Here's Why It's Called "The Daily Stampede"

OK, so the new name of our blog isn't super interesting or creative. There are some good, practical reasons for that - it makes the blog easier to find in searches, and for people who type in the URL instead of following a link, it helps them remember the name and get it right. We don't have zillions of page views per month here, so every person counts.

We could have kept the name Voodoo Five if we'd wanted to. It had a lot of search engine history. When you looked for any of the major USF athletic events over the last six years, one of our stories was always at or near the top of the list. Plus, our readers were fond of it. But we ditched it because:

• It doesn't fit the way we feel about USF athletics anymore. When I came up with that name in 2010, it referred to USF's history of near-misses and mini-tragedies. Then it morphed into a symbol of everything that got screwed up during the last few years of the Doug & Bill era. Things are much better now, so we thought it wouldn't be appropriate to keep referring back to the bad old days.
• We're not in USF's pocket or anything like that, but we have a pretty good relationship with the athletic department and the university now. When we had to point out a lot of inconvenient truths about athletics and we had a name referring to one of the worst moments in USF football history, some people thought we were just a couple of muckrakers. Even though we've never criticized USF without having a good reason, Collin had to do a lot of convincing to people on campus, even now, that we weren't malcontents. It wasn't worth the hassle anymore.

So then we tried to think of a new name, which was much easier said than done. Collin and I spent an entire afternoon brainstorming, and I have to say the results were pitiful. The best I could do was "Number Eight," both a reference to Matt Grothe and the original name of "The Bull." Collin came up with "No More Billboards" in honor of, well you know. The rest of the names we threw out that day were so bad I don't remember them anymore.

Some more unusable names followed. Collin's friend Chris suggested naming it after the best play in USF history, "Shin 560 Shin Elbow," which was the winning touchdown at Auburn. I like to think I'm somewhere behind Jim Louk in the honorable mention tier of USF trivia gods, but even I didn't know that one.

Some other good names we couldn't use followed that. I thought "The Greenery" would have been a great name in honor of the greatest USF dive bar that ever got shut down by the Florida Department of Health... but the URL wasn't available.

Then FOB* Mike Stuben suggested "Meanwhile in Tampa." We loved it immediately. It was topical, very funny, and a sharp stick in C.Florida's eye after they put up that stupid billboard in Tampa and were instantly rewarded with another 0-12 season**. It broke our hearts that we couldn't make that the title (again, very unpractical), but at least it's in the tagline.

Finally Collin and SB Nation and I had a "let's just name the damn thing" call. After turning down The Daily Brahman because no one under 35 would know USF's original nickname was the Golden Brahmans, we arrived at The Daily Stampede. We weren't always the best at writing every day before, so putting "daily" in the title of the blog was a deliberate move to remind us to keep that sweet, sweet #content coming for you.

The most important thing is that we're back at SB Nation and hopefully we'll be even better than ever. Welcome back. Tell your friends.

* - stands for Friend of the Blog, of which there are many.

** - It absolutely gutted me that we weren't on SB Nation when this happened. I came up with the #UCFDonut campaign the day before USF walloped them in Orlando and I'm convinced it would have been huge here. I guess we'll have to wait for their next scheduled winless season in 2026.