Defunct Michigan Blogs
Yo this is going to be some #content right here, since I don’t have time for nothing else. I was going through our lists in preparation to transfer the tertiary things to the new site (don’t ask) and this reminded me it had been a long time since we cleaned up the links on the sidebar.
I’ve done so, but it hurt to remove some old bookmarks I used to check every day. So they don’t all just get summarily dumped, I figured a thread in tribute to some great Michigan writing during the formative years of blogging was in order. If you joined the sphere too late for the age when 20-something Michigan fans all had blogspots and tried to invent our own shticks so as to not come off as LiveJournals, some of them are worth going back and reading.
A top three:
Burgeoning Wolverine Star
An X’s and O’s Michigan blog. Chris Gaerig is one of those guys I keep meaning to contact about writing for HTTV sometime because he was a fantastic writer as well as a deep thinker about specific Michigan plays. His posts used to get linked regularly in UFRs. Neck Sharpies exists because I set out myself to fill some of the void he left. Also: basketball.
The Blog That Yost Built
There are two types of MGoBlog readers: those who think we have too much hockey, and those who think it’s awful how little we cover hockey. Tim Williams started his site because we didn’t have enough hockey coverage at MGoBlog and if he still had time to write he’d be a regular here, since we’re all among the former as well.
Ronald Bellamy’s Underachieving All-Stars
Though he has a far better writing gig these days, I still think of him as Johnny RBUAS. If you have ever wanted to feel very emotional about a beloved Michigan player’s fictionalized stream of consciousness, this site was for you. If you haven’t, really that’s okay, I won’t curl up in a ball and cry, unless Johnny RBUAS writes about it. Bonus: the url was umichedme dot blogspot.
Others I remember and don’t:
- The Ace of Sports—His name was Ace (actually Harry), and he liked M and Detroit sports. Get it?
- Autumn Thunder—The half-assed Michigan blog. MS Paint, Hart, and more Hart. Still occasionally useful, though some of his best work has grown outdated.
- Bitter Rivals—Short-lived M v MSU site, beat Mike Hart to the fraternal metaphor.
- Blah Blah Blah—2008 was not the year to start blogging about Michigan.
- Hokeamaniac—That didn’t last.
- In Rod We Trust—That didn’t last either.
- Maize Wings—Very late to the very late-‘00s blogging party
- MGoBlue Football
- MGoSwim
- Michigan Football Recruiting—Guy I grew up with made a crootin site.
- Michigan Football Saturdays—Dedicated blogger in the era of everyone had a blog
- Michigan Hockey Net—Covered M hockey, Red Wings
- MMMGoBlueBBQ—Joe Pichey wrote for himself before he wrote for us.
- Stadium & Main
- The Diag—MLive tried to have a blog
- The Game—Can’t think why a M fan wouldn’t want to post daily about the M-OSU rivalry anymore.
- The M Zone—Humor site, now a worthy follow.
- The Michigan Faithful
- The Wolverine Blog
- Three And Out
- UMGoBlog—Annoyingly, would get our traffic. Annoyingly, UMGoBlue.com took his twitter handle.
- Victors Valiant—Had useful previews.
- When Carcajous Attack!—Used to have some great previews, joined Maize ‘n Brew for a time.
- Wolverine Liberation Army—Only the unicorns remain of the once proud proletariat
- Wolverines Daily
What did I miss? What do you miss?
My 3 go-tos used to be MGoBlog, Michigan Hockey Net, and Yost Built. I was sad to see both hockey blogs drop out at about the same time - though I know I still see the guy from Yost Built post here from time to time
Also- didn't Ace have a blog before he joined MGoBlog?
added,
Any chance you could get the M Zone guys to bring back their "Know Your Foe" feature and put it on MGoBlog?
Original M-Zone FTW!
My favorite was the thread about the Buckeye caught, um, doing it with his patio furniture.
I had to leave my cube at work and go in the hall I was laughing so much.
And of course "Your Life vs. College Life":
http://michiganzone.blogspot.com/2007/04/your-life-vs-college-life.html
I remember Autumn Thunder! being relatively short lived but great while the author still had time to make lots of MS Paint drawings.
Their twitter profile pic scares me, though.
WLA's OSU UFR - http://mgoblog.com/content/upon-further-review-michigan-vs-ohio-state
One of the original negbangs - http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/members-only
Post after the MGoPurge of 2013 - http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/were-here
Oh god, the memories. Those guys used to be staples around here back in the day. Aaaaaah man, those were the days. Just not the same around here anymore.
Man, went through the comments on those links because some of the old readers you never see here anymore...
I always felt like Chitown and I would have been the best of friends or the worst of enemies if we ever met for reals.
I was a little afraid of Dex, tbh.
The WLA OSU UFR was truly epic.
We shared a similar sense of humor.
Although the hockey content around here has been damn good
What's crazy is that the current site design has outlived them all.
Not true at all.
It used to be even worse.
Like 1996 AOL and a TTY terminal had a baby.
Edsel Motor Cars, Bob-lo Island, hula hoops and Bell Bottom pants...
Didn't The Last Anbender have a big blog that got him hired here? Was that The Wolverine Blog?
But yes, TWB was a blog I spun off from my college internship, and my current podcast co-host Alex Cook was eventually one of the site's contributors.
we pretty much all went to prior to MGoBlog? They basically shit things down and referred everyone here (like ten years ago!) One of their last posts was a video of an Ohio State coed stripping in front of her computer to some rap song, trying to get her boyfriend to go to OSU...I mention this only as an historical reference, of course.
Sack Lloyd Carr(? I think it was called). The latter was more of a forum or message board. No content from an author.
No accounting for taste.
they were the best.
bandos!
Oh hell yeah!
iBlog for cookies is still around on the Victors Board
iBlog For Cookies was one of the best names ever.
Yost Built and Michigan Hockey Net are original Michigan hockey types dating waaaay back to when USCHO was the only real place available to talk about that sort of thing. Both continue to be great fans and reasonable resources and both are somewhat active on twitter, though MHN mostly just retweets stuff now. Tim is still a good follow for Michigan hockey stuff and, uh, Indycar racing. Good enough that Mel has retweeted him a couple of times.
Ace's old site actually was one of my regular visits back in the day, so I was happy to learn that he was hopping on board here. Doesn't seem that long ago... and then, it does seem that long ago.
I miss BWS and the picture pages feature both there and here a great deal. Seth is good and IMO his football content has become very strong, but PP features had a great simplicity and clarity to them.
I'm delighted with this post. Those links have been staples on the sidebar and are obviously going away; recognizing them is really good.
*BTW the other Michigan feature I really miss is Blue Seoul's "Game Wrap (With Pics!)" even though that was actually located here.
Nice callback. A lot of good fans used to post there; a couple still do.
What was your handle there?
I was a pretty committed lurker there, but I occasionally posted as umaeromajor. Inspired by MGoBlog, I did launch a Michigan football/hockey blog around 2005, then transitioned to covering Texas A&M football when I went down there for grad school in 2006. Despite voting in the blog poll for a couple of years, it never caught on and the chief contribution was convincing me that I was not meant to write about sports for a living.
You must be one of the very few to know that name.
redundant post
Is it that unknown? Used multiple places (USCHO, dark side, etc) and I thought he never really made a secret of it.
Michigan Hockey Net's original incarnation Michigan Hockey Rules! dates back to 1997 on Geocities. I imagine many these days have no idea what Geocities is and how big Geocities was back in the day. I don't remember exactly off hand when I made the switch to my own domain. Always tried to stay on top of the news and game recaps, but also incorporating features such as archiving The Red Berenson Show (when WTKA wasn't able to in those days), posting video highlights (in the days before YouTube), CoverItLive live blogs (believe I was the first to do this when I attended a game in the Soo), getting threatened to be sued by Paula Weston (true story), and helping open the door for blogs to get credentials to Michigan athletic events (major THANK YOU to former hockey SID Matt Trevor for that). It was a good run while it lasted but life took over and now I'm a Florida Man.
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