As some of you may know, this fall will mark 10 years of the GBU. That spans 4 head coaches- Fran, Price, Shula, and Saban. 1 National Title, 1 SEC title, 2 SEC West titles, and much much more. The next few weeks will be a series of posts remembering some of the moments and discussing some of the what ifs and what could have beens of the decade that was. I get asked a lot of quesitons from time to time about this blog and hopefully I will answer some of those in this series.
How did the GBU come to existence????
Well, it was kinda by accident to be truthful. In 2002, Fran was king of the castle and Writer Mike (more to come there) had spun a lot of thought for Bama fans. Bama fans were dealing with the Dubosian Failure Syndrome and Probation. They could not accept that things were where they were. The first posting was after the OU game that year. Bama had lost to a highly talented Oklahoma team that had withstood all the tricks Bama could throw at them. However, I was reading all this hype after a loss.
I find no morals in defeat, just lessons. So a moral victory is like going to a frat party and going home with your sister and trying to spin how that was good somehow. After a day or so of reading this "it was a good loss" routine, I posted on BamaMag a post simply entitled "The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly". It was named that because I had remembered a bit in the Birmingham News at the top of the sports page that always hit 1 high, low, and bad point. It was fairly well received and I just kept on doing it.
How do you go about preparing what you blog?
Here is the weekly ritual that starts on Tuesdays.
Tuesday- Typically, the prior week's GBU is winding down on the various places it goes to. I try to not keep it going after a day or so, and I do such because I typically start surfing trying to read up on the next team. If it is Kent State or Georgia State, I typically won't do quite as much reading, but I still like to know if they have any game talent or what style they play.
Thursday- This is a pretty good day when in the process. Thursdays I typically try to watch YouTube or ESPN clips of the opponent. I try not to watch just highlight reel material because I don't see the best and worst at one time. I also DVR other games to watch like ARK v. FL or UGA v. AUB, and see if there are some kinks worth finding.
Friday- I take a day from college and watch as much HS football as I can to see the prep stars and see which ones meet the mark and who is the hyped pretender. Remember in Random Thoughts I do spend time talking about recruiting and I do a recap, so it isn't just a short term thing, it is an ongoing process.
Saturday- Game day comes and I really don't watch the game and think about the play by play being good or bad per se. I do tend to keep a note pad and jot down notes at times to review on the replay/DVR to review a few things. Sometimes, I do participate in game time chat sessions with fellow fans, but I try to simply enjoy the game and not break it down as it happens. The notes I take aren't real detailed. They usually are something like:
1st- 9.53 MI run RT, good or
4th- 2.33 GM sacked corner, bad
After the game is over, I tend to let it sit. I will talk to family about the game for a bit, but I don't go to a message board or read anything that night. I like to think that it wipes the slate clean for a bit.
Sunday- I do start thinking about the game after Church. As the NFL goes on, I do see things and it makes me think about this play or that from the day before. I break my message board ban around mid-afternoon and just read. Sometimes I read things that people talk about and make a point to review those plays or players.
Sunday night, I tuck my son in bed, go to the living room, and watch the replay. I start from the begining and take notes. This time I am noting about every play. What you read on Monday really comes into place Sunday night. I watch most plays about 3 times. First time is to just see it again, second is to see where things went well/wrong, and third is to double check who made/missed it. If it is a Sister Mary game, I probably don't dig super deep into things, and sometimes I type the GBU that night. However, it usually takes about 3 hours to watch the game from start to end.
Monday- Monday is easy really. The blog post you read seem long, but they don't take long because I have already formed the ideas and structure, so it is just a matter of taking about 30 minutes to just type them out. While some think I spend more time typing the bad or focusing on it, I actually focus on the Good portion more in trying to point to as much as I can find. Some weeks of the Shula years, that was a helluva struggle. I type more of the Bad out because I cannot just do a short blurb and go on. I have to go in depth because some readers get monkey butt about stuff if you don't beat it out into a long thought. The post usually hits the boards around 10 EST, sometimes sooner or later depending on my day. After I post, I usually don't revisit it until an hour or two sometimes more later. I always give it time to just be. At that point, I tend to like to reply to as many posters as I can because if you took time to read and respond, it is the least I can do.
Some odd stats and such....
I was a bit ignorant about how viral this post was each week. It wasn't until I moved the post to this site that I realized how many people really read this. On any given week, I get anywhere from 3000 to 5000 hits on Monday. Tuesday gets about another 1 to 2K. If I do a random thought, it spikes it back up to around 1 to 2K those days. Most come from message board reading, but about 15 percent of the hits come from email and google searches. I knew the emails happened because folks emailed me telling me they had sent it to their Dad or someone who loved Bama football as well. I just didn't think that many did it each week.
Another fun stat is that the GBU is a regular read in Sweeden, Canada, Germany, the UK, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates. I am guessing the Troops are reading in their spare time. I doubt a guy from the deep south translates well in those countries otherwise. Most of you who read are IE users, but the Iphone/pad has picked up this year. Of the major Bama sites, the most referred is Rivals BOL, Tider Insider does a few yet I do not attend that site, and Scout puts a regular group in as well. The most read GBU on this site is the Arkansas 2011 game, and the most read post of all time is the Random Thought from February 7th, 2011 aka recruit roundup. Just a quick note, in 2011, the blog will be Mobile friendly. So, now you can view it from your Blackberry and IPhone and it not be this small and have to deal with magnifying it. Trust me, I hated that too. Now it is fixed.
Random Favorite Memories thus far....
My favorite memory from the GBU so far is my infamous run in with Writer Mike. If the name doesn't ring a bell, Mike is best known for this moment in Fran history.... My first run in with the silver tongued one was when he was trolling about every Bama site known to man to run propaganda for Fran. Fran's last year at Bama was good up until the end. Mike didn't like that I was pointing out things in the coaching or in the plays themself, from what I gather, none of them do at times. The posts you read on here, he hated, and I am guessing that his boss probably didn't like them either. Mike had earned quite a bit of fandom on message boards because he claimed to watch film with the coaches and talked to Fran every day. The latter was probably true, but it didn't take long to figure out that he was making up half of what he said. I would guess those A&M boosters and Kim probably figured that out eventually too.
He had prodded and poked at my thoughts about things for a couple of weeks, and finally I kinda outed him. It isn't a secret, coaches don't like to sit with reporters or ankle biters during the one thing they treat as Church, film study. He kept claiming his in with the program, but never was real clear on much. It was all abstract and vague, sound familiar to some of today's "Insiders"? It came to a head when after the LSU game, Fran would not say he was coming back, he said something to the effect "it will all work out". Mike was aware then that Fran was out the back door to avoid the walk of shame, and I cornered him about that to the point he just left the message boards. Between his lying about his connections, and basically outing that he knew Fran was gone, it didn't take long after that for a few fans to figure out what had happened. Mike tried the same trick at A&M, but their fans weren't quite as message board happy so that is where the newsletter came from. McKenzie is about 1 step higher than Scott Moore in this world when it gets down to it. He always wants an audience and is always taking a small fact and surrounding it with a big lie.
How bad has the hate mail been?
Well, there are some that are just bad. I get some after Bama loses that wishes me to die. Some want to meet at the KMart parking lot in Gasden and other locations to fight. Some try to do an educated email but end up saying nothing but "I don't like what you said but I cannot dispute it, but I know I don't want to read that". Some will email over and over trying to force me to believe what they say. I love that one. I am sure the mods at various sites get a lot of emails wishing my banishment, but it is hard to do when you have to click a link to read something.
Do you like recruiting? You seem to have a hate for it.
I love recruiting, but I hate where it is going. I hate the hat thing. I hate the gimmicks in general. I didn't like them when most were going for the good guys, but now it seems to be that recruiting is almost a pimping exercise. Recruits now throw names and change positions to keep their name fresh and see their headlines on a regular basis. I would guess that most know a month or more before signing day what they will do. I also cringe when I see posts on message boards where a 40 something guy does a C&P for a 17 year old off of Facebook. I also cringe when I watch these same fans blast a young man for going to another school. To be honest, you get 25 or so players every year to come to your school, you can't sign all of them and some just don't want to go to your school. It just is a fact of life. My fear is that you get an Updyke type of guy who just goes ape shit because a player goes to the rival school and greets him somewhere with a bullet.
I want to know about recruits and where they are going just as much as anyone, but I don't put my life around their soap opera.
NEXT UP- Top 10 Players of the last 10 Seasons and The 10 that missed the Saban Era the most....
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