Why Our Writers Do What They Do...

I do this because I’ve loved the Rangers all my life, and I love
talking about them, both old and new. SBNation had no Rangers blog, I
was writing part time at Big Blue View and threw my hat on the ice for
consideration. Persistence paid off, and I got the gig. I’m not a
professional writer, never have been, doubt I ever will be. I just
enjoy giving Ranger fans something they didn’t have, a place to visit
daily for something new on the team.

I’ll admit, it has turned out to be much harder and more time
consuming than I ever imagined, because it literally is another full
time job, but the perks that come along with it, such as attending the
NHL Draft, meeting the great guys involved with SBNation, and
occasionally having your work recognized makes it all worth it.

I’m not going to include how I got into hockey (some of us did just that on the mailing list) but stick with the blogging gig:

I got into blogging by way of a couple of factors. In fall 2003, you could easily find on the web a bunch of Tampa Bay Lightning sites from the mid- and late-90’s that had not been touched. Those fans had given up when the Bolts got terrible after their first playoff appearence in 1995-96. That bugged me as it gave off the false impression that there were no Lightning fans on the web. What also bugged me was being taken as an also-ran voice when trying to contribute to a conversation on the official message board for the Bolts cable network (where most of the intelligent discussion about the team took place at the time)… That was minor, really, though… Another reason was the hearsay (going on to this day) that people were posting elsewhere about things regarding hockey in Tampa Bay (falsehoods about attendance, about ticket prices, about hockey fans in Tampa Bay in general). All together, no one wanted to be more than a message board member and find approval within a clique of local fans. There was no grander representation, nor desire for it.

The final compelling reason I started blogging was because I had a serious back operation in November of 2003… By February 2004 I was still doing physical therapy a few times a week and didn’t have anything else on my radar. I ended up purchasing the domain Boltsmag.com (which had been used by Rivals.com when it had a Tampa Bay Lightning community in the past) and just started writing. Post game reports, news, opinions and observations. Dispelling myths and calling BS when media persons elsewhere started using stereotypes to describe Lightning fans and Tampa Bay.

Of course, at that point in time I didn’t expect the Lightning to end up winning the Eastern Conference… Let alone making it to the Easter Conference final… or the Stanley Cup final. Or winning the whole damned thing! I may have started blogging in 2004 but it was dumb luck that all the pieces came together for the Bolts then.

And then, for NHL fans, all hell broke loose as the 2004-05 season was postponed and then canceled due to a work stoppage. There weren’t many bloggers around to begin with when I started, but the lockout killed off many who couldn’t persevere through the doldrums. I lasted, though (so did James Mirtle, Jes Golbez, Jon Swenson, Eric McErlain, Jon Press, Mike Chen, Tom Benjamin, a few others who I can’t recall).

The story doesn’t end with hockey coming back in 2005 though. I stopped writing a lot with Boltsmag as I got caught up in work, life, and the hyperlocal blogosphere in Tampa Bay. Helping others out and honing different web skills as I went. It side-tracked me from writing more than once.

This leads me to February of this year, where I wasn’t blogging much at all (had maybe a handful of posts all season about the Bolts). James (who was now head Hockey administrator here at SB Nation) dropped me a line and asked if I would be interested in coming on board with SB Nation… I really wasn’t sure about it and didn’t even know if I could live up to the commitment, knowing how I had been writing so little. I do love to write, and I love covering the Lightning… But besides life getting in the way, it does get tedious at times trying to think up something relevant to say that isn’t just re[eatomg what’s being said by X number of sources throughout the web.

But I like the challenge in the writing. I like the opportunity to try to build an online community and representation of Lightning hockey on the web… That’s why I do it.

I have a lot of friends, but no one’s really into hockey. So for years and years, I’ve really had no one to talk hockey to – until I started blogging. I mean, what’s the point in knowing stats if you’ve got no one to share them with, right?
 
I started watching hockey in Washington State – around the greater Seattle area. It was major juniors and the very occasional NHL preseason game. Up until this last season, the Vancouver Canucks haven’t bothered with broadcasting their games across the border. And forget about advertising in the Seattle area. For Vancouver, their hockey audience is strictly British Columbia and Washington be damned. This, despite Washington State currently having four major junior teams, and Portland (Ore.) having one as well. So other than HNIC, you had to trek all the way into BC to watch NHL hockey – TV, live, or otherwise.
 
Which is probably why I was only nominally a Canuck fan while I was there. Most people in the Seattle area have barely heard of hockey because of Vancouver’s neglect, despite Vancouver and Seattle only being 140 miles [225 km] apart (Seattle also being only 170 miles [270 km] away from the other Vancouver to the south in Washington State – a burb of Portland, incidentally), so not many people have a serious interest in the sport. So that’s really why I have no one to talk with about it.
 
I, too, fell into the blogging thing. I moved to Florida and started a personal blog for friends and family to follow instead of sending out email after email answering how I was doing. Then I moved to the Tampa area and started blogging about hockey. Not because I’m any great Tampa Bay Lightning fan, but mostly because they were the local team and I love hockey. As I’ve said many times before, I tend to follow players more than teams, so the whole team blog thing was completely accidental on my part. Not that I regret it for a minute, tho people do tend to think I started to blog because I liked the team – instead of me blogging because I love hockey and they just happened to be the local team at the time.
 
I enjoy writing, and I love hockey, so it works for me – particularly since I can’t play anymore due to a bad ankle. And I’ve made a lot of great friends along the way, so I wouldn’t change it for the world. And most of the time, it doesn’t even bother me that people think I’m a guy when I write. So long as I get to write and it’s about hockey, I’m good.

Since this looks like it could get very, very long, I’ll keep this as brief as I can.

As die-hard Ole Miss Rebel fans, myself and the other Cuppers felt that there was not a place which delivered Ole Miss news and analysis from a younger, frank, and lighthearted perspective. Furthermore, we felt that some of the mainstream coverage of Ole Miss was very poorly written and overly homeristic (and therefore dishonest). We would see news outlets and other sites (even the pay sites) and think to ourselves “man, we could do so much better at this as a hobby.”

So we put ourselves to the test. It paid off.

We’ve made it known that we’re not going to call ourselves “journalists.” We are fans with a penchant for writing who just so happen to manage a snarky little website. We use said website to deliver news to fans, foster discussion amongst fans, and connect with our fellow fans.

Really, it’s the element of fandom which is what has allowed SBN to grow like it has. Our readers know this isn’t just some nine-to-five for us; we love this and they love us for loving it.

I was bored and I had a lot of time on my hands. I had just finished up with grad school and I had no real job prospects, making me the stereotypical sports blogger. To pass the time while I looked for a job, I started writing a sports blog which quickly became a Bruins-focused blog as hockey season approached. The blog started getting some recognition and took off better than I ever could have hoped for. Sometime during the winter, James Mirtle asked me to join the talented group of sports bloggers here at SB Nation (a decision I was skeptical about at first but very glad I made). SB Nation has quickly become the benchmark for sports blogging.

I’ve seen my team dismissed, ignored and given the short stick of media coverage since the mid-1970s. Not a day goes by without memories of other L.A. area teams having front page coverage in the local papers during mediocre seasons while the Angels were relegated to below the fold if not Page 4 altogether, win or lose.

Slowly gathering more readers than the remnants of those dead tree elitists drives me like the heartbeat in the soundtrack of a Rambo preview trailer. I will drive the dialogue or die trying.

Halos Heaven – Angels fans take no mess.

This can and will get very long, starting with my story:

Truth be told, I was more than content with being a message board poster on Hockey’s Future for the Devils for a while between 2001 and 2006. Yet, I’ve been reading blogs since 2001 so I remember when it was a “brand new craze” and how it opened up doors (and still does, really) for different opinions, viewpoints, analyses, and whathaveyou about politics, news, fashion, etc. With respect to sports, all I knew was whatever Eric McErlain and Steve Ovadia blogged about and linked to (Fontana pretty much lists all the relevant names, I’ll just add a reference to The Fourth Period where some bro named Greg Wyshynski had an reg. article); but I was content just talking hockey on HF.

I look back on those days with some regret because I knew and believed that blogs are important online, having read plenty of them daily (still do), and despite reading over and over how easy it was for anyone to do it – I never thought to do it myself after more than a few years. I mean, who else was I going to talk Devils hockey about? I only know one person personally who is into hockey as much as I am and he’s a Penguins fan. Everyone seems to just humor me politely. OK, there was HF, but I felt a message board was limiting in some ways. And I didn’t want to delve into Devils Rule or NJDevs.com. No offense to them, but they are just forums.

Upon recognizing that I tended shoehorn hockey into conversations with others a lot, I realized I needed a better outlet to ramble on about all things New Jersey Devils. Finally, a light bulb went off and considered blogging myself. The idea came to me before; yet I didn’t give in. I came up with all kinds of excuses – too busy with school (I was in college from 2001-2007), not confident in what to say, not confident in any “credibility” as I was (and still am) just a fan, etc. Eventually, I realized that A) it’s not like I didn’t have the time being a quasi-non-social-basement-dwelling goon; B) I could say what I want to say no matter how obtuse it was; and C) Blogger was free so let’s go for it. And so then the only tough decision was coming up with a good, appropriate name. That took about a morning. On October 27, 2006; I finally did it, opening with a posted introduction along with a long piece over who should replace the then-injured Scott Gomez.

While I didn’t write anything great (inlouwetrust.blogspot.com is still live, but there’s a reason I’m not bringing the archives over; oh, I wince at my old writing more than a little bit even today); I quickly realized that there wasn’t a large Devils presence online outside of the official websites and message boards. I mean, I knew that media coverage of the Devils was weak given the crowded metropolitan market; but I didn’t really grasp it until I learned that the only other blogger I immediately found was (I think) Tom Lycan blogging about the team at NJ.com (then with all kinds of awful interstitial ads, but not anymore) before he discontinued. I actually felt like I was blazing a new trail – a justifiable claim as 2 Man Advantage, On Fire, Interchangeable Parts, Beast of the East, etc. all popped up or got going at about the same time I did or a few months after.

But the larger important point is that the blog really satisfied my need for an outlet – I put my Devils thoughts online and Devils (and others who should be Devils) fans could read it as they would be interested in that sort of thing. It solved one problem and actually gave some people what they wanted. What I didn’t expect was how it helped me become a better fan. I quickly learned of other blogs, sites (Behind the Net was a revelation), and such – all with different takes on how to look at whether a player or a team is playing well; different outlooks on how the league is doing; etc. All while the pucking division of blogosphere was exploding. To this day, the largest Devils communities are on message boards, but they get “blogs” too – thanks to Tom Gulitti and Rich Chere adopting and embracing the format. (Which, incidentally explains why I have no journalistic ambitions; Gulitti and Chere pretty much cover it all for the Devils and the fanbase as a whole follows them religiously, as they should.)

Multiplying this satisfaction is the satisfaction of knowing that people who are mostly total strangers to me are taking their time to read, comment, discuss, link to, and associate with ILWT. It still blows my mind. I actually know someone at games who tells me that he mentions my site to every Devils fan he meets. I actually was on the honest-to-God radio (thanks Mr. Rob Kowal!) all because I posted my opinion about the Devils on a regular basis. I actually get e-mails – unsolicited – for opportunities; including Mirtle’s offer to join SBN Hockey. I have gone to places ranging from the Devils game to my brother’s college graduation to even at church and I find people who read In Lou We Trust. Again, I cannot emphasize enough how impressive it is to me that other read what I write.

This, along with satisfying a personal need, is why I do what I do, why I tend to take it seriously, and so I see myself continuing to do it for years to come. I may not have many friends or a significant other (or the slightest hope of finding one) or whatever it is you expect a 26 year old male to have done or currently live in this in day and age. But I do have In Lou We Trust, something that I made that I’m proud of and proud to continue.

Now if only I can fully decide what I want to do with it…

I wanted a fun place for Penguins fans to gather and discuss the team and all-things hockey. A personal motivator was to try and work on my craft as a writer and potentially land a job or two or three through this whole blogging thing, but I was also really focused on bringing like-minded fans together to just have some fun. I’ve picked up regular freelance work because of it, landed a FT gig at a newspaper’s web site and watched my site exceed even my most inane aspirations.

I guess at this point I just have to keep aiming higher. If you told me two years ago that I’d be covering the NHL Draft live in Montreal I would’ve called ya a liar. SBN made it happen, I was able to provide some original material and I couldn’t be happier.

I’m relatively new to the blogging scene, compared to some of the more seasoned vets on SB Nation.

I mainly got into the online sports community because I was a Dallas sports fan living in New England. During my time up here in CT, and spending years on a submarine, I found myself isolated from other Stars, Cowboys, Mavs and Rangers fans and it was a bit depressing. I followed Dallas sports on the DMN blogs (anyone who’s been there knows the quality of commenters is severely lacking) and then finally started to find message boards. A lonk on the Cowboys message board led me to Blogging The Boys, in 2006, and I was hooked on SB Nation ever since then.

I was an avid reader of BTB, as well as Lone Star Ball and became a frequent author of FanPosts (or “diaries” as they were known then). I’ve always enjoyed writing, it was what I was best at in school and I found myself with a need to express my sports opinion. My isolation and my emotional connection to sports led me to adopt a very personal take on sports, something that is still prevalent in my writing today. In early 2008, Dave Halprin of Blogging The Boys asked if anyone would be interested in joining him as a writer for BTB and after applying I was brought on board.

Writing for one of the most popular fan websites on the internet, covering perhaps the most popular sports franchise in North America was an incredible learning experience. Nearly every single tool I use at Defending Big D was a lesson learned at BTB, how to engage the readers, how to draw in new readers and the value of a good title. As the holidays neared, I started to notice that SB Nation was starting to fill the empty spots for all the hockey blogs. I saw an opportunity to move up and start my own site, focusing on my first love: hockey and the Dallas Stars. Tyler and James Mirtle welcomed me with open arms, and I started a brand new Stars site from scratch in the middle of a season.

So why do I do what I do? There have certainly been some trying times as I fought to get DBD off the ground, and I questioned whether I had the patience to wait for a readership to build. Yet having so many great sites on SB Nation and the incredible support system that is here gave me the motivation to give my all to build the best Stars website I could. I enjoy the writing and I love the feeling that comes with knowing you have put together a respected destination for fans to come to for their hockey and Stars news.

I also love the fact that I know that I am nowhere near the goal that I set for myself and the website when we first launched 8 months ago. We are just setting out on a long, long road and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished so far. But there is still a long way to go before we’ve reached the pinnacle of what I know we can become. Having that goal in front of me, and wanting nothing more than to do my best for the readers that come to my site every day, both new and regular, keep me going every day.

It’s not an easy job, but it’s one that I’m more than proud to say that I do.

“Hi, my name’s Dirk, and I’m a hockey blogger.”

[chorus] “Hi, Dirk…”

My story dates back to the mid-90’s, when Usenet newsgroups were the only place you could discuss hockey with other fans from around the world online. At some point (perhaps early 1996), I answered an ad to join a new “internet magazine” called In the Crease. Basically I wrote columns every other week about the Detroit Red Wings, and got an opportunity to interview Brendan Morrison when he was a senior at the University of Michigan. Back then it was just about exercising some creative juices, and enjoying the feedback from people who read and enjoyed the work.

Perhaps the greatest experience with ITC, however, was when, during the spring of 1997, one of our editors called from Denver with the news that she had obtained a press credential from the Red Wings for an upcoming game – and would I be interested in using it?

Uh…. what do you think?

It turns out that the game, on March 26, 1997, was perhaps the greatest regular season NHL game in living memory. Colorado came into town for the first time since the infamous Claude Lemieux-Kris Draper incident in the 1996 Western Conference Finals, and, well, you know the rest of the story. My recap of the evening was incredibly ham-fisted and crude, and when the chance came to get another press credential in Detroit for the 1998 Stanley Cup Finals, I didn’t do much better.

The day before Game 1 in Detroit, I went downtown to pick up my credential, media guide, etc. They had these button-down shirts with the Stanley Cup logo on them, and told me to grab one, so I did. Foolish me, I thought we were supposed to wear them, and so the next day, I was the only guy in the entire frickin’ Joe Louis Arena wearing this brown shirt (I picked a size too big, too, so I looked like a complete dweeb). The experience was fun, however. Game 2 was a thrilling OT win, and of course the Wings went on to sweep the Caps that time around.

A few months later, however, I got married and moved to Indiana – so other than catching games on satellite, I felt separated from the game. It wasn’t until the summer of 2005 that I picked up my keyboard again and hung out my shingle with a new blog, “On the Forecheck”. A move to Nashville (back to an NHL city, hooray!) brought the Preds front and center to my attention, and shortly after that, I discovered that you could download and parse the game files from NHL.com, so the fun with stats began.

In Music City, most of the traditional media don’t really know what to do with the Preds and the NHL, so over the last few years I’ve taken on a mission to both broaden and deepen the discussion of the team and the league here in town. It’s a lofty goal, but worth shooting for. The dedicated core of fans here is eager to share their excitement with each other and the broader community, so it’s hardly a one-man effort. And when that lengthy playoff run finally comes to Nashville, and the bandwagon starts to fill up, those newbies will find a rich and diverse community of fans to join up with.

I first dabbled in blogging when I put up a post or two a week for “On the Wings,” which is still going strong, back in 2003. After about a year or so of that, I decided to go on my own.

I started my own blog during my senior year of high school, which also happened to be the lockout. I think I’m probably one of the few who started during the lockout rather than afterward (or before). Basically, I knew I wanted to go into sports journalism or PR. I was the Asst. Editor-in-Chief for my high school’s paper, but rarely got to write about the Wings or Detroit’s other sports teams (except for the times I was invited to the Wings’ High School Journalist Day and convinced Mr. Ilitch’s daughter who was a mom of a kid at my school to get me into a closed practice- I attended practice and interviewed two players for 20 minutes each outside the locker room). Anyways, I wanted a place to practice my writing and actually generate content about the Wings.

There wasn’t a ton of coverage at that time. Yes, even in ‘Hockeytown.’ I wanted to bring more commentary on the lockout from a Wings’ fan perspective so I started Behind the Jersey. As most blogs, it started off small and slowly built a readership. In my last year blogging for BTJ, Sports Business Daily named it one of the top 10 NHL blogs which I was pretty proud about even if those types of rankings are always arbitrary and there were other blogs I ranked above my own. Not only did my blog allow me to practice my writing, but I enjoyed the opportunities that came with it — getting to interview book authors, being asked to review hockey books, receiving invites to go on sports radio shows to talk hockey, meeting other amazing bloggers, etc.

The ultimate moment was when I attended Steve Yzerman’s jersey retirement ceremony a few years ago. I had seats right above the zamboni pit so I saw all the players in attendance walk out onto the ice right below me. I took a ton of pictures and as soon as I got home, I posted all the pictures and wrote an in-depth post about the evening that I worked on until 6am. Aside from the great reaction from my readers and fellow bloggers, I got an e-mail from Yzerman’s memorabilia representative saying that he loved my post and wanted to send a small thank you from Yzerman. It ended up being a 16×20 frame with a 2002 Stanley Cup patch, plaque, and an autographed 8×10 photo of Yzerman. That was probably the coolest moment of my blogging career.

As a PR intern, I understand why PR departments do not credential bloggers and why they are wary of websites. I don’t always agree with those sentiments, but I understand. However as a blogger, I believe that it is important for teams to add bloggers to their press release e-mail list and consider inviting them to practices and games (if there’s room). I do not think that every blogger deserves this, but obviously the qualified ones do. I hope that when I get a full-time position working in the PR department for an NHL team (hopefully), I can help bridge the divide between PR professionals and bloggers.

Blogging has been a springboard for my career. While I likely won’t be able to continue blogging if I start working for an NHL team (it’d probably look bad to blog about the Wings if I’m working for another team), I’ll never forget the fun — and hard work — that came with maintaining a Wings’ blog. The SBN community has been amazing here and I’m continually blown away by the advances our tech team has done to make our network the best out there.

Way back before the 2007 season, I stumbled upon an Iowa blog called Hawkeye Compulsion which is now better known as Black Heart Gold Pants. I laughed, I cried and learned exactly what a blog should be about: a good mix of humor and unique coverage of your favorite team.

I started looking for any other MAC blogs out there and I came up empty handed. It was even hard to find all the Big 10 blogs out there back then. I was disappointed by the lack of media coverage not only of my own team, but the entire Mid-American conference as a whole. I went ahead and made the first blog about Northern Illinois Athletics on blogspot when I was extremely bored in a 9-credit hour class that I was taking. After that, I went ahead and took a couple journalism classes for fun to improve my writing skills. I was going to minor in that, but I definitely started that goal way too late in my college career. I found a new hobby to keep me occupied between classes.

I have since discovered that writing is an art form. I focus on what the fans would want to read. I love everything that I write, re-read it over and over again and use it as a good reference when keeping track of players and what happened in previous games. I would be nowhere if it weren’t for the community that I am trying to build.

I feel as though I spearheaded the revolution of media coverage for NIU Huskie Athletics. Coverage of my team has improved immensely in only two years and I couldn’t be prouder catching up to the major Chicagoland teams like University of Illinois, Northwestern & Notre Dame. MAC blogs have been popping up all over the place and I’m really happy about that as well.

You couldn’t pay me a said amount of money to stop blogging about my favorite team. I want people to become new fans just by visiting, reading and enjoying my blog.

During the last 14 years, there has been a fan-run paper sold outside St. Louis Blues hockey games. For the first 10 it was run by this strange borderline alcoholic who called himself Jeffio. It was crass. It was filled with stats. It was opinionated. It was ribald. I would read it from cover to cover.

After the locked out 2004-05 season, he gave up the ghost and retired Game Night Revue. Another kind of strange guy who enjoys a tall boy off-brand beer as much as the next guy revived the tradition and started Game Time. I bought one of the first issues when the league returned to play, sent a tryout story in an e-mail and became one of the writers. The next season I started writing the 1,400-word front page and took charge of our wordpress blog. More than two years later we were recruited to the SB Nation family.

For eight years I was a reporter and editor in the newspaper industry. Around the time Game Time started, I changed careers and went to work for a large corporation in communications. Writing for the paper and the blog has taken up countless hours of free time, robbed me of hours and hours of sleep and encouraged me to sometimes put the real job in the backseat. Why? Good question.

I missed seeing my name in print from my newspaper days. And the guys who do the paper and site are good friends now. But that still doesn’t explain the committment we’ve made to this thing we’ve made.

If I wasn’t a part of Game Time, I would be its biggest fan. And I feel like if I didn’t have the role I have, it might not exist — or it at least wouldn’t exist like it does now (during the season). I play a big role in the community. I’m a part of our community and I feel like I have a responsibility to the community to keep it strong and entertaining.

At our site, we don’t take things too seriously. We break stuff down, but we also write one-act pieces, top 11 lists and other weird crap. But that attitude is what keeps it fun and me missing bedtime so often.

Right on target. I was at the Baltimore Ravens Training Camp with full media credentials. I spent a lot of time with the other media and listened to them bitch and moan about how much they hate the long hours and boring-ness of Trqaining Camp, while I was like a kid in a candy shop. To them it’s nothing more than a job and if the pay wasn’t right, they’d probably leave. To me, getting paid is irrelevant (for the lack of the big bucks as well!), and the thrill is just being there! The demise of the sports journalist from the big papers and media markets is almost complete.

I’m analyze everything in a psychological way, so get ready for some nonsense….

When I was a teenager, my family moved from NJ to San Diego. Somehow, without knowing it, my parents managed to pick the one suburb in San Diego that has almost no teenagers. They also picked the local private high school as the one for me to attend, meaning I was the only kid not driving or being driven to school. To put it more succinctly, I was in a situation where it was impossible for me to hang with friends outside of school.

Luckily, my extended family started following my family to San Diego. So on Sundays, when I didn’t have anything else to do, I watched football with my dad, grandfather, uncles and cousins. It started as something to do and formed into something to bond over (I was talking with my dad more than ever). With each passing game, I learned more about the game and become more passionate.

In 2005, my grandfather passed away and I moved to Philadelphia. I was still a die-hard Chargers fan, but no longer had anyone to watch Chargers games with or even discuss the team with during the week. I tried participating in Chargers forums, but it would just turn into trolling and mocking instead of good debating.

A few weeks into the 2008 season, I found Bolts From The Blue. Although the community was small, it was different. It was respectful and thought-provoking. It was more than “Norv Turner sucks!” It was exactly what I wanted. I started by commenting constantly and eventually started throwing up FanPosts for some of my more thought-out ideas. That led to Brian, who was managing the blog at the time, asking me to become a weekly writer, which I happily accepted.

When Brian had to step away from managing BFTB because of his job, I petitioned whole-heartedly to take it over. I didn’t have much in the way of a resume, but I had passion. Not just for the Chargers, but for the community that was being created. I’m going on four months as the manager, which has included BFTB’s first NFL Draft, first Training Camp (which I visited as a credentialed member of the press) and now first preseason.

The community continues to grow and I get e-mails almost daily from readers, thanking me for helping in creating an intelligent community for Chargers fans. I do what I do so that I have people, as close to me as friends and family, to watch and discuss my favorite football team with.

Oh yeah, I also do it because I love football and love writing.

I believe I am the oldest blogger in SBN — I will be 53 in November. I have been a Cubs fan since my dad took me to my first game when I was not quite seven years old, in July 1963.

Now, that’s a common story — a father taking a son to a baseball game, right? The difference is, that when that happens to a Chicago kid in the 1960’s, he soon discovers that he can follow his favorite team every day on television after school. With all day games in that era, the Cubs televised all home games to try to create interest in going to the park. It worked. The team began to get good in the Santo/Banks/Williams/Jenkins era and I was hooked.

Then crushed by the collapse of 1969, something that still haunts the psyche of Cubs fans of my generation and older.

I lived through some hope in the 1970’s — the 1977 team started 47-22. When they won that game to go to 25 games over .500, Lou Boudreau, then a Cubs radio broadcaster, said on the air, “They can kiss the .500 mark goodbye!” That team finished 81-81, exactly at .500, and had to lose their last five games to do it.

The playoff teams of 1984, 1989, 1998, 2003, 2007 and 2008 have been exciting for me, but each one of them ended in failure, some (1984, 2003) more soul-crushing than others.

It is this — the seemingly endless quest for a championship — that brings Cubs fans together. I started blogging in 2003, mainly because, well, everyone else was. It was a general-interest blog but soon I discovered that most, if not all, of what I was writing was Cub-centric, so it became a Cubs-focused blog, and that is where Blez found me in early 2005 to create Bleed Cubbie Blue. All Blez promised at the time was “a cool new blogging platform”.

I signed up and was amazed at the community it created. I have, through the growth of BCB, been able to get in contact with management at the Cubs, some of whom told me they were following the bleacher construction project in 2005-06 on weekends when my friend & I would trek to Wrigley to take and post photos. BCB has been written up in the Chicago Tribune and on various other sites.

That’s not why I do it, though. I do it because I love baseball and the Cubs and writing about it and sharing it with so many of the great people I have met through the site.

And when the Cubs do finally win a World Series, I’ll be able to share it with so many great friends… who have been through the failure, understanding what it means, and the success will thus be that much sweeter.

I write about the New York Islanders, from a perch in St. Louis. Why?

I love hockey and can’t stop watching it, particularly two NHL teams that rarely cross paths, which has allowed a father-inspired, 30-year obsession with each to intensify without having to choose between mommy and daddy. To make this part brief: My childhood was forged by watching Islanders champions and Blues also-rans with my father. The mythology and mystique of the sport is tied up in that father/son relationship.

As papers started cutting back — not just the recent elimination of beats, but before that the truncation of even game stories — I had trouble finding good coverage and sane followers of the Islanders. The format, politics and personalities of message boards at the time turned me off — I just wanted thoughtful perspectives and conversation about the Islanders, without having to weed through clutter and personal attacks to get there. I began to wonder if to get what I want, I should create it myself.

At the same time, I came across one of SB Nation’s earliest baseball blogs — and I was struck by how engaging and smart it was. I tell people my best testament for SB Nation is that it actually got me to read a baseball blog every day. (I hadn’t cared about baseball in several years, yet somehow I was returning to Viva el Birdos each day.)

Naturally, SB Nation’s existing baseball setup made me think, “My god, hockey needs this.” That inspired me to start a small blog about the Islanders, to practice (and test my resolve) to join SB Nation if they ever expanded. Now this network has all 30 NHL teams covered, and the variety of styles and approaches among them inspires me and makes me laugh and think about hockey in new ways. I love that I can check any site and find a smart, passionate voice to get a quick pulse and links to more resources and voices about that team.

It’s never far from my mind that following sports — a diversion, a form of entertainment — is supposed to be fun. It’s a waste of time otherwise. Thankfully, doing this is a whole lot of fun, so … well, that’s why I’m here.

Hey all,

I’ll try keep this short. My father got me into hockey when I was about 3 years old. That was in 1977, when all we could watch was Hockey Night in Canada. Naturally I became a Leafs fan at a very young age. Go Sittler!
As I got a bit older (and able to write) I’d still follow the Leafs and then the Canucks on BCTV. (Yay for rabbit ears!) I really took notice of the Canucks when they went to the Finals in 1982. I cried when they lost.
In those young years I would save up allowance money and buy stat books or year-end newspapers to compare stats of players (and use hockey cards). I’d jot down who was better than who in several areas on a piece of paper and then stick it into a binder. I did this for years.
By the time the Canucks went to the Finals in 1994 I was torn. They had beat the Leafs in the previous round, rather handily. I continued to follow the Leafs every Saturday and the Canucks whenever possible, still collecting stats, except now organizing hockey pools as well. I just loved doing that stuff. I could and still can talk hockey all day but don’t have enough friends that can do the same. In 2006 I started a blog to relieve my brain of all the hockey clutter. 3 years later I was recruited by Yankee Canuck to join SBN.
I love this sport. It is an obsession to me. I scour the internet daily for information. It takes up a lot of my time. My wife hates it but I don’t care. This is who I am.
I’m really enjoying the increased exposure here at SBN and the community feel that we have at Nucks Misconduct. It is my goal to be the best and most informative Canucks site on the net..period.
Thanks to all of you who share your stories. They have all been great reads! Hockey fans unite!

Sean Z

I love talking sports, and could do it non-stop. I always wanted to do something related to sports, whether it be as a commentator, writer, working for an organziation, etc. Somehow college this dream of mine took a detour. I majored in something that would ensure a respectable full time job out of college (Econ and I work as a Financial/Statistical Analyst), as working full time in sports is so competitve and has so much excess supply in regards to people wanting to do it.

Regardless, I started becoming a superfan. I am not the loudest guy in the stands, I don’t have the entire Cyclones history book memorized, but I watch every game I can and hate missing a play. My friends and family just weren’t as big of fans as I. They liked to talk for about 5-10 minutes about the game and move onto something else. Just from talking with people, I think I have a different take on the game then the typical fan might.

Similar to Blez, I started making the rounds on message boards to try to have intelligent conversation about my Cyclones. That didn’t work out the greatest. Many of the boards are filled with homers that take an angle no different than either the University or the major media outlets, and typically have little to no thought behind it.

As I tried to push the envelope and make people think, I quickly became one of the least popular members on the board. As a fan, I think we can love our team but also be objective at the same time. I can watch what’s happening and cheer/boo, but I can also look at why something may or may not have worked (other than the obvious “refs screwed us over” argument that is so common on the boards).

Fed up with not feeling like I could express my viewpoints, I decided to start an ISU Basketball blog. College Basketball is my favorite college sport, and one that I started following when I was 12 thanks to my ACC Fanatical Uncle (who was only slightly less fanatical about the rest of college basketball). I am an ISU Alum, and have been following them closely for 7 years, so I consider myself somewhat of an expert on ISU.

The Clone Chronicles lead writer at the time saw my blog, invited me to write on Clone Chronicles, and eventually I took over as lead writer. Honestly, it was one of the best things that had happened to me. I have now retired from the message boards altogether, and spend a majority of my spare time doing something related to Clone Chronicles.

That was the long answer. The short answer, as corny as it sounds, is because my dream has come true.

If you have passion for your team, and think you want to do writing as a hobby, I recommend giving it a shot! Do a fanpost on your team’s SB Nation Blog. If it’s good, it may get moved to the front page, but regardless you are likely to get feedback from the rest of the community on your thoughts.

What I love about this SB Nation platform is that as bloggers, yes we run each of our sites, but it’s the readers through fanposts and comments that add to the blogs. Everyone has a voice, and we can have an intelligent discussion about what we have in common – the team we love!