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CollegeClub meets its fate
Tuesday, August 22 2000
For weeks CollegeClub.com has been talking about a major announcement being imminent concerning their "challenge" with paying off a mounting pile of bills. Meanwhile, of course, CollegeClub's dwindling staff have been slaving away in the increasingly irrational hope that their stock options would one day be worth something. Well, today the announcement finally came. CollegeClub is seeking Chapter 11 protection under the federal bankruptcy code and being sold for 20 million dollars to their direct competitor, Student Advantage.
So reviled was Student Advantage back when I worked there that it was called "Student Disadvantage." The irony, of course, was that when CollegeClub tried to "embrace and extend" Student Advantage's business model, it failed miserably. CollegeClub operatives in the field claimed to have signed up thousands of businesses for participation in CollegeClub's own discount card program and were even paid for this by CollegeClub, though in actuality they'd done nothing but copy Student Advantage's list of member businesses. This was the basis for a suit successfully brought against CollegeClub by Student Advantage late last year.
This announcement means that my stock options are now officially worthless. I can write them off as a loss on my taxes. I don't even think I'll be getting worthless certificates to use as wallpaper.
I wonder how Kevin the DBA is coping with this news. His last words to me on this subject were something to the effect of "I'd borrow money to buy CollegeClub stock. They're a sure thing."
It's amazing how the utter incompetence in that place, starting at the top with the psychotic phone-throwing antics of the Grand Pooh Bah and cascading downward through his spineless jargon-spewing lackeys, managed to drive that big truck of corporate potential into the brick wall of Chapter 11. So this is how it ends. CollegeClub is down to its last 20 dispirited employees and the company is being sold for peanuts. As one of CollegeClub's former VPs pointed out in a private email to me today, one of the few things of any lasting substance the world got out of the whole embarrassing tragedy was my account of what happened.
(Bennett Fisher, VP of Community Development, wrote me to correct a figure I'd gotten out of a news report about today's announcement. He says that CollegeClub still has about 100 employees.)
In the evening my housemate John and I hung out, drank some beers and talked about all sorts of amusing stuff. The more I talk to him, the more I realize he's a perfect housemate for me. Today, for example, he was telling me about what a visionary genius Ted Kaczynski is. John also mentioned his interest in perhaps getting a job as a project manager at a dot com and transitioning out of his schoolteacher career, although he admits the hours (8:30am - 2:30pm) are kind of nice. I wonder how the parents of his charges (he teaches K-6!) would react to his views about the Unabomber!
Because John finally got a $300 mattress delivered today (from 1-800-MATTRES - "leave off the final S for savings") he was able, for the first time ever, to spend the night.
Here are the fascinating particulars of
how the Big Brother story is altered by manipulative CBS producers.
Here is the research confirming the core premise of American Beauty:
homophobic guys have secret homosexual cravings.
The preceding link comes to you courtesy of some person who is so intent on being anonymous that he/she used the special paranoia-slaking service provided by Anonymizer.com. But then he/she emailed me with the odd demand that I give him/her credit. So here I am, giving him/her credit, though I have no idea who he/she was/is. He/she also sent me this link, which I'm including only for completeness.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?000822 feedback
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