September 4, 2015-SI's Campus Rush Kicks off College Football SeasonSMU SMC

What day is it? GAME DAY. As the first games kick off, Sports Illustrated Group kicked off its newest website devoted to college football, SI’s Campus Rush. However, don’t expect to just find stats and replays of the action. SI’s Campus Rush aims to capture not just the news from the field, but the real culture and excitement found on college campuses across the country during game day.

The decision to create Campus Rush came in part from the increased audience on Sport’s Illustrated’s website, SI.com, for both pro and college football. Paul Fichtenbaum, editor of Sport’s Illustrated Group, attributed the increased popularity to the growing participation in fantasy sports, as well as last year’s inaugural College Football Playoff. Instead of cannibalizing from SI.com, Campus Rush complements its parent website, bringing a broader story to SI’s stats and analytics. According to Fichtenbaum, Campus Rush spotlights the “passion, pageantry and culture” of college football.

One of the most unique aspects to the site is its “social wall.” With a layout comparable to a Pinterest board, the social wall acts as a quasi social media platform, displaying Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram posts from the fans during game day. Every Saturday, the social wall is featured prominently on its homepage.

Articles on SI’s Campus Rush include everything from a passionate feature on one receiver’s comeback from an injury to the best eats around the Virginia Tech stadium. With such a broad range of articles, SI’s Campus Rush really looks to bring in that campus-wide spirit only found on game day. To provide that authenticity, SI has enlisted 66 student journalists from top football schools to become “campus correspondents,” writing articles featured on the site about their own school.

While SI’s Campus Rush remains a site exclusively for college football, Fichtenbaum is open to the possibility of adding other college sports into the mix in the future.