Ancient Chinese curse, "May all your wishes come true!"

Sports fans have short attention spans. As a site, this one can be confusing to navigate. There are 1,000 boards here. Having stumbled around the site for a while I tend to like having a separate board for each school. To an outsider that just adds to the confusion.

Many fans think the world starts and ends with their school. While I like hearing opinions from fans of other schools, most fans do not. So they pay money to go to sites where they don't have to listen to opposing fans.

The view count for threads seems to run about 20-30 times the actual replies. Were they registered users that didn't reply or guests?

(03-11-2013 06:30 AM)Wolfman Wrote:  Ancient Chinese curse, "May all your wishes come true!"

Sports fans have short attention spans. As a site, this one can be confusing to navigate. There are 1,000 boards here. Having stumbled around the site for a while I tend to like having a separate board for each school. To an outsider that just adds to the confusion.

Many fans think the world starts and ends with their school. While I like hearing opinions from fans of other schools, most fans do not. So they pay money to go to sites where they don't have to listen to opposing fans.

The view count for threads seems to run about 20-30 times the actual replies. Were they registered users that didn't reply or guests?

^^^ THIS ^^^
I think some fans of Southern schools go directly to the page for their school, and when they see no activity there for maybe a year or more, they just leave (or at least, they never sign up).

IMO, it would be better to remove all school-specific boards and merge them all into the ACCBBS Conference Talk board. That way (1) it's never hard to find the latest posts, and (2) It gives the impression of more activity - even if some of it is specific to another school. Just my 2 cents.

(03-11-2013 06:30 AM)Wolfman Wrote:  Ancient Chinese curse, "May all your wishes come true!"

Sports fans have short attention spans. As a site, this one can be confusing to navigate. There are 1,000 boards here. Having stumbled around the site for a while I tend to like having a separate board for each school. To an outsider that just adds to the confusion.

Agree 1000% Why do sports forums like this have team boards?

Have one generic conference forum to start. Add specific teams as traffic dictates. There are really only a couple team forums here with any traffic (Memphis, Cincy and a few others)

(03-11-2013 06:42 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  ^^^ THIS ^^^
I think some fans of Southern schools go directly to the page for their school, and when they see no activity there for maybe a year or more, they just leave (or at least, they never sign up).

IMO, it would be better to remove all school-specific boards and merge them all into the ACCBBS Conference Talk board. That way (1) it's never hard to find the latest posts, and (2) It gives the impression of more activity - even if some of it is specific to another school. Just my 2 cents.

Conference boards become active first (larger pool to pull from) and from that team boards get active. It is long term foolish to eliminate non-active team boards.

I have various things in the works that will aid in bringing in traffic.

(03-11-2013 08:37 AM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(03-11-2013 06:42 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  ^^^ THIS ^^^
I think some fans of Southern schools go directly to the page for their school, and when they see no activity there for maybe a year or more, they just leave (or at least, they never sign up).

IMO, it would be better to remove all school-specific boards and merge them all into the ACCBBS Conference Talk board. That way (1) it's never hard to find the latest posts, and (2) It gives the impression of more activity - even if some of it is specific to another school. Just my 2 cents.

Conference boards become active first (larger pool to pull from) and from that team boards get active. It is long term foolish to eliminate non-active team boards.

I have various things in the works that will aid in bringing in traffic.

OK, but could we at least have a single place where we can see what's been posted on the school pages? We used to be able to at least the the most recent post for Atlantic & Coastal divisions, but even that is gone now... and the list of "active boards" doesn't appear to be dynamic, is it? At any rate, that's a pain to check that - can we just get something like this:


Maybe even BOLD the ones I haven't read yet... THAT would drive me to read those posts!

(03-10-2013 09:21 PM)CardinalZen Wrote:  Terry is THE only ND poster that I see on my Internet travels.

There are a few that pop up on the Louisville boards from time to time, but they live in Louisville.

I don't worry about Notre Dame fans considering the fact that 99% of them couldn't find South Bend, Indiana on a map. I would prefer not to associate with such uneducated riff raff...

(03-11-2013 09:01 AM)7fielder Wrote:  

(03-10-2013 09:21 PM)CardinalZen Wrote:  Terry is THE only ND poster that I see on my Internet travels.

There are a few that pop up on the Louisville boards from time to time, but they live in Louisville.

I don't worry about Notre Dame fans considering the fact that 99% of them couldn't find South Bend, Indiana on a map. I would prefer not to associate with such uneducated riff raff...

Precisely how we ACC fans who grew up in the South feel about the typical "Wal-Mart T-Shirt" SEC fan.

(03-11-2013 08:57 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(03-11-2013 08:37 AM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  

(03-11-2013 06:42 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  ^^^ THIS ^^^
I think some fans of Southern schools go directly to the page for their school, and when they see no activity there for maybe a year or more, they just leave (or at least, they never sign up).

IMO, it would be better to remove all school-specific boards and merge them all into the ACCBBS Conference Talk board. That way (1) it's never hard to find the latest posts, and (2) It gives the impression of more activity - even if some of it is specific to another school. Just my 2 cents.

Conference boards become active first (larger pool to pull from) and from that team boards get active. It is long term foolish to eliminate non-active team boards.

I have various things in the works that will aid in bringing in traffic.

OK, but could we at least have a single place where we can see what's been posted on the school pages? We used to be able to at least the the most recent post for Atlantic & Coastal divisions, but even that is gone now... and the list of "active boards" doesn't appear to be dynamic, is it? At any rate, that's a pain to check that - can we just get something like this:

Code:

Name of Forum           Last Post
====================    ====================
ACC Conference Talk    Why Can't We Get Fans Fro...Today 10:37 AM by georgia_tech_swagger
Boston College          1/1/2012
Clemson                 1/1/2012
Florida State           1/1/2012
Louisville              1/1/2012
NC State                1/1/2012
Syracuse                1/1/2012
Wake Forest             1/1/2012
Duke                    1/1/2012
Georgia Tech            1/1/2012
Miami (FL)              1/1/2012
North Carolina          1/1/2012
Pittsburgh              1/1/2012
Virginia                1/1/2012
Virginia Tech           1/1/2012
Notre Dame              1/1/2012

Maybe even BOLD the ones I haven't read yet... THAT would drive me to read those posts!

What if... The 2nd column indicates what sport the thread applies to. It doesn't seem to get used very much. What if that was replaced with something team specific? It could be the school logo or a tiny football helmet. If there are copyright issues, a simple, text NCS or UoL would work. The same features would apply - black dot, bold for not read, etc. Clicking on that thread would take you to the appropriate team page and by association, tell you the thread came from that team page. Probably too hard to program though.

(03-11-2013 09:51 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(03-11-2013 09:01 AM)7fielder Wrote:  

(03-10-2013 09:21 PM)CardinalZen Wrote:  Terry is THE only ND poster that I see on my Internet travels.

There are a few that pop up on the Louisville boards from time to time, but they live in Louisville.

I don't worry about Notre Dame fans considering the fact that 99% of them couldn't find South Bend, Indiana on a map. I would prefer not to associate with such uneducated riff raff...

Precisely how we ACC fans who grew up in the South feel about the typical "Wal-Mart T-Shirt" SEC fan.

Yeah, the last Pitt / Notre Dame game that I attended I lost count how many people had both of these tatoos... Somehow I doubt most of these guys even knew that Notre Dame was located in Indiana? They probably think ND is in Ireland and they probably think Ireland is off the coast of Massachusetts...

(03-11-2013 09:01 AM)7fielder Wrote:  

(03-10-2013 09:21 PM)CardinalZen Wrote:  Terry is THE only ND poster that I see on my Internet travels.

There are a few that pop up on the Louisville boards from time to time, but they live in Louisville.

I don't worry about Notre Dame fans considering the fact that 99% of them couldn't find South Bend, Indiana on a map. I would prefer not to associate with such uneducated riff raff...

A vast overstatement and stereotype, in my opinion.

(03-11-2013 11:53 AM)TerryD Wrote:  

(03-11-2013 09:01 AM)7fielder Wrote:  

(03-10-2013 09:21 PM)CardinalZen Wrote:  Terry is THE only ND poster that I see on my Internet travels.

There are a few that pop up on the Louisville boards from time to time, but they live in Louisville.

I don't worry about Notre Dame fans considering the fact that 99% of them couldn't find South Bend, Indiana on a map. I would prefer not to associate with such uneducated riff raff...

A vast overstatement and stereotype, in my opinion.

OK... 90% and I didn't mean you Terry.

(03-11-2013 08:57 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  Maybe even BOLD the ones I haven't read yet... THAT would drive me to read those posts!

That's what the unread post marker (the blue circles) denote. Mark all posts as read. As something lights up -- there's thread(s) containing post(s) you haven't seen. Simply click on the circle to dim it out again if it was a thread you weren't interested in and to mark the forum as read.

I've met plenty of Notre Dame football fans in the South... I'd venture to say no more than 10% of them could point to South Bend on a map*... I'd go so far to say that 25% of those ND T-Shirt fans don't even realize it's in the state of Indiana!

*they think South Bend is on the southern end of Indiana, near the Ohio River.

(03-11-2013 10:28 AM)7fielder Wrote:  

(03-11-2013 09:51 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(03-11-2013 09:01 AM)7fielder Wrote:  

(03-10-2013 09:21 PM)CardinalZen Wrote:  Terry is THE only ND poster that I see on my Internet travels.

There are a few that pop up on the Louisville boards from time to time, but they live in Louisville.

I don't worry about Notre Dame fans considering the fact that 99% of them couldn't find South Bend, Indiana on a map. I would prefer not to associate with such uneducated riff raff...

Precisely how we ACC fans who grew up in the South feel about the typical "Wal-Mart T-Shirt" SEC fan.

Yeah, the last Pitt / Notre Dame game that I attended I lost count how many people had both of these tatoos... Somehow I doubt most of these guys even knew that Notre Dame was located in Indiana? They probably think ND is in Ireland and they probably think Ireland is off the coast of Massachusetts...

I grew up near Pittsburgh and I root for both of those teams, ND and the Pittsburgh Steelers.

I don't have either one of those tattoos. Sorry.

I do know where Ireland is located because I am a dual citizen of the USA/Republic of Ireland and I travel to Ireland.

In fact, I will be there again for two weeks this summer.

My last trip was in June, 2011.

My family started rooting for ND when it beat Army in 1913. We have been ND fans for a century.

My parents went on their honeymoon to an ND/Purdue game in September, 1939.

They went to ND games almost every other year since then and took all of their children, grandchildren, etc.. to South Bend, Baltimore, New York and other places to watch the Irish play.

My older brother started off every one of his letters home from South Vietnam in the Fall of 1966 with "How did the Irish do?".

Every other year, about 17-20 of us make the trip to South Bend from Louisiana, Florida, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Alabama and other places to get together at an ND home game.

We just rented a house and met up for the ND/BYU game this past October.

My 96 year old Mom insisted on making the trip, tailgated in her wheelchair from eight a.m. until the 2:30 p.m. kickoff and then was wheeled inside the stadium to watch the game.

I travel to San Antonio, Corpus Christi and Houston, Texas, Starkville, Mississippi and other places to watch ND baseball.

We travel to places like San Antonio to see ND play a "neutral site" game football game against Washington State and to El Paso to watch ND play Miami (Fla.) in the Sun Bowl.

We plan to be at the ND/Arizona State game in Dallas next October.

For 100 years, my extended family members have all been die hard ND fans with not one alumni among us.

Many are/were alumni of other universities. They always remained ND fans.

It is partly an Irish Catholic thing. It is party a family tradition thing.

Both I (a long time ago) and my two sons have sat in the Tiger Stadium student section and cheered for ND against the Tigers (and survived), despite all of us having degrees from LSU.

I won't drive eight miles to watch LSU play Alabama (my law firm represents the Tiger Athletic Foundation and free suite tickets are available to me any time) since I have no interest.

But, I often drive 1000 miles to watch ND play Stanford, BYU, BC or Pitt in South Bend and have for years.

I donate money to ND so that I can get ticket access. I don't donate to LSU.

My sports loyalties were well entrenched before I came to Baton Rouge to attend LSU Law School. Besides, I quickly became turned off by SEC football.

I passed those things down to my three children. They are all ND fans despite being born and raised in Baton Rouge.

I don't care that other folks think that is wrong. I never believed in cheering for local "State U". To me, states rights died at Appomattox.

Besides, I grew up detesting Joe Paterno and Penn State.

Trust me, we can all find South Bend on a map. We can find Ireland too.

To lump all ND fans together in one stereotype is a false assumption.

There are thousands of families in America quite similar to mine.

Terry, I have no doubt that YOU know where South Bend is located... but you are NOT a typical Notre Dame fan. The Irish have literally MILLIONS of fans who have never set foot in the state of IN, much less South Bend. Most of those fans never attended ANY college, much less Notre Dame.

As for you attending LSU and still pulling for Notre Dame - that just shows me that you are an intelligent individual!

(03-11-2013 12:27 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  Terry, I have no doubt that YOU know where South Bend is located... but you are NOT a typical Notre Dame fan. The Irish have literally MILLIONS of fans who have never set foot in the state of IN, much less South Bend. Most of those fans never attended ANY college, much less Notre Dame.

As for you attending LSU and still pulling for Notre Dame - that just shows me that you are an intelligent individual!

While there are the type of ND fans you describe, I submit that all colleges have those types of fans.

I also think that, while they exist, their numbers are vastly overestimated.

When I attend games in South Bend, there are license plates in the parking lots from just about every state you can think of.

Terry, I said I wasn't referring to you. Your knowledge and contribution to this board has never been in dispute. However, you have to admit that there are a lot of hickslaps that choose ND to be their favorite college football team merely because they are either Irish or Catholic or even some other reason?

I still know there are quite a few yinzers that can't find South Bend on a map, I've sat next to them at Heinz Field, I went to high school with them and I work with them.

(03-11-2013 12:31 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(03-11-2013 12:27 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  Terry, I have no doubt that YOU know where South Bend is located... but you are NOT a typical Notre Dame fan. The Irish have literally MILLIONS of fans who have never set foot in the state of IN, much less South Bend. Most of those fans never attended ANY college, much less Notre Dame.

As for you attending LSU and still pulling for Notre Dame - that just shows me that you are an intelligent individual!

While there are the type of ND fans you describe, I submit that all colleges have those types of fans.

I also think that, while they exist, their numbers are vastly overestimated.

When I attend games in South Bend, there are license plates in the parking lots from just about every state you can think of.

Yes, I too applaud Terry for pulling for the Irish over an SEC team.

(03-11-2013 12:31 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(03-11-2013 12:27 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  Terry, I have no doubt that YOU know where South Bend is located... but you are NOT a typical Notre Dame fan. The Irish have literally MILLIONS of fans who have never set foot in the state of IN, much less South Bend. Most of those fans never attended ANY college, much less Notre Dame.

As for you attending LSU and still pulling for Notre Dame - that just shows me that you are an intelligent individual!

While there are the type of ND fans you describe, I submit that all colleges have those types of fans.

I also think that, while they exist, their numbers are vastly overestimated.

When I attend games in South Bend, there are license plates in the parking lots from just about every state you can think of.

(1) You may be right; maybe I'm the one who is mistaken
(2) Notre Dame has the highest TV ratings for a reason... WAY more people watch the games on TV than attend at the stadium... it's those fans I'm referring to.
(3) YES, every school - Va Tech included - has T-Shirt fans. Actually, one could argue it's those fans who finance the athletic departments. I'm good with that. To me, college football is distinct from college education (at many SEC schools this is literally true... but that's another thread!)
(4) I've forgotten - why are we even having this debate?

Lol, I don't know why we are.

I think I saw a post referring to knuckle dragging, geography challenged ND fans and launched.

My bad. :)