RAGBRAI Organizers Split from Register

[Walden4Prez]

My impression (only based on my opinion) is that RAGBRAI became very big and began to act that way. I would assume that with all the economic impact deals started to be done to impact the route. Less and less money started going to charities and more to who knows where. All that said, this organizer guy has been part of that for 16 years. I am sure he wanted out from under Rag and I agree he is using the timing of all of this to make his move. I don't see it as "Killing RAGBRAI". People are going to get together and ride no matter what it is called. If it hurts the Rag, I am all for it. That was my opinion before I had ever heard of Carson.

 

[NoCreativity]

Sorry if someone already posted this, but ragbrai/the register are absolutely getting roasted on Twitter.

Lol, people still can't let this go, imagine if the people of Iowa could actually channel all this outrage into something productive.

 

[isukendall]

I for one would be a big fan of the self-supported type ride. The concerts and stuff are cool but what percentage of people who "ride" RAGBRAI actually ride their bike across the state? The more and more time I spend there the more I realize most are just there for the party and ride MAYBE 50% of the time. The rest is spent on the bus. Who knows. I'm interested to see where this goes though!

I always joke that you don't need a bike to do RAGBRAI, you just need to be fun and have a friend with a bus. And there's a lot of truth to that. Our group has people that ride hard, people that party hard, and is mostly people that do both at the same time. And everyone treats it like a vacation, because that's exactly what it is. I think if you remove the party aspect completely and make it strictly a "bike ride", it loses a ton of appeal, at least for the group I ride with. And TBH, I would stop driving across Colorado and Nebraska to do it every year, like I have been.

 

[NorthCyd]

No reports from the interview with the former RAGBRAI director on The Morning Rush?

It's pretty easy to go listen to the podcast on Iheart radio if you really want to listen. IMO he didn't do a great job explaining why he was leaving. He made it clear he was not planning on this at all until a few weeks ago. Kept saying they wouldn't let him put out his own message to represent RAGBRAI on the Carson King thing. The message he wanted out wasn't strong support of King, just wanted to basically say the stance of the Register does not represent the stance of RAGBRAI. Kinda of felt like he was talking a lot about how he thought the backlash was going to damage the ride a lot. He had zero issues with anything prior to this when dealing with the Register.

Based on the interview it feels poorly explained and very reactionary. I feel like he's been planning this far longer than he was saying in the interview. The timing and plan seem very calculated to me.

 

[Trice]

It's pretty easy to go listen to the podcast on Iheart radio if you really want to listen. IMO he didn't do a great job explaining why he was leaving. He made it clear he was not planning on this at all until a few weeks ago. Kept saying they wouldn't let him put out his own message to represent RAGBRAI on the Carson King thing. The message he wanted out wasn't strong support of King, just wanted to basically say the stance of the Register does not represent the stance of RAGBRAI. Kinda of felt like he was talking a lot about how he thought the backlash was going to damage the ride a lot. He had zero issues with anything prior to this when dealing with the Register.

Based on the interview it feels poorly explained and very reactionary. I feel like he's been planning this far longer than he was saying in the interview. The timing and plan seem very calculated to me.

RAGBRAI belongs to the Register. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Register's stance, the stance of RAGBRAI is whatever the Register wants it to be. This guy would seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the employer/employee relationship.

Or, as is pretty transparently the case, he understands this perfectly and is simply trying to capitalize on the Register's mishandling of the Carson King story to further his own private venture, but is fumbling the hell out of his explanation.

 

[Clone5]

I'm at the same point as a lot of you where I'm thinking there's more to this than just the Carson King situation. If it is just that it doesn't seem like reason enough to do all of this.
It will be interesting to see how all of this progresses considering the Iowa Ride took the usual week of RAGBRAI and the area of the state RAGBRAI was probably going to use in 2020.
What would it look like if RAGBRAI did a ride earlier in the summer and/or changed it up to go North/South?

 

[CYdTracked]

After hearing the interview this morning I agree I think he's been looking to get out before this but the Carson King mess just accelerated the timeline. He was also careful to mention how he was not working on this one the DMR watch but his own free time during the nights and weekends so I would guess as long as his emails and texts will back that up the DMR would not have much of a case against him for doing this on the clock. I missed the first few minutes but caught the bulk of the interview and it sounds like RAGBRAI has been dying a slow death recently and his fear was this bad publicity with the Carson King drama was only going to make that worse because now people had a reason not to register which is how they generate the dollars they need to have the event.

My personal opinion coming from someone that has never gone on RAGBRAI nor have any ties to either side of this is that the DMR would be wise to just let this one go and not drag it out in court and make a bigger mess of things. Not sure what they would really accomplish out of it because even if they were to win a lawsuit their event is pretty much a big mess now losing all it's staff that plans it plus the added negative exposure they will get out of a lawsuit will probably just hurt the registrations even more.

 

[Urbandale2013]

RAGBRAI belongs to the Register. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the Register's stance, the stance of RAGBRAI is whatever the Register wants it to be. This guy would seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of the employer/employee relationship.

Or, as is pretty transparently the case, he understands this perfectly and is simply trying to capitalize on the Register's mishandling of the Carson King story to further his own private venture, but is fumbling the hell out of his explanation.

Ultimately the DMR can chose the stance of RAGBRAI but they hired him to run the event and from the sound of it historically it operates pretty independently.

You seem to have misunderstanding of how the relationship works not him. If your boss hired you to do something and then tied your hands on how you could run it then you’d rightfully be mad.

I just don’t get where this nefarious motive is in this deal. The guy clearly IMO cares deeply about the event as an institution. He felt that the DMR was going to destroy it for a multitude of reasons. Unless he’s taking a much larger salary here (which is highly doubtful) what is in it for him to ruffle feathers by starting a new one. He risks it failing and therefore losing his job. From what we know he doesn’t appear to profit even if it is much more successful.

 

[ricochet]

The one thing that sucks about the new event... The Name.. Ragbrai was a cool name. Even though a lot of people have no idea what it stands for and some don't care. However, the name itself was better than just "The Iowa Ride". They could have came up with a cool name that meant something even if nobody knew what the hell it meant.

The could have resurrected the TOGIR name (The Other Great Iowa Ride). Isn't that what the Cedar Rapids Gazette called their ride? I think it only lasted a couple years and did a North/South route instead of East/West. Unless my memory is totally gone and I'm just making stuff up.

 

[Trice]

Ultimately the DMR can chose the stance of RAGBRAI but they hired him to run the event and from the sound of it historically it operates pretty independently.

You seem to have misunderstanding of how the relationship works not him. If your boss hired you to do something and then tied your hands on how you could run it then you’d rightfully be mad.

I just don’t get where this nefarious motive is in this deal. The guy clearly IMO cares deeply about the event as an institution. He felt that the DMR was going to destroy it for a multitude of reasons. Unless he’s taking a much larger salary here (which is highly doubtful) what is in it for him to ruffle feathers by starting a new one. He risks it failing and therefore losing his job. From what we know he doesn’t appear to profit even if it is much more successful.

This shouldn't be difficult. If you are hired by another entity to run something, you are by definition not independent. Even if you typically operate with a great deal of latitude, that is at the leisure of your boss(es). He/she/they are absolutely within their rights to tell you to operate in another fashion.

There are a million different ways to handle this and very few of them are going to make the Register look good, but if this RAGBRAI director thought the Register was going to let him - their employee - use their own event to club the Register over the head with publicly, he is either a pretty dim bulb or he's just using that as an excuse because he knows that people who are already enraged at the Register will eat it up.

 

[06_CY]

I think a North/South ride would be pretty neat to shake things up.

He may not have been working on the new venture on DMR time, but he likely wasn't putting full effort into RAGBRAI knowing they were wanting to get this new deal started. Pure speculation, but logical.

 

[isukendall]

I think a North/Soith ride would be pretty neat to shake things up.

He may not have been working on the new venture on DMR time, but he likely wasn't putting full effort into RAGBRAI knowing they were wanting to get this jew deal started. Pure speculation, but logical.

I'm gonna go ahead and assume this was a keystroke error.

 

[06_CY]

I'm gonna go ahead and assume this was a keystroke error.

Yes, very much so. Sorry about that. Editing now.

 

[Bigman38]

Best case scenario is the DMR sells the naming rights to him, but it seems way to bitter of a split for that to happen this year. Maybe eventually though, would make a lot of sense for both parties.

 

[cyson]

I'm so tired of the Carson King story.

No ****. Mimed in front of a tv camera subsequently showered with money that he promptly gave away. Makes us all feel good because we’re Iowa nice.

 

[CYdTracked]

I think a North/Soith ride would be pretty neat to shake things up.

He may not have been working on the new venture on DMR time, but he likely wasn't putting full effort into RAGBRAI knowing they were wanting to get this new deal started. Pure speculation, but logical.

I'm betting if the DMR sticks to their guns and plans to hold RAGBRAI the same week at this new ride the Iowa DOT and State Patrol are going to be in a tough spot where they may have to choose a side. They still have to get approval of a route and resources to make it happen and I can't imagine they will want to stretch their resources thin on opposite sides of the state for a whole week at the same time. Someone is either going to be told no or they have to change their dates.

I just don't see how the DMR comes out of this a winner regardless what they do. If they sue and try to keep their event alive then essentially they are going against their own PR advice of "letting this situation blow over" because they would now be keeping this in the public spotlight as it plays out in the legal system. If they win with all the reputation damage that has been done how popular will RAGBRAI still be when the now former director says it was already on shaky ground before this? Then if they just let it go and chalk this up as a no-win situation they admit defeat too.

Again, this whole situation and all the PR fires that have come with it would have never happened if they never ran bit about Carson's old tweets and they could have saved face had they just apologized after the backlash they received after they did. It doesn't matter if they think they were still right to publish that, we've all probably had to apologize for something at some point in our lives we felt we were right about but needed to issue the apology so we could forgive and move on and that is exactly what the DMR needed to do instead of continuing to defend themselves and basically sweeping the backlash under the rug hoping it all just blows over. TJ basically just pulled the band-aid off the wound with this announcement and now it's bleeding again. Does the DMR finally take steps to let the wound start healing or just put another band-aid on it and hope no one else picks at the wound some more?

 

[cycfan1]

Lol, people still can't let this go, imagine if the people of Iowa could actually channel all this outrage into something productive.

It was channeled already in the form of a $3m check.

 

[Farnsworth]

The one thing that sucks about the new event... The Name.. Ragbrai was a cool name. Even though a lot of people have no idea what it stands for and some don't care. However, the name itself was better than just "The Iowa Ride". They could have came up with a cool name that meant something even if nobody knew what the hell it meant.

Yes Iowa Ride is so plain jane. I think it cheapens it

 

[Trice]

I'm betting if the DMR sticks to their guns and plans to hold RAGBRAI the same week at this new ride the Iowa DOT and State Patrol are going to be in a tough spot where they may have to choose a side. They still have to get approval of a route and resources to make it happen and I can't imagine they will want to stretch their resources thin on opposite sides of the state for a whole week at the same time. Someone is either going to be told no or they have to change their dates.

I just don't see how the DMR comes out of this a winner regardless what they do. If they sue and try to keep their event alive then essentially they are going against their own PR advice of "letting this situation blow over" because they would now be keeping this in the public spotlight as it plays out in the legal system. If they win with all the reputation damage that has been done how popular will RAGBRAI still be when the now former director says it was already on shaky ground before this? Then if they just let it go and chalk this up as a no-win situation they admit defeat too.

Again, this whole situation and all the PR fires that have come with it would have never happened if they never ran bit about Carson's old tweets and they could have saved face had they just apologized after the backlash they received after they did. It doesn't matter if they think they were still right to publish that, we've all probably had to apologize for something at some point in our lives we felt we were right about but needed to issue the apology so we could forgive and move on and that is exactly what the DMR needed to do instead of continuing to defend themselves and basically sweeping the backlash under the rug hoping it all just blows over. TJ basically just pulled the band-aid off the wound with this announcement and now it's bleeding again. Does the DMR finally take steps to let the wound start healing or just put another band-aid on it and hope no one else picks at the wound some more?

I'm sorry but people are being woefully naive if they think an apology from the Register would have satisfied people. The online mob got at least a half pound of flesh with the firing of the reporter and that did nothing to calm them.

People continue to paint this RAGBRAI thing as some kind of Register failing based on...what exactly? That the director - whose motives are very much in question here - quit of his own accord and trashed the Register on his way out the door?

You're taking everything he says at face value when he has pretty obvious reason to bend the truth to benefit himself.

 

[DeereClone]

The more I think about this, the more I think this has been a long brewing feud between the organizers and corporate, and the Carson King fiasco became the sympathetic out they’ve been looking for.

There’s entirely too much leg work done to have been put together in the past two weeks

Completely agree and because of that I am torn on this. On one hand I don't like the DMR at all and their handling of the King story was horrid, so I think it is funny that they are getting completely burned on this deal. On the other hand, the new ride organizers seem to be taking advantage of the King story to propel their own personal interests in the new ride.

The whole thing is a cluster and it seems that there is no "good guy" to cheer for.