Mgoblog half decade club
"The Age of Miracles" is still my favorite Mgoblog post ever. I've always been fascinated by stories about the intersection of sports and life, and Brian wove those two things together poetically in that piece. It was my sole motivation for reading Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch, one of my now favorite books of all time.
And I concur. That may be the best thing Brian's written.
Yep, Age of Miracles is probably my favorite. Instantly relatable, totally poignant. Really a fantastic piece of writing.
I was around when the WLA had a firm grip on all things.
The nights were as dangerous to post stupidity as the days back then, friends.
I yearn for those days again.
What happened to those guys?
Was Chitownblue a WLA guy?
They're always around... in the hushed corners of the back alleys in the night.
You can hear a whisper... WLA...
Seriously though, no idea, to both of your questions.
Chitownblue was a WLA guy.
What happened to Mgochris, or was it Chrisgoblue? He was a frequent poster back in the day.
I still miss haloscan and flight tracker during the infamous coaching search.
Poor bulldog.
time flies, hit 5 years about a week ago, had lurked for a year & a half beforehand.
I'd like to say the eloquent 11 Swans post inspired me to sign-up, but honestly it was probably some stupid Barwis-riding-wolves-with-lasers thread that pushed me over the edge.
I just realized I missed my anniversary. Happy Anniversary!!
I miss actual pos bangs
No kidding. I'm still holding out hope that they will come back at some point. Great satisfaction came from creating some picture, posting it to a thread and coming back later with 50+ pos bans.
I'm almost there, I have a few more weeks to go before I hit the big #5.
I still think the lloyd brady photoshop thread was my favorite. I laughed consistantly over that for like a week.
Agreed. You were tremendous in that thread. Tears were streaming down my face from laughing so hard. I think I checked that thread multiple times over the next week just to see if there were any late additions. And it might be the greatest posbang thread in the history of posbangs as far as total points awarded in one thread. Classic.
Even though I've only been here for close to a year, we have encountered so much as a fan base in these five years. From the low points of RR to the higher points like Michigan finally going dancing in basketball (and having a legendary run last season) and the New Beginnings of the Hoke Era. I don't know if a fan base has encountered so much in the past five years than us, but I do know that through good and bad, these are the types of things I live for. You guys have been great (except for the trolls and flamers), and I want to thank everybody. GO BLUE and 2013 is the year.
Posting just to see when I joined o.O
Edit: well I'll be damned...five years for me.
5 and counting. . .
I am not a five year guy so I missed "Seven Swans" when it originally posted. Given the large number of people who've referenced it in this thread I went back and read it and was stunned by its poignancy, its eloquence and Brian's ability to send chills down my spine in reading his poetry. And yes...that was poetry in the truest sense of the word.
I couldnt help but wonder, however, after finishing it what the Brian who wrote that piece would've thought about the recent "Most Buckeye Thing Ever" post that generated so much backlash this past week. It seems to me like they were written by two different people given the literary heights one versus the pandering depths of the other.
It kinda made me sad.
From The Horror to Haloscan to Hokeamania.
Minor quibble, but the blog has actually been around for nearly ten years. The move to this domain was five years ago. Also, the first of the two coaching searches was almost six years ago, and it took place when the site was still over at Blogspot.
I think the most memorable thing Brian has ever written was this:
http://mgoblog.com/content/you-were-killed-bear-and-i-am-sad
Obviously things didn't play out as that post anticipated they would, but much of it is still relevant. Irrespective of what came after it, the end of the Carr era did represent a very significant milestone in the history of this program, and that post perfectly captured the conflicting emotions that I think most Michigan fans felt about it.
My favorite Brian post was the one a couple of days later (he was on a role), the evening before Rich Rod's first game.
It was simultaenously reflective, naïvely optimistic, and eerily clairvoyant.
http://mgoblog.com/content/space-big-place
We are all Don Canham now. Rich Rodriguez comes in with a wildly successful pedigree but promises to finally tear down the culture of Bo’s program, to replace it with something uncertain. This has caused apprehension in some, joy in others, and disdain verging on hatred in a select group. The program risks changing into something people drift away from because it has drifted from them, or, worse, something that you only wish you could drift away from. It also promises fireworks and fun and victory and a feeling that’s something other than that thing we’ve felt so much before. Other fanbases go through this every five or ten or fifteen years; for us it’s been 40. I could welcome it, I guess, or celebrate it, or proclaim inevitable dominion over the land. But I don’t feel like it. Nor do I feel like fretting over imaginary scandals future. Like Canham, I just hope it works.
There was also the 'Story' post for 2008 with the infamous time machine parable:
The thing about time machines is this: you show up with a copy of tomorrow’s newspaper, and the day after tomorrow’s. On day one, you loudly proclaim “I AM FROM THE FUTURE” and people laugh at you and you make bold proclamations about newsworthy events, holding up tomorrow’s paper. The next day you’ve gained some credibility but skeptics remain, so this time you show them the day after tomorrow’s paper, which just has one story on the front page. The headline, in “WAR”-sized caps: “HOLY CRAP, THIS GUY IS FROM THE FUTURE.” Your credibility established beyond a doubt on day three—which is sometime in late August, 2007—you sit the Michigan fanbase down and carefully explain everything that is going to happen to them over the next twelve months, at which point they laugh at you again.
Man, it all seems so surreal now.
"Then Lloyd Carr retired and things got weirder . . . Brady Hoke was theorized."
Uh Oh.
My favorite from the Haloscan days was the Sissy Boy Blogger Slapfest of 2005: http://mgoblog.blogspot.com/2005/06/pot-declares-war-on-kettles.html
That was back in the days of the triumverate of UM blogs: Mgo, iBlog for Cookies, and Straight Bangin'...
Lurking like its my job...
Just coming up on 4 years myself, but I started getting into MGoBlog awhile before I joined. In 2008 I graduated from Michigan, moved out of the state for the first time in my life, and started an MA program at Notre Dame. All of a sudden my Michigan identity went from being shared with everyone around me to being a hated, tiny minority. MGoBlog was certainly a great resource in those days.
Honestly, it was moving to ND that made me more of an all-sports Michigan fan, since I started following things via here and mgoblue.com, so I got updates on all the non-revenue sports and learned to love them (softball especially, of course!). All of us Wolverines in the diaspora really owe this site a debt of gratitude!
FIRST!
THIS.
Cheers to that.
Personally, chunks the hobo was my favorite. Wish I had some of his stuff saved somewhere for posterity.
about the rush to be able to be the first one to post. 5 years, wow! Congrats Brian
Getting my Fandom Endurance III badge for Northwestern '08. Also seems like forever since McFarlin and the original The Knowledge were lurking around here.
On a more negative note, but still a fond memory: getting sent to Bolivia by sheer user downvotes and earning my way back one point at a time with posts and positive upvotes. The RR years were not kind to my point totals, I could probably be pushing 10 thousand by now.
The best thing this blog has done in the past five-ish years (my MGoBirthday isn't til September but whatever) is without a doubt expose Rosenberg's drive-by hack job for what it truly was.
I've followed since fall of 2006 (the Wisco game I believe). The blog began in Dec of 2004, IIRC.
in those days, 2005 was referred to as the year of infinite sadness. 7-5 really opened everyone's eyes to the decay of the progam under Carr after 3-4 years of rumors about his health being in question.
that minnesota game in 05- woof
5 years on MGBog, 5 decades bleeding blue.
The first post I can remember reading was The New Math. It's possible that is what originally attracted me to mgoblog.blogspot.com, when I was looking for someone to share my joy and befuddlement at what just happened.
Since then, there are too many memories to count to pick a single favorite. The lead-up to the 2006 Ohio State game. Recovering from the start to 2007. The 2008 Gator Bowl. Communist Football. The truth behind the practice time scandal. The 2011 Ohio State game. The Final Four run. Many more.
I still remember my first post. It was roughly a week before my grandmother passed away and I had joined to start a thread about QB commit Shavodrick Beaver's flirtation to Tulsa of all places.
Prior to that thread, I had been a regular lurker on the site. How time flies.
The only thing I remember from that timeframe was that I would check the mgoboard at 3 AM during some all nighters trying to finish up a project.
/terrible old memories.
Earning enough points to start a message board thread.
Then being too fearful to start a message board thread.
I'm here for the 5 year pos bang! Haven't seen a lot of you in a while. Miss the good old days.