We are gonna miss everybody…including Uncle Charles

After 3 years plus of forced jokes, questionable spelling practices, professional wrestling references, and an exhaustion of the full jokes-about-Houston-Nutt catalog, I have decided that it’s time to shut down Friends of Program in it’s current state and form.  There are a couple of factors that led up to this, but essentially it’s just a lack of time and the self-inflicted pressure to keep it going on a daily basis.  The moment I started to feel like I had to get something up on the site and not because I wanted to was when I knew it was probably time.  Eh…we had a good run.

There are several people that I absolutely need to acknowledge and thank for making this site what it was…whatever that may be.  The list is long, so brace yourselves.  First off, this site would never have even started or evolved if not for my good friends Mike Medallion and The Juice.  Auburn fans both, but don’t judge their character on that one fact…FOTP wouldn’t be what it is without them.  Thanks to Rick Muscles for bringing his creativity, humor, and workout tips to the site and to our podcast, Friends with Muscles (which we will continue to do). I also want to thank others that contributed to the site over years, including Steven Godfrey, Ray T., TZilla,  and the brothers Stuckey, who lended actual talent to whatever it is we normally do around here.  I want to thank a couple of bloggers and writers specifically, who helped promote and encourage this site over the years….A big thanks to Joe Kinsey at Busted Coverage who was there to always offer advice and the occasional story of Bama fan doing something gumpish.   Thank you to Spencer Hall at SBNation/EDSBS who helped validate the site by linking to it over at EDSBS and on his Twitter every now and again.  He’s a much better writer than all of us and the simple fact that you would go from his site to this one means that some of his readers are either extremely bored or just don’t have discerning enough writing tastes.  Thank you to Holly Anderson (and Doug, of course) at SI.com and Jason Kirk at SBNation for including the site in their mentions on the regular….probably undeserved but certainly appreciated.  Thanks to other blogging bros like Matt Hinton, Bobby Big Wheel, Celebrity Hot Tub, the guys at Red Cup Rebellion, Adam Kramer, Barrett Sallee, and Adam Jacobi for including me in the fun and inspiring (attempted) better writing around here thanks to your efforts on your own sites.  Thank you to several radio guys who let me come on their shows and talk nonsense every now and again as well as anyone who has ever let me contribute to their site, you were truly a terrible judge of character.  Thanks to everyone who has ever linked, referenced, posted on a message board, tweeted, or mentioned in a dark corner somewhere anything from this site.  You helped keep this thing going as long as it did…and more importantly, thank you to anyone and everyone who has ever stopped by the site, from those of you that come here on a regular basis (what’s wrong with you people!?) to those that stumbled on here thanks to a really racist comment thread from AL.com.  Thanks for your patronage and cocktails to you all.  Finally I want to thank  Houston Nutt, Dan Mullen, Bobby Petrino, Bobby Petrino’s mistress, Les Miles, Nick Saban, Gene Chizik, Lane Kiffin, Will Muschamp, PAAAWWWLLL, the bag man, Trooper Taylor, Ryan Mallett, AJ McCarron, AJ McCarron’s tattoo, AJ McCarron’s mom, Bama fan, Auburn fan, Arkansas fan, LSU fan, Shreveport, Ric Flair, and really anyone else who made writing jokes about college football fun and pretty easy sometimes….Gems, every single one of you.

As for me, Bunkie T. Perkins, I’m not gone for good…sorry.  I’ll be appearing on a site or two that you may be familiar within the near future.  I’ll keep you posted of the details when they become available on the ol’ Twitter feed.  Thank you again to everyone who has ever stopped by the site, on purpose or otherwise.  It’s been fun.