Hawk Digest 9/13/2006
One Year Later
Today marks the one-year anniversary of Hawk Digest, yet for the fast-paced Web 2.0 world, it seems so long ago. I turned the decision to start a football-only blog for KU over in my mind for several years before finally committing last September. At the time, the source for KU football news, photo, audio and video was kusports.com -- as it is now. The Phog.net gridiron board was the community and Rivals provided the best recruiting info. On the peripheral, you had the usual newspaper sites -- KC Star, Topeka Capital-Journal and the Wichita Eagle plus the Phog Blog which was pretty focused on hoops. You pretty much had the same beat stories then that you have now with KUsports.com, but they were already starting to toy with blogs like the Greene Room. The columns seemed infrequent and really the best place to be was the Gridiron board. Stories about or related to KU football pretty much went up there first and still do. Plus, a handful of posters there really provided good content. Yet, the experience was frustrating with the club of nuisance posters (anti-Mangino's, anti-KU football, KSU flamers and Mizzou flamers) trashing up the place. It became a time-consuming chore to weed through the trash. I was an infrequent poster (damage_96 -- 300 posts), but a daily reader. I secretly hoped one of the regulars would start up a blog. During those searches, I found the Kansas State Football blog. Pride kicked in and I immediately went into action. If KSU had a football blog, then KU football would have one no matter if I posted once a day or once a month. Besides it really felt like there just wasn't enough football content.
One year later and we've gone 180 degrees. A new blog covering all of KU sports arrived in early 2007 -- Rock Chalk Talk (with extensive football coverage). Plus, I'm not sure why, but KUsports.com has gone into overdrive with Ryan Wood adding his Sawin' Wood blog and the columnists are kickin' out at least one article per day. Since the season started, there are multiple items posted every day. Even Phog Blog was getting into the action with several football posts earlier this month (though that may have been strictly a surge due to the HotDog YouTube moment). The Gridiron Board is still the same, but faster paced and more trash than ever.
In other words, it's a great time to be a KU football fan on the internet. Here at Hawk Digest, I'm building on the original plan. The focus is to consolidate and present all of that KU football content in a single source while throwing in my thoughts and opinions. Basically, simplify the KU football internet world for the fans. In addition, lately I've been working to build more of a community here at Hawk Digest. The stories are coming in so fast, I could use some help getting out the breaking news on the Jayhawk Network Forum which feeds into the left column. Rather than the free-for-all on the Gridiron board, I envision a forum for fans that are ultimately more supportive of KU football. Well-supported criticism and cordial debate is welcome, but the childish tirades and flamers will be eliminated. So, if you've been on the fence, join the game and post away in the comments or on the Jayhawk Network Forum. HD is a full-fledged one-year old now, and it's time to start crawling.