(This is the first of a week long series sponsored by EA Sports NCAA Football 2011)
Being a fan of a particular team or school is determined at birth for many of us. Like many of the good folks who visit our blog daily I have been a Husky fan for life. My earliest remembrance as a toddler was crying as my father left on a train with friends to watch the 1960 Rose Bowl in Pasadena. One of my most prized possessions was a program from that game which I virtually wore out once it was passed to me once I learned to read.
I am a student of Washington Husky football. I can rattle off the names and bios of Husky greats like George Wilson, Chuck Carroll, Don Heinrich, Hugh McElhenny, Bob Schloredt, Rick Redman, Ben Davidson, Junior Coffey, Dave Williams, Sonny Sixkiller, Robin Earl, Warren Moon, Joe Steele, Steve Emtman, Marques Tuiasosopo, and hundreds more.
I have fond memories of UW QB Bill Douglas fitting me for my first set of cleats when he worked at Athletic Supply. I remember the Alumni team led by Big Ben Davidson arriving in an ambulance before the spring games. How many of us ate TV dinners while watching Husky Highlights hosted by Jim Owens and Keith Jackson? To say the least Husky football has always been a passion for me and every Saturday afternoon in the fall is an opportunity to renew that passion.
I am entering my fifth season of blogging about University of Washington sports. Strange as it may sound the person most responsible for the creation of this blog was the infamous Tyrone Willingham. Not too many people were happy when Ty was hired. The message boards at the usual UW recruiting sites turned absolutely venomous as the fan base divided itself into nega-dawgs and posi-dawgs.
I wasn't thrilled when Tyrone was hired and to be honest red flags for performance began to pop up immediately. That being said I felt he deserved the respect associated with the position he held and support while he put his program together. I felt that during the end of his second season we would have a clear view of where the program was headed.
I started the blog to give us a positive place to talk about Husky Football while we were enduring what was the darkest time in history for the program. We only had 2-3 steady readers when we started but it has grown to over 1700 unique visitors per day making it the second most popular Husky site on the Internet.
Former PI blog writer Nathan Ware had a lot to do with our growth. We teamed up to write a weekly Q&A column together during the season which was popular on his blog. When Nathan decided to take a break from writing and the print PI met its demise a lot of our current readers moved over here on a permanent basis.
At the beginning of our third season the good folks at Bruin Nation (UCLA), and Building the Dam (OSU) recommended us to Peter Bean over at SB Nation. The Washington SB Nation site had struggled to find a readership and the writer over there had moved on. We picked a new title, they drew up our infamous logo, and the rest was history. We were a member of the most respected sports blog network on the Internet and have had steady growth ever since.
As we enter our fifth season of blogging hopes are high for a Husky turnaround of epic proportions. The fan base is uniting once again under popular head coach Steve Sarkisian. People in Seattle are starting to whisper Rose Bowl and Heisman Trophy once again because anything is possible if you are a Husky fan.
Washington football is back!