When I came to work for The Bison in the fall of 2014, this, right here, was all I knew how to do. I was a hard-core sports fan with tons of opinions, a decent amount of writing skill and no outlet to voice the many random sports notions floating around in my head. I wasn’t sure about AP Style, I had never written a game story — much less a feature — and the only thing I knew for sure was that I could rant and rave about what I thought I knew better than everyone else.

While working for the newspaper, I’ve learned how to do all of those things and then some. I’ve discovered the difference between kerning and leading (sort of). I’ve found creativity in page design that I didn’t know I had. (“You can’t lay out the sports page the same way every week, David — figure it out.”) I’ve been given all the tools necessary to pursue everything I want to do, simply by working for The Bison. The experience I’ve gathered from working here is invaluable, and I can’t speak highly enough of my time on staff.

All of that to say, somewhere, underneath all of the fine-tuning I went through in learning how to work on a newspaper, the part of me that just wants to rant and rave about random sports stuff is still there. I’m sure many of you can relate to this feeling, but when you are as passionate about sports as I am, you never run out of things to talk about. Thankfully, that part of me has gotten to spread its wings and fly this year in the form of this column.

I resolved from day one on the job that I was going to write whatever I felt like from week-to-week with no agenda — in other words, just whatever popped into my head. Because of that, you all have had to endure an incredible amount of Gamecock insight for a private school in Arkansas, a ton of complaining about things I don’t like and even an article dumping on Kobe Bryant for not being good at basketball.

For putting up with all of that, I want to say thank you. Thank you for reading the things that I wrote this year, and thank you for taking the time to tell me you enjoyed them (or that they were garbage). There would be no point in doing what we do if it was not for all of you, our readers. I will truly miss this next year when I voyage into the real world.

Thanks for reading,

David Salley

P.S. Go Gamecocks.