The Decade Stampede: Jamie’s Pre-Emptive AMA Answers

This is a terrible time of year for me. My work schedule goes absolutely crazy in late January and February, and it means I can’t hang around in the comments or write anything during the day today.

To make up for that, I have decided to provide answers to the AMA questions you haven’t asked yet, but probably would have. Here we go.

• The original 10th anniversary plan was to take our annual Daily Stampede Awards and give them out for the entire decade. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized how lame it was going to be to celebrate, like, a team that didn’t even win its own division, or that time someone almost made it past the second round of a six-round tournament. All this while pretty much every other college blog can celebrate actual major achievements, like national championships and the New Year’s Six and Final Fours and All-Americans by the boatload. Simply put, this decade was not good enough and we’re not going to console ourselves with poor substitutes for real success. Apologies to Quinton Flowers, Sara Nevins, Evelyne Viens, and the time Sterlin got dumped on McNeese. They would have all won an award for sure.
• No, I had no idea the site would turn into what it has become. My only thought was to start writing and keep writing and work on the craft and try to cover USF in a fun, different way. I had no plans of ever podcasting or getting credentials or going out on the road to cover games or holding parties for our readers or being taken (mostly) seriously as a media outlet. Someone even called TDS the conscience of USF, which is a huge compliment. Everyone except me deserves all the credit for those things happening.
• I will, however, take credit for one thing. I named the Bulluminati Podcast. I am probably too proud of this.
• Ken left because of a very stupid and petty disagreement on my part and Collin’s part. We often tell you that the site does not make much money, and that was especially true in the early years before we had a podcast or fundraisers. We got mixed up about how we were going to spend some of the site’s money, and it escalated a lot further than it should have. Collin and I have both been over it for a long time, and we’re both sorry for our part in what went down. At the very least I think Ken should be in our Slack.
• If we’re voting on the worst posts of the decade, it’s either Collin giving up on the 2015 football team in spring practice, or Steeg gassing up Sterlin like crazy a couple years ago. Those didn’t age well at all.
• In theory Connor still owes us all dinner at Bern’s and here’s why: Before the playoffs last year, he promised everyone in the Slack channel he would take us all there if the Lightning didn’t win the Stanley Cup. As you know, it takes 16 wins to lift the Cup and the Bolts finished with zero. We basically haven’t heard from him since and it’s now a running joke any time we do. Connor, if you’re reading this we are willing to negotiate. I think we’d settle for like sandwiches and a couple pitchers at Mr. Dunderbak’s at this point.
• How long can the site go? It’s funny because every time I worry that we might be running out of contributors or managers, someone else finds the site, and they help lead TDS to even greater things. At the end of 2017 when Collin decided to get out of the siterunner’s chair for good, Nate and Connor were there to take over. Nate in particular has done an amazing job building up the journalism side of the site. When we needed a regular basketball beat, Sandy Czarnecki put on a two-year master class of how to make reading about a terrible team entertaining. When writing about recruiting made our skin crawl, Nick Simon came to the rescue and got us more focused on crootin than we had ever been before. When Getty and USA Today stopped taking pictures at most of our games, Robert Steeg came in and gave us better photos than we were getting off the wire. When we got tired of our trashy Skype chat podcasts, Anthony Vito... well, any attempt to describe how much better the pods have been since Vito got here would not do him justice. While we’re talking about podcasts, thanks to Senator Giggity for joining them and making the shows so much more fun to listen to and record. I hope TDS can keep getting so lucky with contributors for many years to come.

Finally, thank you to all of our readers, listeners, and people who follow us on social media, even the ones who still think this is a H A T E B L O G. The only reason TDS has lasted this long is because you take the time to participate and support what we do. We hope you’ll keep reading and listening and @’ing us as we continue forward.

On to the next decade stampede!