Most of you know that Thursdays during football season around here are generally reserved for the upcoming opponents' Record of Wrongs. But today is Thanksgiving (and this week's opponent is Kentucky), and so we're forgoing the usual litany of complaints in favor of a list of things for which we are grateful.
I say this every year, but it bears updating for 2009: Since the first post on August 26, 2006, Hooper, Will, and I have hastily hit the publish button on 2,846 posts, and, as I write this, the site has had 1,165,968 visits and 2,288,356 page views. We have over 1,300 registered members and over 67,000 comments. And we're still growing like crazy as more and more folks stumble onto our path.
Stats are always nice, of course, but as any true blogger will tell you, the real satisfaction is in the development of the community. So far, somehow, and thanks to all of you, we've all been fortunate enough to avoid most of the funk that plagues message boards and newspaper comment threads.Thanks to y'all for that.
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Hooper, for his numbers and charts and pretty things and for ever-raising the level of intelligence and civility on this site, digging into his never-ending supply of virtual hugs in the comment threads and doling them out to regulars and warted-trolls alike.
- Will, for joining up with us this past January, adding to the mix a true knack for capturing the essence of a game and enabling us to relive it, goosebumps and all. And for carrying the cause to the uninitiated on WNML every Friday and for tolerating my affection for eefing on the RTT Podcast most Mondays.
- Every single one of our regular commenters. I'm going to resist the urge to start naming names, but you know I'm talking about you, right?
- All of you lurkers out there who visit regularly but don't leave comments.
- Anyone's who's ever said nice things about us and invited someone to check out the site.
- The Kiffin Chimera, Bruce Pearl and Pat Summitt and their respective staffs, and all of the players who take the floor or the field so that we can enjoy a brief respite from the stress of the week.
- It's been an interesting year. Lane Kiffin's given us plenty of stuff to talk about. We've enjoyed a great recruiting class and a couple of big wins over Georgia and South Carolina, and we've seen a future in which we will again be able to play with the best in the league. We've been looking forward to Pearl's guys, the old CHI$$LE and the new McB43. We've talked with Dane Bradshaw. We've published a 128-page pre-season annual. Yeah, it's been a good year. Thanks to all of you for helping to make it all happen. Happy Thanksgiving.