Why/how YOU came to MGoBlog
Opened up "Why I came to MGoBlog", thinking it would be something completely different. And while it's a great thread, it wasn't what I was expecting...and even though a few people threw the concept in there, it's more a Bama discussion (interesting in it's own right). But what interested me - how did you first hear about MGoBlog, and what made you come here and start reading and posting?
My cool story bro is actually Jim Carty started fairly regularly referencing the Blog, and it was far more interesting, and better written, than anything Carty or the Ann Arbor News (yes, it was a paper at the time) was putting out. So after clicking it more and more, I went back to the beginning, and started reading all the parts that interested me over any lunch hours I was staying in, reading the opinion and emotion pieces, and skipping over Miami of Ohio previews, or UFRs (because while interesting today, 3 year old UFRs lose a little something), etc. And few months later, I was basically up to date, and kept reading. Then started reading the posts too, and that season came around, and I finally started posting too.
So that's how I found it and started reading...how did you? Who guided you, tipped you off, what search made you come across MGoBlog...then stick around?
(Those 4 or 5 who mentioned it in the other thread, feel free to cut and paste).
February 15th, 2012 at 11:28 AM ^
I was watching an away game during the 2010 season with my roommates (Indiana I think) and during half time one of my roommates was on his laptop and showed me the Llyod Brady photoshop thread and explained it to me. Suffice to say my mind was officially blown that a site that combined uber Michigan fandom and great comic relief existed. I began coming and reading posts regularly then finally created an account this season.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:30 AM ^
I was a freshman during the 2006 football season. I was on the 9th floor of South Quad in the computer lab, frantically trying to put together a paper from Great Books 191 that was due the following morning. I noticed a student on a computer next to me reading a Michigan sports blog. He told me it was MGoBlog back when it was mgoblog.blogspot.com. I got back to my paper several hours later and finished it at about 7 AM. I have been a chronic procrastinator ever since.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:32 AM ^
I googled "Michigan sports blog" sometime in 2007 and this site was my favorite.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:32 AM ^
people that were as angry as I was at what was going on with the Winged Helmet.
What I found was:
good tailgate info (from time to time)
what people were drinking all the time
pictures of Kate Upton (thank you again for that)
it's incredibly difficult to get to 100 points (mostly because I'm stupid)
and all the rage that the middle 50% of the world has to offer.
so... thanks for all that!
February 15th, 2012 at 11:32 AM ^
'05 I started really getting into the "please retire, Carr" phase and found SackCarr.com. After a while someone there mentioned this place. Don't remember if it was still 05 or 06 by then. Back then damn near every post here was gut-busting and Haloscan was a fricking wonderland of insanity. Stayed ever since.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:37 AM ^
and have been hooked ever since
February 15th, 2012 at 11:38 AM ^
I was looking at the ESPN B1G blog in August 2010 and seen the link to MGoBlog. I haven't left since.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:41 AM ^
I came for the recruiting news and stayed for the football UFRs.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:42 AM ^
I honestly cant remember how I ended up here but it was the beginnings of my obsession with Michigan football and having my own income to spend on it. I lurked for a good 6 months before I finally created an account and from there I've become the "guy" who all my friends text with about questions. I also email my dad daily recruiting updates which guys at his work ask him about so I guess I'm responsible for that too. Thanks Brian, Tim, TomVH, Ace, and Tremendous for making me feel loved!
PS for what its worth I signed up for 3 years of ESPN Insider just to get a TomVH fix and yea..that site blows balls compaired to here.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:46 AM ^
...er, not really. I was jonesing for some Michigan news (not much here in MN) so I googled. After visiting a few times, I realized I like the pretty pictures, alot.
(please, please let this happen...)
February 15th, 2012 at 11:51 AM ^
http://mgoblog.com/mgoboard/un-film-dérangeant-catlab-buckeye-urban-tre…
But I was actually here before that mind numbing video. I enjoy the UFR's, and the HELLO posts a lot, but to be perfectly honest, I probably enjoy the comments by readers most of all. This site has a good collection of intelligent posters who are also funny as hell.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:51 AM ^
....undeniably the best site for U of M fans to discuss topics that we are passionate about. Prior to finding MGoBlog, I spent a lot of time on MLive, which most can agree is a terrible site to try to have any type of rational discussion.
When I first came here, I immediately despised the point system. My first opinion of it was that is squelched the uncommon viewpoint. While this was true, it had more to do with the delivery than the opinion itself, and I learned to respect that some of my opinions were not the opinion of the majority. It didn't mean that I didn't share opinions that I felt strongly about. It just mean that I needed to choose my words carefully. I came to realize that the point system was necessary. Now that they are gone, I think it apparent more than ever.
Brian had mentioned that he intends on improving the point system. I anxiously await that day. People should have the right to have an alternate view point, but they should always think twice about clicking that send button.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:56 AM ^
I found the blog by googling best michigan football blog. I could never get enough of M Football and quickly realized the Freep was crap and living out of state couldn't catch anything on the radio. I quickly found out there was a place just for me that had, actally too much information for me. I have been addicted since summer of 2008.
Anyone remember the cowbell commander blog!? I just thought of that now. He had awesome crappy photoshop goin' on back then.
February 15th, 2012 at 11:56 AM ^
In the early days, Brian would offer delicious cookies ("Thin Mint-caliber") to people who visited his site. However, the cookie tasted more like a Samoa.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:00 PM ^
I thought Tim had a great site, and I then was introduced to this site via that avenue. I gradually started visiting this site more and more. When Varsity Blue closed with the migration of Tim to this site, the choice was obvious. This is the most comprehensive site for those enthusiastic about Michigan Football, Hockey, and Basketball. There is nothing else like it on the web. Period.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:07 PM ^
back when MVN was a thing, their M site was somehow the first result for "Michigan football blog". that was like June 2005? mgo was in that dude's blogroll. i went back and read everything i'd missed up til then (dec '04 iirc was blogstart), so i'm pretty sure there isn't an mgopost i haven't read.
/csb
February 15th, 2012 at 12:07 PM ^
I got hooked during the first days of the Freep Jihad. I was a big journalism nerd in high school, and my newspaper advisor loved the site. So I came hoping to figure out what the f*** was going on, and found Brian's approach to finding truth to be the best of any news media I had seen.
My cool story bro: I was walking by Crisler with my buddy on the day of UTL when I spotted TomVH standing by himself. We introduced ourselves and kind of gave him a razzing for his then-recent departure for ESPN but congratulated him on making the move he thought was best for his family.
Also, I met Brock briefly in the fall of '09.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:24 PM ^
TomVH's story is incredible. Wasn't he just a random poster at first who decided to be bold and send friend requests to recruits on Facebook?
February 15th, 2012 at 10:36 PM ^
He started facebook chatting with teenage boys and it got him all the way to ESPN. Some people try the same thing and they end up having a sit down with Chris Hansen.
February 16th, 2012 at 1:45 PM ^
Yea, he was talking with Ricardo Miller on Facebook. He did an interview with him and then Miller gave him the numbers for some other recruits. He started doing more interviews, got more numbers, and eventually grew into the recruiting guru that he is now.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:13 PM ^
I was trying to find the latest news on the coaching search after Carr's retirement. I ended up here and got hooked.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:19 PM ^
I read MGoBlog since Fall '07, my senior year, right around the time it sounded like Lloyd was going to retire. Early November maybe. I didn't really understand blogs at the time. I pretty much looked at blogs as long-form versions of twitter - basically a public journal - and I don't give a shit about what you ate today and how you felt about it. Obviously, my thoughts about blogs have changed.
I finally joined in Spring of '10 because my job got slow for a while and I could actually follow the board and other site-specific themes/memes (that and there was too much funny shit to not comment, especially when trolling the RR debate threads). I wish I had a June '08 membership date so I could brag about my e-peen, but alas, I'm only working with a '10er.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:17 PM ^
February 15th, 2012 at 12:21 PM ^
When Comcast and BTN were holding a contest to see whose penis was larger based on radio advertising budget, Michigan-Northwestern 2007 was put on BTN and I had to find a bar with the game. I ran into an old fraternity brother at the bar, and he told me about MGoBlog and how Brian called App State "The Horror" and had made the site go completely pink and put up kittens. I spent that night reading UFRs and discovering why I hated DeBord (not Ciulla) and was hooked.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:22 PM ^
And found this: http://mgoblog.com/content/spring-sprang-sprung
Loved the writing style and wasted a whole day at work reading through older articles. Got hooked. Lurked around for a few months before finally creating an account in order to make fun of someone's grammar.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:29 PM ^
It was a dark and stormy night and I was tired of cruising the Infobahn and needed a place to crash for the night. Mzone was booked full that night so I had to go down the street a bit to this place called MiGoBlog. It seemed like a nice place with quite a few cars parked in the lot. So I checked in....
Seriously, I think it was when I found one of my pictures from the UConn game posted here and I've been hooked since.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:30 PM ^
I think my brother-in-low (Sgt. Wolverine) may have recommended it. What kept me was the content, and the (generally) more intelligent commenters.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:32 PM ^
made me come to the site...
February 15th, 2012 at 12:35 PM ^
I used to get all my Mich info from Freep, AA.com, etc...
The day Devin Gardner was to announce where he was heading to college the above sites had nothing posted. I googled Devin's name to see if he had annouced yet and this site popped up as one of the choices. I clicked and have been hooked ever since. My work now suffers. It is a risk I must take.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:38 PM ^
I got tired of pressing the "Reply All" button.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:41 PM ^
I first came upon MGoBlog back in the good ole days when it was a blogspot site. It had to be in like 05 or 06 when some of the first rumblings of getting rid of Lloyd Carr started to pick up (I think ridiculous ideas like getting Lou Holtz were even being thrown around at the time). Desperate to find some info, I stumbled upon Mgoblog.blogspot.com to get my fix of Michigan news.
However, it wasn't until the much maligned coaching search that got us "he who shall not be named" that I became a dedicated, full time reader (but part time contributor). My life has never been the same since.
February 15th, 2012 at 12:59 PM ^
February 15th, 2012 at 1:38 PM ^
February 15th, 2012 at 1:34 PM ^
Mgoblog kinda saved me from going a little bit nuts.
By mid-way through the 2010 season, I was seeing so many things with the football team that I had never seen before. A complete disinterest in defense and special teams, a litany of mental mistakes on the field, extremely poor fundamentals, and a weekly article on U of M football that had nothing to do with anything actually on the field...
It looked to me like the team should have been improving more than they had been, as RRod himself said, they should've been further along. Of course, that's subjective, but I love football, love Meeechigan football, and it seemed like there were still a lot of things missing form RRod's 3rd team; some off-the-field stuff, some on-the-field, some coaching, some players...
I think it was after the Iowa game that I woke up at 6am on Sunday morning, hungover and depressed, and I went to the Internet in a desperate search for answers. I probably didn't google "What's wrong with Michigan football?" but my search term wasn't too far from that. And eventually, I came across MGoBlog, and realized that I HAD FOUND MY PEOPLE!
People speaking passionately and intelligently about Meeechigan football...honestly, it probably stopped me from throwing in the towel and just giving up on one of the biggest passions in my life. It was good seeing people talk about the pros and cons of what was happening, but for me, I saw that I wasn't alone in my maddening confusion and frustration!
Thanks, MGoBlog. You may have saved me from waking up, alone in ditch in a Bosnian ghetto with my face bleeding off my head with my last conscious thought before walking into the light being "Why would anyone think a 3-3-5 with a depleted, inexperienced defensive secondary would work in the Big Ten? ...Nanna...is that you...?"
February 15th, 2012 at 2:58 PM ^
has really come along since 1997...
February 16th, 2012 at 1:48 PM ^
I must be remembering it through the haze of the '98 Rose Bowl.
February 15th, 2012 at 1:42 PM ^
February 15th, 2012 at 1:43 PM ^
I also came here to escape the fact that my girlfriend is an MSU slappy and her entire family is too.. I can't tell you how annoying that is..
February 15th, 2012 at 1:58 PM ^
I couldn't stand MLive anymore. It was so painful going there, I would rather NOT have Michigan info than to wade through their threads. I think (like someone above in the thread,) I came here because of Carty. I loved it from the start, and never looked back. I used to read Johnny's site, and still will go every now and then over to Detnews & the Freep. Oh, and of course, to umhoops. But nothing beats mgoblog for information about Michigan sports.
I will say, while people can be pretty snarky and rude here sometimes, the mods and Brian keep things from an utter descent into anarchy. And who can complain about tasteful pictures of Scarlett Johansson?
I continue to come to this site for sports news, and because the mods help the site largely self-regulate. (or, they're busier than I realize in deleting posts I don't want to read or see anyway.)
February 15th, 2012 at 2:55 PM ^
I've got to say, the rudeness/snark is one of my favorite things about this site. On other non-sports sites it's sometimes hard not to start attacking other users like we can here
February 15th, 2012 at 3:10 PM ^
Some posts simply beg for a snarky or rude response. I have been guilty of more than a few such posts.
OTOH . . .
- it can be brutal for new users;
- Heaven forbid someone repost something that was already posted;
- Some people have awfully thin skin and take offense too easily when they disagree with something.
Like I said, Brian and the mods do a great job of moderating this. Deserved snark is allowed to ride. And if a thread is turning into a flamewar, well, they rein it in. I think, following Brian's own pattern of sarcasm yet restraint, the mods do a wonderful job of balancing this. They get rid of the mlive juvenile insult and troll type stuff, but allow fools to be skewered as deserved.
February 20th, 2012 at 7:03 PM ^
"And who can complain about tasteful pictures of Scarlett Johansson?"
Mrs. Kass?
February 15th, 2012 at 3:12 PM ^
I actuallly found this website(ironically enough) through a Freep link about the backlash they had taken during the days immediately following the beginning of "Stretchgate". I soon discovered there were actually other people as obsessed with Michigan sports as I was and thus this became my most visited site since.
February 15th, 2012 at 3:27 PM ^
I found it about a year ago. I'm going to Michigan next year, going to be a freshman, and my dad went to Michigan, so I've always been a huge Michigan fan.
Last year during basketball season I was always trying to find a good place to get some basketball info. After the disappointing football season, when Michigan's basketball team started to exceed expectations, I became even more obsessed than I was. I didn't really know where to find info though so I just relied on ESPN posting things every once in a while.
Then when Michigan was about to play MSU in Ann Arbor last year, I went hunting for some better analysis than what ESPN gave me. I went to the B1G blog and looked at the side links and found MGoBlog. I went here, and have bene addicted since.
February 15th, 2012 at 4:13 PM ^
I heard about the site during the stretchgate shenanigans. I even think it may have been mentioned by the freep at some point. Anyway I am glad I discovered the site and I visit multiple times a day. I am glad to see there are many people that are as obsessed with Michigan sports as I am. I am constantly surprised by the great content generated by Brain, Ace, Heiko, and especially the users of the site. I usually laugh out loud at least once or twice a day at replies I see on the blog. There are some very clever and informed users on the blog. I visit for the comments as much as the general content.
February 15th, 2012 at 4:38 PM ^
THE KNOWLEDGE
February 15th, 2012 at 4:42 PM ^
To find out who Tacopants was/is.
February 15th, 2012 at 5:02 PM ^
I don't remember if I read about it somewhere, if someone told me about it, if it was the sound of heads asploding, or the inevitability of its gravitational pull, but it really doesn't matter. This was where I was meant to be.
Hail and well met, MGoBlog.
February 15th, 2012 at 5:02 PM ^
The Michigan Recruits and Recruiting classes and I asked him: "Where the heck are you getting all this information?" BOOM!
February 15th, 2012 at 5:14 PM ^
I don't remember how I got here, but I think it was googling a recruits name. I haven't left since, but I did make did a trip to Bolivia for a bit.