A Quarter Million Thanks

I've always enjoyed writing as a way to relax, and after bugging friends and fellow alums with my Hobart Football related emails and "analysis" in the early 2000s, taking it to a blog seemed like a logical next step (my classmate Michael Mills '96 made the suggestion, if memory serves).

To be fair I had some (a lot? of) practice blogging / opining on the Statesmen on the D3football.com "Post Patterns" fan boards but it wasn't until August of 2009 I finally decided to try out this "blogging" thing thru the medium you're reading now.

Here we are, less than 10 years later and this little site has eclipsed 250,000 views!

While I don't know if that's a lot or a big deal in the scheme of websites, it feels like a milestone enough to step back and reflect a little.

I am so grateful to all the Hobart coaches, players, families and others that this extra-curricular activity has put me in contact with over the past (almost) decade. Based on my math, this site has previewed and covered:

- 629 posts
- 104 games
- 80 wins
- 48 National Football Foundation (NFF) recipients
- 10 winning seasons
- 9 Recruiting and graduating classes
- 8 Straight Centennial Cup wins (we've beaten SLU 8 straight too ;) 
- 7 Conference player of the year recipients 
- 6 League Championships
- 5 NCAA tournament berths & wins 
- 4 First team All-American players
- 3 Undefeated regular seasons
- 2 Elite 8 / National Quarterfinals appearances
- 1 Brand new dome practice facility 

Over this same time period I've also covered coaching and conference makeup changes, provided opinions, promoted ITH appearances of multiple HFB players and coaches, told a few jokes, enjoyed post-season celebrations, ranked all-time great games, even saw one of our own get drafted into the NFL. About eight years ago I came up with the 2000's All-Decade team and will likely have to do so again after the 2020 season. In April of 2011 you can find several commits to the Class of 2015 that went on to have historic Statesmen careers. This was a definite bright spot in what was an up and down, eight game regular season, but one that produced some of Hobart's most impressive all-time wins like the 56-20 crushing of SJFC.

Some other random trivia:

2016 was the most popular year for this blog as most of the Top 10 most viewed posts, including the current and reigning #1, came from that year. The peak was in November/December when the site had over 9,100 visits.

The long standing most viewed post a few of these jumped was on Andrew Klindera 13's pro football career in Germany That reminds me I'm overdue for another "email interview" post sometime in the near future.

The high point from last season was over 4,400 views in the month of October. Google is how this site is usually found, with Facebook and D3boards.com the other two providing the most "referrals."

Otherwise, while I don't plan on stopping anytime soon, I may look into other more modern blog websites or other / better ways to keep delivering this type of content (like did you know In the D3FB Huddle has it's own YouTube channel now? The 2017 and 2018 episodes are still downloading over to it, but it should be done in the next couple of weeks. Pre-2017 audio episodes and interviews can be found on Podbean).

Thank you, the readers, for your continued support.

We're onto 500K. Go 'Bart!

Best regards,

JB H96