdowns of player performance, both individually and in tandem, such as the defensive line

• Podcast - all topics covered by Hokie Analytics are fair game for the podcast; some weeks it will be collections of statistical nuggets, others it will be deep dives into lawsuits or pending legislation, or trends I found hiding in the data that no one else is talking about

Other things to keep an eye out for

Here are a few other tweaks I’m making around the edges:

• More, but shorter posts - 1,200 words is too long for an average article; moving forward, most articles will be in the 600-800 word range, with only deep dive pieces going beyond that

• Punchier writing and formatting - the goal is to convey complicated information in as straight forward, and entertaining, a manner as possible

• Datawrapper visualizations - after much experimentation, this tool works best in Substack posts when the charts are inserted as images with a background; embedding is a crapshoot - when it works, it’s great, but too often something goes haywire, especially when emailed

• New data sources - I’m not ready to make any announcements, but I am eying one dataset in particular that is equal parts awesome and expensive

My commitment to everyone is to publish content that you won’t find anywhere else. In fact, I go out of my way to consume as much of what everyone else is publishing as I can in order to ensure that I provide Hokie Analytics readers with a truly unique and valuable product.

After all, if you can get the information somewhere else, you might as well just do that.

Help spread the word

As President John F. Kennedy so famously (almost) said:

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your newsletter can do for you — ask what you can do for your newsletter.

My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what Hokie Analytics will do for you — but what together we can do to grow man’s appreciation of college football analytics.

With that in mind, I ask for your help in spreading the word on the newsletter, which is currently read in 22 states.

By pooling our collective social circles, I have no doubt we can get this number to at least 40, if not all 50, states.

A special invitation to free subscribers

As we venture into an exciting new era for Hokie Analytics, I'm thrilled to extend a warm invitation to all free subscribers to explore the enriched experience of the paid tier. This isn't just about accessing more content - it's about diving deeper into the world of Virginia Tech football analytics, engaging with a community that shares your passion, and discovering insights you won't find anywhere else.

My commitment to delivering unparalleled analysis remains steadfast, and the paid tier amplifies this by offering exclusive articles, in-depth analyses, and special features designed to enhance your appreciation and understanding of the team.

Your Support Makes a Difference

Every subscription not only unlocks a treasure trove of content for you, but also directly supports the sustainability and growth of Hokie Analytics. It's through your engagement and support that I can continue to push boundaries and deliver content that makes a difference.

Subscribe now

Refer a friend

In keeping with the season’s theme of counting and reflection, I’m going to spend the next week closing the books on 2023. I’ll start today with an audit of Hokie Analytics.

Volume

Print Articles

In 2023, I published 93,665 words of print content on Hokie Analytics. Spread over 76 articles, that comes out at 1,232 words per article.

Publication cadence went from one article per week, or roughly four each month, from January through August to an average of more than 10 each month starting with the season’s kickoff in September.

September was the busiest month, with 14 articles published comprising 15,392 words.

In contrast, July was the quietest month at 4,976 words spread out among four articles.

Seasonality is alive and well in college football!

Podcasts

I launched the Hokie Analytics Podcast in September. The 15 posted episodes in 2023 totaled 469 minutes of content, with an average of just over 31 minutes per episode.

Analytics, by nature, is inclined toward visual media. If a picture’s worth a thousand words, than a 1,000 word article with three graphs is basically an essay.

Bringing all that to life in a sound-only format was a challenge I was excited to tackle.

Like the print content, podcast episode topics ranged the full gamut: from detailed reviews of offensive line play to strategic decision making, model reviews, play selection, and risk management.

Growth

Hokie Analytics began to really find its audience in 2023. From a low-ish base in January, the number of total subscribers increased 10-fold throughout the year.

Among referrals, the highest number of new subscribers came via Settling the Score with Ricky LaBlue, so a tip of the hat and a big thanks to Ricky. Settling the Score is on my short list of must-reads, and if you are not yet a subscriber there, I would highly recommend checking it out.

In addition to strong growth numbers in new subscriptions, Hokie Analytics saw a roughly 5x increase in the number of page views that December articles generated compared to those published in January.

Page views are very important because I view Hokie Analytics as both a newsletter and a website. A significant percentage of the articles I write are timeless, or at least have a comparatively long shelf life, so I am keen to keep the website clean and well organized in order to invite readers to revisit posts at a later date.

Best of 2023

A number of posts really stuck out this year, either for being especially prescient or really connecting with readers. I present below the top five in chronological order

1. The first post to really make a splash this year was Ron Crook and the 2021 Miracle in Cincinnati. Published on March 17, this article looked at new Virginia Tech Offensive Line Coach Ron Crook and his history of coaching lines that performed, as a whole, greater than the sum of their parts. After the offensive line’s struggles in 2022, the prospect of Tech finding a coaching diamond in the rough seemed to be welcome news as spring practice began.

2. At the absolute nadir of college football news, in late June, I published Southern Conference Split All About Business. In this age of the supposed P2 super conferences, most Tech fans are unaware of the fact that the Hokies were once a member of arguably the greatest super conference of all-time: the Southern Conference. That’s right, Tech used to compete in a massive league that spanned the entire Southeast and featured, in addition to what was then known as VPI (no SU), Alabama, Clemson, LSU, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and many others. The reasons for the initial split, the one that resulted in the formation of the SEC, will be familiar to fans today: it was all about media rights.

3. College football is perhaps the craziest market ever devised in the history of capitalism. In How Competitive Market Forces Impact the Virginia Tech Football Program, published on December 10, I illustrated the push and pull of the market on Hokies football. This article got a ton of views and, if nothing else, fans frustrated with the Old Dominion series, amongst other common complaints, emerged with a better understanding of the dynamics that lead to such deals getting done.

4. For me, perhaps the most surprising article to strike a cord with readers was The Pending Announcement Nobody is Talking About, published on December 17. For all the love Kyron Drones (deservedly) received last year, he also took a lot of hits. And while he never left a game injured, the prospect of RS-Freshman Pop Watson having to step in and replace Drones at some point in 2024 left me uneasy. I made the case that the Hokies should do all they could to convince Wells to return for his final season of eligibility. It is unclear whether the program took this advice, but Wells ultimately decided to leave the program.

5. Finally, I will note the high listener numbers for Episode 15 of the podcast, entitled, Apathy and the Current Bowl System. At this point, it’s clear that something needs to change with the bowls, given all the opt outs. If Hokie Analytics Podcast listeners are any indication, college football fans are open to creative proposals.

Thanks to everyone who read or subscribed in 2023. Now it’s onward and upward in 2024!

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