Welcome to our newest contributor, Derek Duke!

We’re always looking to add talented writers to the WRNL staff, and we’re extremely excited about our newest addition. So, without further to do, we’d like to introduce you to Derek Duke, our new ‘crootin guru.

Hello Cyclone fans, I hope all is well with you. I just wanted to introduce myself to you because I will be covering Iowa State recruiting for Wide Right and Natty Lite from now on. I am greatly appreciative for the guys here for accepting me and welcoming me with open arms and some silly questions, but I will save that for another time.

To tell you a little about myself, my name is Derek Duke and I currently live in San Antonio, Texas (Yes, the same city as the Valero Alamo Bowl). I have lived in San Antonio for the past few years, but I am originally from the small Texas town of Shiner where you may have heard of Shiner Beer. My love of Big 12 football has grown over the years and so has my passion for writing or blogging as I like to call it. Eventually those two things met when I started working for Heartland College Sports where I still cover the Big 12 to this day. I also do a Big 12 podcast called Big 12 Country during football season as well, so my schedule is full of Big 12 football year-round.

You’re probably asking yourself, what am I doing covering Iowa State recruiting? Well, I have always kept up with football recruiting in the Big 12 and when it came to Iowa State, I felt like there was a little lack of coverage considering how the football program was up and coming. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands and over the past few months, I am now up to my ears in Iowa State recruiting and so far, it has been a blast and the feedback I have gotten is awesome. So, when the opportunity came to take my Iowa State recruiting coverage to an Iowa State focused website like this, it was a match made in heaven like gravy and chicken fried steak.

I will do my best to post at least once or twice a week and for those who have followed along with me previously, I do a piece called “Bacon Bits” as my Iowa State recruiting notebook for anything I have that I can give to you in the drop of a hat. Of course, I will have feature pieces with commitments and break downs as well. Before I let you go, I just want to thank this website once again for allowing me to be here and I want to give a big thank you to all the Cyclone fans who have welcomed me with open arms. I promise to give you the recruiting coverage you deserve. Also, if you would like to follow along, you can give me a follow on Twitter (@DerekDuke25), Cheers!