Diary of a Trip to the Grove: College Football Heaven

As if I didn't have enough to do already between my day job and my gig with Bleacher Report, I'm also writing occasional sports columns for a new website, The Fan Manifesto.  It's a site that does more off-beat and in-depth stuff than b/r, which does mainly features stories about a specific athlete or team. 

My first column with FanMan is about my first-ever trip to an Ole Miss football game, which is an experience that's only vaguely about football.  The grassy lawn beside the stadium where everyone gathers is called the Grove, and trust me, there is nothing else like the experience there. 

Click here to find out why.  

The 400 Club

Clay Travis and I went to law school together.  He got a legal job and decided he didn't like it. Truth be told, nobody really does.

So he quit. 

He started writing instead.  He developed a following, wrote two best selling books and last month had 500,000 visits to his website. 

He doesn't return my emails now, but I'm sure he makes a nice living, doing what he loves. 

Against this backdrop, it doesn't sound very impressive to say that this blog got 400 hits in August. 

It doesn't sound impressive until I remember that less than a year ago that I posted twice as often and this space still didn't get 100 hits in a month.  That's right, the blog is slowing taking off--August was the second best month ever--and I want to thank you all for it.  Please come back.  Often.

The long term goal is to sell ads in this space and make a living entertaining you.  It's getting closer all the time.

That said, the blog is at a bit of a crossroads.  The sports website for which I write (also for free), Bleacher Report, has a built-in audience that provides me, literally, 100 times the audience my personal blog gets.  If I want to make a living writing, Bleacher Report seems the most obvious path the that goal.  And every post I do here is one less post I do there. 

But I can only write about sports there.  I can't do a column where I answer made-up silly questions.  I can't blog political debates or provide a running diary of my holidays or conversations with customer service specialists there.  I need to do these things. 

This is where you come in.  I'll keep doing this as long as this site continues to make progress in catching up to my other one.  I try to post something new by Tuesday or every week, but occasionally I can't get around to it until Wednesday.  Soon, hopefully, it will be more often.  But I need you here.  All 400 of you.  And 400 of your friends. 

I know you probably don't have 400 friends, but perhaps you have two. Refer them both here, because the other people who find this blog entertaining probably don't have any friends at all.

The more people who read, the sooner I can do this full time and consistently post new stuff more than once a week. 

And then we'll all be happy. 

Exciting News

So, last week I wrote about following one's dreams, or something like that. It's one of those things that's easy to write, but tough to actually do anything about.

But when I wrote that all that sentimental, head-in-the-clouds-type stuff, I wasn't just speaking hypothetically, like I usually am when thinking unattainable thoughts. I had something in the works. I'm sneaky that way.

I'm thrilled to announce that the blog is moving up in the world. Or at least part of the blog is. While my pointlessly random attempts at humor and thoughts on life and spirituality will be staying right here, those sports posts that half of you consistently tune out have a new home. As of today, I have an arrangement with Bleacher Report, the fourth most popular sports website in the United States, to be the new home of all my sports blogging.

This is good on several fronts. The hardest thing about this space has been figuring out how to balance my desire to mix in some sports-related posts, given that my sports topics are the only thing that half of you read, but they completely bore everyone else. It's been much harder than I had imagined trying to figure out how to write humor columns, politics, sports posts and life observations all in one consistent voice.

Now, I don't have to. The sports posts go on Bleacher Report and everything else stays here. Having two different sites also means I'll be blogging twice as often, and being associated with BR means I suddenly have an exponentially larger audience, so maybe I can finally get some long-awaited hate mail.

Of course, I'm thrilled about the added exposure Bleacher Report provides. I'm on the verge of having credibility. But for all of our sakes, I'm going to try really hard to never quite get there. Life is much more free when you have no expectations to uphold.

Anyway, for those so inclined, my first sports column, recapping Alabama's basketball season, is posted here:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/627395-alabamas-2010-11-basketball-season-officially-a-success-with-win-over-georgia

I promise not to make a habit of cross-referencing every sports article on this site. But for my first one, I would appreciate the page views, even if you don't actually read the piece.

God bless you all. Thanks for reading, and pushing me one step closer to my dreams.