SB Nation United and you

I consider CougCenter my home, the place I can go to relax, vent and clear my head. I just happen to do it by writing, reading comments and consuming anything I may have missed. For a lot of us, this is like home on the Internet -- a familiar place where one can kick up their feet and enjoy each other's company.

You may have come home and seen the house repainted, the furniture change and a pantry with food in different places than it was yesterday. SB Nation United is a big change, and change is scary. We get that. We're still adapting to the new look and feel of the website ourselves, both on the public-facing end and the editorial side.

But I can tell you a lot of smart and talented people put a ton of effort into this redesign, building the site from the ground up. Was it ever going to be perfect on the first day? Of course not. Nothing is. But our amazingly talented product and support teams are responsive, able to adapt at a moment's notice. They're here to help us all as we dive into the new look of SB Nation.

It's an adjustment, and I understand it. Is it frustrating to see some of the anger directed at the product team? For me personally, it's disheartening. I've watched our team, which is, in my opinion, the best around, slave over every detail of SB Nation United. None of us have had a significant amount of sleep in probably about a week, so we're cranky to top it all off. But they're still here, working hard to squash bugs and field constructive input.

Change can be downright frightening, even if this is just the Internet. I was here before the first real iteration of Chorus rolled out. It was before comments auto-refreshed, when homepages looked, well ... just old, I guess. The changes were made and widespread panic ensued. There were threats by users and at one point a flesh-eating pony may have been deployed. The change scared the hell out of communities -- communities I was a part of -- and they weren't shy about letting everyone know.

Over time -- a short amount of time -- everyone adjusted. The MASSIVE SCARY CHANGE became the new normal and lived for about four years. That first "big" change that scared everyone became the look and feel that communities were so attached to. It's the look some were so shocked to see disappear this morning.

All that is to say you'll adjust to the new look. And the new look will also adjust to you. Just because it was launched today doesn't mean the product team won't be taking feedback and making changes. You'd be amazed at how quickly they work and how receptive they are to constructive criticism.

We're in this thing together and I have a vested interest in everything going well. I've spent my day presiding over controlled chaos while also listening to complaints, compliments and everything in between. I've seen it all, and the CougCenter community has been fantastic in its response to the new design.

Stick with us and keep sending feedback. You can get ahold of our outstanding support team at support@sbnation.com.