It was 3 years ago last Friday that Bearcats Blog started. Don’t worry, I didn’t know the actual date the blog started either, just that it was some point in December. It’s been crazy that this has lasted so long. Fortunately, every year has gotten better, every month has gotten better and in general lots of things have gotten better. I don’t advise anyone to read the first few posts on the site. Like all of you reading this, I read blogs and sites and thought it would be nice to have one. I never really thought about starting my own. Not until UC beat Pittsburgh. I wanted to talk to other UC fans about the game and the season. Having your team reach the mountain top of success and having no other outlet to express your joy besides calling the same 5 UC fans and saying “Wasn’t that fucking awesome?!” over and over doesn’t really last that long. Since I couldn’t find one, I started one. It is 100% safe to say there was not a girlfriend in sight when I decided on this. Slowly but surely things started to grow. It turned out that there was an audience of people out there who cared about UC sports. It was pretty small at the start, ha, but eventually things have branched out. All of the credit for that goes to everyone reading this wherever they are. I can share my stories on twitter and whatever, but you guys are the ones who shared something, retweeted something, told someone about the blog and really helped out. I can’t thank you guys, and gals, enough for that. I really appreciate it. Couldn’t, and wouldn’t, do it without you.
There are very many people out there who have helped me along the way. The first two people I always thank for things are Mike Rutherford from SB Nation and Card Chronicle and Sean Keely from Nunes Magician and also SB Nation. Card Chronicle was the inspiration for this blog. The community feel over there is really great. People there are good people and they aren’t the negative message board a-holes that forced me off of message boards. Every single Cincinnati-Louisville preview that I’ve written has gotten a lot of traffic from CC. If there were a list of the top 10 traffic days, I would say a majority of them are from Card Chronicle. Mike has also let me interview him a couple of times and blatantly rip off the logo paragraph header. Sean was the first one to spread the word about the site. It was one of the coolest things anyone has ever done for me. That and EDSBS retweeting stuff I said to him during the Sugar Bowl. That was also cool. Sean has taken the time to answer a whole lot of my questions over time. Many of those questions were about cooking shows. I was a fan of his site even though I wasn’t a fan of Syracuse. I just enjoyed his writing. Those two are two of many examples of people you follow being incredibly nice to people they don’t know for no reason at all.
Of course I can’t thank them and not thank a lot of other people. Brian Harrison from Orange 44 has been a great person who has helped me along. Like Sean, he let me ask him many, many questions about cooking shows. He also is good for great Q and A’s about Syracuse and UC. He has a knack for predicting the score to all of those games, even if he was completely wrong about the winning team this year. The man Paul Dehner Jr has been a huge help for this little ol’ site. He was the first person to link anything I wrote. He has linked to numerous things that I’ve written, and it’s awesome every single time. He’s another one where I read him and knew who he was and he somehow found out what I wrote and linked to it. He has given me some good advice as well. There are the guys from Voodoo 5, who are all nice. I can’t remember who, but an interview with one of them was the first thing I ever got linked to. Still remember that. Plus, they feed my fake gambling addiction with the Protect Your Unit game. There is Raphielle Johnson, who is also the man. He knows a lot about a lot and lets me ask him a thousand questions about anything. He’s a pro. There have been a ton of people who have let me interview them, and even though I’m blanking hard, I thank them a lot. The UC volleyball team was great. Dan Hoard let me interview him a couple of times, he’s great. John Goebel. There have been a lot of people who haven’t been on the site that I’ve been friendly with on twitter. There is also ULHotHot, but even he has good qualities. I don’t know how many people I would have found out about and followed on twitter if I didn’t have the blog. There are so many interesting reads out there. Some of them have even linked here, which boggles the mind. Thanks to all of those people.
I’ll do a new paragraph for the fellow UC bloggers Matt from Down the Drive and Chris from Bearcats Nation. They both do a great job. I’m not big on the recruiting game, but Matt is and he covers every incoming UC football recruit. Chris puts out quality posts every day, although he’s crazy for thinking Kelvin Gaines should have started against Wright State. That’s just a little of what they do. They do much more. They’ve also helped me in the sense that they are another barometer to use to get a read on things. We all see things differently, which has made me see some things in a new way. The more voices out there, the better. When I start UCland, I will hire them to do all the posts and then throw out 3,000 word posts at 6:30 pm. I believe that’s how it’s done.
This post went on a lot more than a quick thanks. The blog has been a ton of fun to write. It’s even a little fun writing a giant thank you post to all of you. If you are out there and you are wanting to start a blog, go for it. Start a tumblr, go on blogger, do whatever. If you put in the work, your voice can be heard. Who knows, maybe one of your friends with high school that you lost track of will see your name linked somewhere and will track you down on twitter and you guys will reconnect. That sounds crazy, but it absolutely happened to me. Thanks again for all of the fun. Here’s to a great third year and many more.
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