Thanks for being here with us. Sincerely.
Something happens when you take the time to build a membership base the way we have, and to employ dedicated, level-headed moderators who are serious about their craft: You end up with a membership base that is the epitome of what "Internet fans" should be, not to mention that you end up with probably the most knowledgeable collection of fans of any site.
I had time to reflect a bit on this today as I was asked to provide a self-written bio for an event I'm going to be a part of later this week (not connected to UA sports). I was limited in the length of what I could provide. When you try to condense a life down into four or five sentences, it's not easy, at just about any age.
I had to pick and choose what I'd highlight, and aside from highlighting the parts of my current "real job" that were germane to the task, I chose to talk about the relationship I've had with BamaNation Partners LLC (that's the Clark Kent to TideFans.com's Superman) for 20 years now. The reason for that is, alongside our staff and our members, we have built something substantial here that has stood the test of time. It's even more meaningful given the comings and goings of other sites for a variety of reasons over that same time frame. What I do is quite easy compared to the amount of work that has to be done to hold the site up structurally, and I'm not talking about servers and ports. Most of that work falls to our mod team and the people actually participating in the discussions themselves.
Sometime over the coming years, there will be a disruptive sea change coinciding with the retirement of Nick Saban. We've enjoyed a lot of success together here but a lot of us also remember what it was like to try to unwind the knots of Mike DuBose's tenure, or Mike Shula's, or the Mike Price mini-tenure. The first thing I ever wrote for Brett, I wrote about Gene Stallings in 1996 and I wrote it from the computer lab in the basement of Gordon Palmer Hall my senior year at UA. I couldn't even read it when Brett published it, because that old computer lab was full of text-only terminals and didn't have access to a browser of any kind. This was back before the name "TideFans.com" ever existed. It's just funny to think about how this site, along with all the other "old school" Alabama sites cut their teeth during arguably the most tumultuous time in program history.
I hope I'm around when that next stage comes. I have no plans to be anywhere else. To everyone else, thanks for making TideFans work. Without you, we're just smashing little plastic keys into the nether.
Something happens when you take the time to build a membership base the way we have, and to employ dedicated, level-headed moderators who are serious about their craft: You end up with a membership base that is the epitome of what "Internet fans" should be, not to mention that you end up with probably the most knowledgeable collection of fans of any site.
I had time to reflect a bit on this today as I was asked to provide a self-written bio for an event I'm going to be a part of later this week (not connected to UA sports). I was limited in the length of what I could provide. When you try to condense a life down into four or five sentences, it's not easy, at just about any age.
I had to pick and choose what I'd highlight, and aside from highlighting the parts of my current "real job" that were germane to the task, I chose to talk about the relationship I've had with BamaNation Partners LLC (that's the Clark Kent to TideFans.com's Superman) for 20 years now. The reason for that is, alongside our staff and our members, we have built something substantial here that has stood the test of time. It's even more meaningful given the comings and goings of other sites for a variety of reasons over that same time frame. What I do is quite easy compared to the amount of work that has to be done to hold the site up structurally, and I'm not talking about servers and ports. Most of that work falls to our mod team and the people actually participating in the discussions themselves.
Sometime over the coming years, there will be a disruptive sea change coinciding with the retirement of Nick Saban. We've enjoyed a lot of success together here but a lot of us also remember what it was like to try to unwind the knots of Mike DuBose's tenure, or Mike Shula's, or the Mike Price mini-tenure. The first thing I ever wrote for Brett, I wrote about Gene Stallings in 1996 and I wrote it from the computer lab in the basement of Gordon Palmer Hall my senior year at UA. I couldn't even read it when Brett published it, because that old computer lab was full of text-only terminals and didn't have access to a browser of any kind. This was back before the name "TideFans.com" ever existed. It's just funny to think about how this site, along with all the other "old school" Alabama sites cut their teeth during arguably the most tumultuous time in program history.
I hope I'm around when that next stage comes. I have no plans to be anywhere else. To everyone else, thanks for making TideFans work. Without you, we're just smashing little plastic keys into the nether.
