The Mane Land Announces New Orlando Pride Podcast

As part of our ongoing commitment to provide our readers and listeners with the best soccer coverage in the City Beautiful within our means, The Mane Land is pleased to announce that a new podcast dedicated to the Orlando Pride and women’s soccer will soon be among our offerings. The new show, SkoPurp Soccer: An Orlando Pride PawedCast, will debut this month and we will target Wednesday as the day the podcast will typically publish, although schedule quirks may require an earlier or later release in the week on occasion.

The decision to spin the Orlando Pride off into their own podcast has been in the plans for a long time. We wanted to give the show its own dedicated feed, so those who wish to subscribe only to the Pride show can do so. Orlando City fans who also support the Pride will want to subscribe to both shows to ensure they don’t miss an episode, although we will also run the first episode of SkoPurp on the original feed for The Mane Land PawedCast just to give listeners a taste and to grow awareness of the show.

Why a Second Show?

In addition to giving the club the respect it deserves by dedicating a show specifically to the Pride, rather than sticking Orlando Pride news after the Orlando City recap week after week, launching SkoPurp will allow us to expand on our discussion of the team’s matches, bring in specific guests who we know will directly appeal to the show’s audience, and shorten The Mane Land PawedCast to a more reasonable length.

The Mane Land PawedCast is itself moving to a shorter format, by which the show’s usual segments will be separated into multiple episodes, in an effort to make them more easily digestible on a morning and/or afternoon commute or during workouts. To keep the length down, our site’s original show will be broken into two episodes per week, with the first typically dropping on Tuesday and the second on Friday during the season. The first will have the weekend match recap, any team news, and an OCB segment. The show later in the week will include guest interviews, the “mailbagbox” segment, and what will hopefully be more fleshed out previews of the next upcoming game(s). We anticipate the new format starting next week.

SkoPurp episodes will typically feature our breakdown of the Pride’s weekend match, team news, any scheduled guest interview segment, then our “mailbagbox” and a preview and key match-ups/predictions segment at the end.

What’s in a Name?

Why “SkoPurp?”

“SkoPurp” is simply a shortened way of saying “Let’s go purple!” — the club’s primary color. As far as we can tell, the phrase was originally coined (or at least popularized) by former Orlando Pride and UCF midfielder and current Central Florida Crusaders player Bridget Callahan. Being that Callahan is a (Hollywood) Florida native with strong soccer ties to Central Florida, it seems appropriate that her term is a prominent part of the show’s title.

We wanted to ensure the show was easily found in podcast searches, so the full title may seem a little wordy, but it should turn up in searches for the terms “soccer” and “Orlando Pride” as well. Using the word “PawedCast” in the name also ties the show identifiably back to The Mane Land PawedCast. For brevity’s sake, we will often refer to the show merely as “SkoPurp Soccer” or “SkoPurp.”

Will SkoPurp Have the Same Hosts as The ManeLand PawedCast?

Yes, at least to start. Me and my cohost on The Mane Land PawedCast, David Rohe, will also host SkoPurp Soccer. But this is not a vanity project. We want the show to have the best hosts that it can, and I would ideally like it to have a woman’s voice (or women’s voices) as part of the team discussion. If we aren’t the best people we can find to do the job, we will gladly step aside for those who are. We are also not married to the two-host format, although it seemed to work best for The Mane Land PawedCast.

We would like to audition potential new talent to either co-host or even run the show. Interested parties should email us and provide any links they might have to previous podcasting or voiceover work, or to schedule an audition. At this point, those positions will be considered voluntary, and any future compensation for such positions will be directly related to the income of the LLC behind this independent website and SkoPurp Soccer’s specific, and individual ability to monetize through advertising revenue.

The Logo

The logo for SkoPurp Soccer: An Orlando Pride PawedCast was designed by Jerry Cutchens of Carina Marketing, who also designed the logo for this new website and the new logo for The Mane Land PawedCast. It prominently incorporates not only the black swans who inhabit Orlando’s iconic Lake Eola Park — the namesake of the Pride’s first official supporters group — but also a color scheme that echoes the club’s. The swan not only serves as the ‘S’ in SkoPurp, but also looms large as a background feature. The soccer ball design for the first ‘o’ in the name incorporates the blue as if it were an overhead view of the Lake Eola fountain, which adorns the club’s crest.   

We hope the addition of SkoPurp Soccer will better serve the Orlando Pride fan community, and while we regret not being able to provide a “one-stop shop” for fans of both teams, the reality is that the crossover percentage of MLS and NWSL fans isn’t as large as one might assume. Fans of both teams can listen to both shows, while those who are specifically drawn to only one team will get a more streamlined podcast that better fits their needs.

We invite you to follow the new podcast on Twitter. We also invite your feedback on this new endeavor and we look forward to bringing you this new show!