Interview With Empty Netters' Seth Rorabaugh

I'm excited to introduce Seth Rorabaugh of Empty Netters in this latest installment of the Pittsburgh Sports Blogger Interview Series. Seth writes Empty Netters, a blog published on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's website, which is a must-read for any Pittsburgh Penguins or hockey fan. I think you'll enjoy this.

You're in a unique situation where you write a blog for a major newspaper. What is your background and how did you start working for the Post-Gazette? Were you hired specifically to write Empty Netters?

I started working at the Post-Gazette in the fall of 1998 as a freelancer. I was going to and living at Point Park College (now university) for a degree in journalism. One of my professors was a copy editor at the Post-Gazette and got me a job just answering phones on Friday nights for high school football. I did that for a year answering phones for all sorts of sports such as basketball in the winter and baseball in the spring. The next fall, I "graduated" to typing agate (i.e. box scores, standings, statistics, etc.). A year after that (fall of 2000), I was hired a full-time news assistant typing agate and other entry-level things. I did a little writing for high schools and small colleges throughout the years and started doing a little copy editing on the night desk for sports. In 2007, I started doing the blog in my spare time. Over time, it's has morphed into a full-time position.

The Post-Gazette credentials get you access to the Penguins and NHL teams and players that most bloggers don't have. Have there been interviews or people that you met that stand out either in a good way or a not-so-good way? Have you ever been star struck?

There have been a ton of interviews that stand out in good and bad sense. Easily the best for me personally was when Sidney Crosby was kind enough to give me an hour and a half one day during the lockout. We just sat in the bleachers at Southpoint and talked. I think part of it was that he didn't have anything else to do. Over the years, I've encountered lots of good and surprising interviews. In no particular order, Paul Bissonnette, Martin Brodeur, Steve Yzerman, Frans Nielsen, Bryce Salvador, Nicklas Lidstrom, Andy Murray, Brent Johnson, Matt Niskanen, Teemu Selanne, Ben Lovejoy, Mike Commdore, Andrew Ference, Toby Petersen, Ron Francis, Patrick Roy, Scott Hartnell, Jaromir Jagr are some that really stand out in a good way. For various reasons, John Tortorella, Erik Karlsson, Peter DeBoer, Patrik Elias, Zdeno Chara, Brad Marchand, Lindy Ruff, Adam Oates and Dwayne Roloson stand out as some of the worst. I will admit I still get a little star struck around the likes of Jagr or anyone of that era that I grew up watching. I'm really eager to interview Selanne again when the Ducks are in town next week. I still act professionally (or I hope I do) when I interview those players, but the seventh-grader in me is ecstatic when some of those players come around.

A 90-minute conversation with Sidney Crosby seems unreal. What all did you talk about? I sort of hope him living at Mario's house came up.

During the lockout, we (myself and other Penguins reporters) talked to Crosby and the other Penguins players working out down at Southpointe a lot. Under normal circumstances, a PR person will usually shuffle you away after 10-15 minutes. During the lockout, the players and team employees were not allowed to interact so we sort of had free reign on talking to these guys on and off the record. Most of them were really generous of their times and sometimes, I think they just had nothing else to do other than talk to us. Crosby was sort of in that boat. One day, I just asked him if he had a little bit of time for an interview. He said yes and we just sat in the stands and talked. After about 20 minutes, I asked if he needed go leave. He said no. I asked again after 40 minutes and he said no again. I published this Q&A and it turned out great in my opinion.

Not a question but a comment. I'm not at all surprised that John Tortorella made your list for worst interview subjects.

The shame about Tortorella is that he is very intelligent and has some tremendous insight into the game. There are occasional moments (I.E. non-game days) where he will hold court with reporters and answer all kinds of questions about the general state of the game. One time, I asked him about the art of "clearing the crease." And talked about how different it is today with the newer interference rules and gave a very detailed response. Sadly, he doesn't offer much on the day of game.

One of my favorite features of Empty Netters are the pictures taken of folks wearing hockey jerseys. How did you start taking game-day pictures? Do you ask people to pose for pictures or just roam around the arena taking action shots?

When I would "live" blog the home games in the first year or so of EN, I would attend as a fan then watch the game on my DVR and type up the play by play. I would add my notes I took from the game in person and link to photos of a players jersey I saw. So if I saw someone in a Janne Laukkanen jersey, I basically would do a Google image search for a Janne Laukkanen photo and link to that. Eventually, I joined the rest of humanity and bought a phone with a camera and started just taking the photos.

During hockey season, you write multiple lengthy posts per day with play-by-play coverage of every Pens games as well as sharing links from throughout the hockey world. Do you have any hobbies during the season besides following/writing about hockey?

I'm a big college football fan but as the season really kicks in, my time to watch that sport wanes. I also have a fantasy football league with some of my best friends from high school. I can only really indulge most of my hobbies in the summer. During those months, I swim and ride my bike as much as possible.

Is there ever a time like a February game against the Florida Panthers where you want to take a night off?

There are times in October that I feel that way. I love this sport, but trying to cover it, or at least cover it well, is a very time consuming endeavor. Unlike baseball, covering a night game takes up an entire day virtually. A morning skate starts at 10:30 a.m. You stick around the rink to cover both teams' skates until roughly 1:30 p.m. You can get home, do a little writing/research then you need to be back at the rink by 5 p.m. for a 7 p.m. start. Depending how late the game goes, you might not leave until midnight. When you work in sports in any capacity, you must understand you have to sacrifice a lot of your free time. I've skipped a lot of weddings, parties, family events etc., to cover the team.

I'm always amazed at how much I seem to learn about Penguins players and history by your posts. Would you consider yourself a Pens historian?

I like to think I have a good mind on Penguins history but anytime I'm around Penguins broadcaster Bob Grove or PittsburghHockey.net Webmaster Jim Kubus, I feel pretty inadequate in that area. They are the best Penguins historians around.

Has your work ever been featured in the print section of the Post-Gazette? Would you like your work to be published there?

I occasionally write for the paper if I happen across an interesting story or even a scoop. Most of my work is online and frankly, I'm much more comfortable writing for an online format than a print. Mainly, I enjoy the virtually unlimited space you can write with on line.

Can you explain your post on The Pensblog about three years ago where you asked readers to contact the Post-Gazette editors about Empty Netters? (At this point, I fully expect you to take off the microphone, declare that this interview is over and storm out.)

Sean, I'm under a non-disclosure agreement with my editors to not discuss that post on the Pensblog publicly. I can only reference my post on EN which followed it up. I appreciate your understanding on that.

Why the "great" Joe Vitale? He can never replace the great Mike Zigomanis!

A former Penguins writer for the Post-Gazette used to reference Dick Tarnstrom as "the great Dick Tarnstrom" in Q&A's with the readers. As a bit of a "tribute" to that writer, I started calling Mike Zigomanis "The great Mike Zigomanis" when he strung together a few good games. When he left, that "honor" fell onto Martin Skoula and eventually Joe Vitale. Vitale actually asked me about it once this season because he follows me on Twitter and I explained to him the lineage with Zigomanis and Skoula. A teammate was privy to the conversation and sarcastically said, "That's some great company Joe." Vitale calls me "The great Seth Rorabaugh" in return.

Finally, do you have any predictions about the Penguins, either as a team or for individual players this season?

I think they'll be one of the five best teams in the NHL this regular season. But the regular season hasn't really been their problem the last few years. It's the postseason. I usually hesitate to predict the postseason this time of year. So many things like trades or injuries can occur between now and then.

Thanks again to Seth to participating in my interview series. Make sure to check out Empty Netters everyday and follow Seth on Twitter @emptynetters.

Interview With Pat of Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke

With the Pirates clinching their first winning season since 1992, coming off an impressive (if somewhat stressful) sweep at Texas, and battling the Cardinals & Reds for the National League Central division title, I thought Pat Lackey of Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke (or WHYGAVS) would be the perfect person for this edition of the Pittsburgh Sports Blogger Interview Series.

When and why did you start WHYGAVS (and yes, I realize that you already addressed this in the "About WHYGAVS" section of your blog)?

WHYGAVS started in a dorm room on Duquesne's campus in 2005. The short story is that when baseball started that year, I could never find enough people around campus to talk to baseball about, and I started putting these long updates about the team in my AIM profile (Facebook was still thefacebook at the time, which, sheesh), and that seemed dumb. I got the idea to start a blog so that I could put all of my ideas in one place. It didn't hurt that I think I was probably putting off Organic Chemistry homework at the time. I decided I'd rather spend time writing about the 2005 Pirates than studying for O-Chem. That should give you an idea of how much I liked that class.

While you've written that Andy Van Slyke was your favorite player, was there ever any considering of naming the site after another player like Doug Drabek, Orlando Merced or RJ Reynolds?

Not at all, actually. I barely spent any time on the name when I started the blog. I sat down and set it all up on Blogger, looked at the empty box where the name would go, and "Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?" popped right into my head. That just felt right, so I went with it. No baseball player can ever replace your favorite player from when you were seven, you know? That's sort of what I was going for with the name and I think that it captures it nicely, even if it's a little bit long and unwieldy.

Have you received any response from Andy Van Slyke about your blog/blog name?

Not directly, no. Dave Brown, who blogs for Yahoo!'s Big League Stew blog, once asked him [about] the site. Since I sponsor the Baseball Reference page and everything, it's not like I'm hiding from him, but I've never had any contact with him. Honestly, I've always been a little worried that he probably thinks I'm some kind of weirdo stalker. Can't trust those people on the internet, man.

I believe that I've seen your posts, or at least your blog name, referenced by ESPN.com, Jonah Keri of Grantland and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Do you have a post or moment that you're most proud of?

I don't want to downplay any of the accolades the site has received, because I really do geek out every time I see a link on Grantland or Deadspin or in a local paper, but I'm not sure any of that is what I'm most proud of. I didn't set out to rack up a huge audience or become famous or to get a bigger or better writing gig. I only ever wanted to talk about baseball and write about what it was like to be a Pirate fan. When I first started blogging, I did it partially because I just felt like I didn't know any Pirate fans at Duquesne that I could talk to about the team. Within the first year, I'd interacted with people from all over the country and I started to understand just how many Pirate fans there really were. Suddenly realizing that being a Pirate fan wasn't something that had to happen on an island changed my perspective on the team quite a bit. Last night, when the Pirates clinched their first winning season since 1992, I didn't get my post finished until midnight and as soon as I posted it and tweeted the link out, I could see visitors streaming into the site and retweets piling up and I realized that people had been staying up late, waiting for my post to finish. The thought that I've been able to take that feeling of community that I first got when I started my blog and share it with so many people is something that is really, really meaningful to me.

After 20 years of losing seasons and 8 years of WHYGAVS, have you found this season and the playoff chase rewarding?

Yes! One of the weird and difficult things about being a Pirate fan is that everything has always had to be filtered through what it meant for the future. Garrett Jones had an amazing rookie year in 2009, but it was hard to enjoy because there was no way of knowing back then if he was capable of doing it in a season in which it would matter. The same thing went for Neil Walker in 2010. Being able to watch these games and enjoy them in the moment and not have to worry about 2014 or 2015 or 2016, really, it's just so much better than the way things happened in the past. I mean, that's obvious to everyone. I'm just reveling in the moment now, you know?

As a full-time graduate students living outside Western Pennsylvania, do you find it difficult to follow the Pirates and write about the team?

Not at all; I suppose I'm pretty fortunate to be living in 2013. Since I've moved, I've always had the MLB.tv package, so seeing the games hasn't been a problem. With the rise of Twitter, literally all I have to do is open up my computer and I can watch the game and talk about it with a ton of Pirate fans. It's incredible.

You are the Pirates manager. (Congratulations!) In the 8th inning with the Pirates down one, PH Travis Snider is on 1st with no outs and lead-off hitter Starling Marte at the plate. What do you do? What would Clint Hurdle do?

Let him swing away! I'm usually too hard on Clint Hurdle and I'm happy to admit that I am, but geez, Marte's legitimately the second best hitter on the team when he's healthy. Let him drive a ball into the gap and send Snider home, so long as he doesn't have to wear his oven-mitt. I think Hurdle would agree.

You are extremely active on Twitter. Do you feel that this takes time away from your blog or enhances your blog (or both)?

I went back and forth on this a lot in the early days of Twitter. I was worried at first that it was hurting my blog, but to be honest, building a devoted Twitter following has made my life as a blogger much easier. I know that even if I have to take a couple of days off from the site for whatever reason, all I have to do is write something up and post it on Twitter and it will find an audience right away. Part of that's a necessary evolution from being in grad school; I don't have time to post seven times a day with every bit of news that breaks, but I can always fire off a few tweets to keep everyone up to date and then put together a longer commentary post when I have time. Really, I think that the important thing

Finally, what is your overall prediction for the Pirates this season? (Win the division? Go to the NLCS?)

I have no idea, and isn't that kind of the best part of it? I will say that there's legitimately enough talent on the Pirates to make a real run at things if everyone clicks at the right time once the playoffs start; after Gerrit Cole's start on Monday we can say that they have four starters capable of taking over games, with Tony Watson's emergence and Jason Grilli's return the bullpen is getting back to the point it was earlier in the year. The lineup is much different with Marlon Byrd and Justin Morneau in it, and if Starling Marte can get healthy by the end of the season I think they'll be awfully dangerous. It's possible that they'll make the wild card game, flame out, and that'll be that, or that they'll run into a buzzsaw of a Dodger team and be done in three quick games, but I don't think that's necessarily a given. They're a well-constructed team with some great pitchers and some very good hitters. Just getting to the playoffs gives them a fighting chance. As a Pirate fan, I'm having a hard time thinking logically beyond that at this point. I suppose now that 82 is behind us, it's time to actually start thinking about the playoffs.


Thanks to Pat for taking the time to answer these questions particularly when he's busy putting together regular blog posts as the Pirates play meaningful September baseball for the first time since I was in high school. (I'm not counting 1997.) Make sure you read WHYGAVS early and often and follow Pat on Twitter.

Interview With Nicholas of PSAMP

You're in for a treat today. For the fourth installment of my Pittsburgh Sports Blogger Interview Series, Nicholas, aka, Tecmo, of Pittsburgh Sports & Mini Ponies ("PSAMP") agreed to share his thoughts about mini ponies, his terrific blog, and much, much more. Enjoy!

How did you start Pittsburgh Sports and Mini Ponies and why mini ponies?

I figured I'd give a ton of detail, cos I might as well have these stories saved somewhere. Sorry for the long answers, but indulge me.

I started PSAMP my final semester of college at St. Vincent. As a history major, I could choose to finish my Senior Research Thesis fall or spring semester of my 4th and final year, I chose fall so I could get it out of the way. During my final semester, I was spending a ton of time in the library computer lab for reasons I'll maybe finally disclose in the future, and eventually got to thinking I needed a place to house my writing and humor.

An adjunct professor in some English class had once asked us to write a paper on whatever topic we wanted, and I chose the Steelers. This was like Junior year or something. This paper was incredible, better than any of the lazy junk topics English professors normally force you to write. And she accused me of plagiarism based solely on the fact this paper was better than anything I had previously written. She assumed I had lifted it. I could've accepted an F for the course or fight it at the Dean's. I know my strengths, sports, and stood behind my work. I prevailed.

As for the ponies, they've always been the OTHER thing I love in life. I mean, I love dogs and pets and any animal really, but dog-sized horses always made me all pumped in my younger days. It probably begins from the 80s, we took a vacation to like Tennessee where my Great-Uncle Mike had horses, and kid-me rode a mini horse named Buttons. I actually have it on tape, thanks Dad!

When I started PSAMP, lolcats and cheezburgers were starting to dominate the Internet, and frankly I was scared that someone would scoop my love for mini ponies and I'd look like a biter if I finally put my love of the critters to digital ink and someone else already had a site of similar ilk. Deadspin was starting the sports blog boom, the Schrutebag incident happened...and then Mario announced the Pens were staying in Pittsburgh, and I felt it was time to start something. My first post was about the Pens staying.

Like a few months after starting the site, MTV's "Rob and Big" premiered their own mini horse, so my foresight was strong enough to get in there before it looked like I was copying someone else.

I'm a simple man, not one to create some catchy, pun site name. I listed the two things I wanted to combine, and left it. Well, the original url was pittsburghsportsandminiponies.blogspot before I changed it to the easier acronym like 2 days later. My original banner was Church Sign Generator with the blog name. Had that for like a month or two. That was the best.

Whenever I see a mini pony or any pony or small horse, I immediately think of you. I'm sure that I'm not alone in this. How does it feel to be the go to mini pony guy?

It goes back to my original point of wanting to combine the 2 things I loved, and also wanting to not get burnt and beat to the mini pony punch. Cos this is the Internet, and someone at some point was gonna have a mini pony site of some kind.

Now, I'm incredibly blasé about my site and humor style, I write what makes me laugh, and keep doing it because why not? But the mini pony thing is actually a bit more businesslike. I strictly set out to become the authority in a field, and that's a hard thing to do. Basically any idea has been done before on the Internet. And with starting a site right around the time of the sportsblog boom, you needed to stand out or get burnt out in a month writing the same thing as everyone else and trying to get noticed without Twitter and the ease of access to readers we have now. So it was trying not to be that biter in getting to the mini pony parade before anyone else, while also establishing a voice and style of presenting it so it readers felt the need to participate.

So it's pretty awesome to constantly have people interacting and taking my love of mini ponies and making it their own as well.

Have you ever been approached by any mini pony groups?

Rarely. I've had a few people trying to sell their ponies. And I've helped several history centers or museums get together information on where or who to contact, but with being a humor site, there's a limit on what I can do. When I said I set out to become an authority on a subject, it's more about the pictures and written love of the ponies, not really the health and upkeep and social/civic aspects of the ponies.

Is it a challenge getting new mini pony pictures?

Nope. nopenopenopenopeetcetcetcetc.

I started the Mini Pony of the Day feature as a joke and to stand out from the jillion other bloggers starting sites every day. I thought I'd run out of pictures in Google Image Search in like a month or two. This is without every researching the depth of the Internet and how many mini pony pictures are out there.

As an aside, I use the term "mini pony" as my own summary of every small horse. Some people get pissed if it's a mini horse or a pony, and don't like the term "mini pony" like I'm purposely misnaming a certain species or something. No, I use the term independently because we feature ponies, full-sized horse baby foals, dwarf ponies with medical conditions, Shetland ponies, mini horses...basically anything that looks like a horse and can pass as a dog.

And as I said, I wanted to create an atmosphere where people could discover their own love of the animals while wanting to contribute. For the first year or so while I wrote for like 20 people, and spent the first couple months of year 2 rehashing the mini pony pictures that I used the year prior since I was gaining new readers and I wanted them to experience the stuff they missed.

Now it is nearly impossible for me to run out of reader submissions. Twitter and smartphones have helped tremendously...you have people everywhere with an easy way to upload a picture and send it directly to me without fiddling with digital cameras and email. The Internet is vast and real life is even bigger, these awesome dog-horses are everywhere in both places and people immediately think to get them to me. I couldn't be happier with each submission.

Let's switch gears to the first part of your blog's name. I think we have a similar blog sensibility. What I mean by this is that while other blogs will focus on the games, stats, players, etc. (and we do this sometimes too), we also write about the other stuff. For example, you have the Pittsburgh Sports Stuff in Hip Hop series and Great Moments in Unlicensed Pittsburgh Sports Merchandise series. I guess I should have a question here. Um, how did you come up with these ideas?

Thank Internet trolls first and foremost. At first, I focused a lot on recaps and strong opinion pieces. And you get the commenters and emailers who think your opinion is bunk and think you should burn in hell and whatnot. And those things help burn out newer and inexperienced writers and bloggers.

So I decided that if I wanted to really explore my humor and not hate everything, I'd scrap the script that most bloggers use. Yeah, you'll get readers who want the game previews, and game recaps and highlights of every local game and all, but how many sources do you really need doing that? Much love to all my bloggers buds that put in the hours to do that, but that just didn't vibe with my style and presentation and mini ponies and all that.

The Hip Hop/Music/Hollywood series helped, as did Unlicensed Merch.

With the former, it is a reflection on me, personally. As a Pittsburgher living in NYC now, I get pumped every time I see a Pirates hat even though it's probably some Latin King or someone who doesn't care about the Pirates. So spotting team logos and gear in the wild among celebs or musicians or actors or anyone is a bit of a thrill.

With the latter, it is also a reflection on me, but also the flip side to the Hip Hop/Music/Hollywood series. I grew up rather poor, and most of what I wore to support the teams were bootlegs from Big Lots or the Strip District. When you're an insecure kid, you hate it, cos all your friends have officially-licensed gear and you stick out like the poor kid. But as an adult, I learned to love my history, as well as the dedication of the generic merchandise hawkers. This series started because I was leaving for a trip to hike Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina for a few days, and needed some auto-publish posts while I was away that didn't really deal with timely issues. So I photographed every generic thing I could find in my apartment. And then readers took off with that too and I still have an intense backlog of generic merch in my inboxes.

China Jack provided toasts for the Penguins playoffs this year and several years ago. How did you start your relationship with China Jack?

Jack is the best. I love that guy. Easily the reason the Pens won the Cup in 09.

About, I don't know, 6-8 months before the Cup I was going through Youtube to see if anything new with a connection to Pittsburgh sports had been uploaded, for a post or something. I came across this new video of a classroom full of Chinese kids doing some sort of taunts at Pittsburgh sports opponents, or chanting Here We Go Steelers. I posted it with my usual commentary.

A few days later, the uploader emails me. His name is Gavin, and he's teaching English in China, using his affinity for his local teams to help the kids learn new words. It turns out he's from an area not far from where I grew up in SW PA, and he says he'll gladly send more videos. There were a few more in the series with his students, until he introduced me to his drinking buddy in Shenzhen, China, Jack. Using the moniker China Jack, he hung out with Gavin and created a toast for the most recent NFL season. And he made a few more toasts to like Pitt basketball and Sally Wiggin. But the ones that stuck were his Pens videos. They started to take off as the Pens got rid of Therrien and brought up Dan Bylsma, with the team winning an in incredible rate to make the playoffs. Jack started toasting every series as the Pens fought through the Flyers, Capitals, Hurricanes and eventually the Red Wings. So it was the perfect storm that Pens fans could use a bit of a laugh after stressful playoff series.

I try to present it without the subtle racism that would be apparent if we were merely mocking Jack's translations or Engrish or whatever. Jack is a legitimate friend...Gavin has been back in the states, I believe, but I correspond with Jack as if he's an old friend. You cannot believe the incredible emails I get on holidays from Jack. At PSAMP, I try to focus on Jack's odd foreign passion for the Pens, and Jack loves doing whatever he can to support the team and show the fans that passion extends everywhere. I'll say it again, Jack is the best.

Any chance for a Steelers Unauthorized Pre-game reunion with Cotter?

HAHA man we totally should! You cannot believe how fun it was back in the early days of the sports blogosphere (which doesn't even really exist anymore in any recognizable form) to watch games and then try and tape our on-air inexperience while trying to remain funny, before throwing unlimited clips into iMovie or Windows Movie Maker and crapping it out to Youtube. Those videos were horrible, but Cotter and I had a blast. And we got better as they went along, but you know, life gets in the way. We don't always have time to devote to intense video editing on minimal video taping/editing knowledge. So it's easy to get lazy and let it fall off. But heck yeah it should probably come back at some point. I'm gonna go call Cotter about this.

You use Twitter as much if not more than anyone I know. Do you feel that this takes time away from your blog or enhances your blog (or both)?

Both. Twitter is so easy, easy enough that a lot of the old blogs that shut down back in the day just switched over to Twitter. People want that immediacy, and blogs start to look a bit stale and old by comparison. So you have to be that guy that stands out, on either platform.

Back in our blog infancy, and I'm sure you can agree, we had to hustle to get noticed. You had to know how to write, well and interesting, to get any sort of attention. Or you had to create actual relationships with your blogger contemporaries and hope they would read and share links or whatever. And even if you accomplished that and increased your readership, the next day there was 30 new local sports blogs trying to recreate what you just did, with more cunning and want to just email-blast their stories to everyone to bypass the work it took to establish something real. And now, anyone can start a site, reply to everyone on Twitter until they get some followers, and they're basically "noticed."

So I try to use both platforms to my own benefit. I have that old-school mentality where my site is my own hard work, the blood and sweat, because that's always been the deal since day one. Write well, be funny, and eventually they'll read. But with Twitter, I can explore the id, and let it run wild. There's more freedom to talk about other topics, or just say anything that doesn't fall within the typical constructs of a blog post.

Actually when I started PSAMP, it was more of a Twitter-like entity than the "sports and animals" staple it is today. Like for the first week or two I would rant about gas prices, or one-sentence punchlines about whatever popped into my head at the moment. I had blogspot linked up to a phone number on my old flip phone, and would publish dumb one-off stuff like that. But I decided to get away from that and structure it more how it is today, getting a daily mini pony picture/caption, and also having sports stories.

Then Twitter came along and I was able to get back to that absurd place. And it helped me weave more humor into my longer blog posts.

Finally, is this the year for the Pirates not only reach .500 but also make the playoffs?

Full disclosure Sean sent me this question like a month ago and I started answering these questions and never finished, now it's a month later, the Cards and Reds keep losing and the Buccos keep winning. So yes to both question, but this is clearly with less worry than a month ago. Love you Sean.


Thanks again to Nicholas for providing a thorough and outstanding response. Make sure you visit PSAMP at least once a day and follow Tecmo on Twitter.

Interview with Pitt Blather's Chas Rich

Welcome to the third installment of my Pittsburgh Sports Blogger Interview Series (I think I need a cool logo for this!) featuring Chas Rich of Pitt Blather, the amazing blog covering the University of Pittsburgh's sports. Pitt Blather is celebrating its 10th birthday this summer, making it one of the oldest continuous blogs covering Pittsburgh sports. As a fan of Pitt sports, Pitt Blather is a must read for me before, during and after Pitt football and basketball games. Enjoy my "conversation" with Chas.

How did you start Pitt Blather?

Well, I had already done some general blogging for about a year. Between seeing an increasing creep of posting on Pitt-- especially from Pitt's coaching search that led to hiring Jamie Dixon and the first ACC raid of the Big East -- and the e-mails I kept firing off to my friends regarding Pitt, it just seemed like a good idea to make a separate blog.

It was originally expected to be a group blog with the rest of my friends from Pitt who I e-mailed stuff during the week. Most of them lost interest or just got a little freaked after a while when they realized that other people were reading.

Have you ever received feedback about Pitt Blather from the University of Pittsburgh or Pitt's athletic department? Do they ever offer you free tickets or a chance to write from the media area?

A couple years after starting, Pitt's Associate AD E.J. Borghetti reached out to me. We e-mail or talk a few times a year. But that's about it as far as communication from Pitt.

I do have a standing offer to get a media pass for football games. Reed did that last year, and I think I will be doing that this year.

Do you get tired of writing about all of the conference realignment (essentially the business of college sports) or do you find that this brings more discussion/visitors to your blog?

The eyeballs don't matter to me. If they did, I would do nothing but recruiting stuff.

There are points where realignment gets tiresome, but I find it fascinating. Which is why I do write about it.

I don't get the delusional speculations -- where people construct ridiculous scenarios in order to get the endpoint they want.

As an aside, prior to the dissolution of the Big East this year, a small contingent of Villanova and Georgetown fans were providing some amazing logic contortions to create a situation where the ACC would invite them. The difference between them and stories concocted by certain WVU message boarders was that they admitted that they were just trying to figure out how to get to that point.

But what I really find interesting about expansiopocolypse is how it lays bare the issue of money in college sports. That what this is all about -- specifically the TV money.

It is so clear how important the money is to sustained success or simply the opportunity to have sustained success in college athletics.

That understanding began, thanks, in no small part, to the shift in conferences that the ACC started with their first raid on the Big East. That's when everybody started waking up to it. The ACC's ill-fated first attempt to put themselves on par with the SEC. Suddenly everyone was aware not only of the idea of conference supremacy, but the money tied into being in the right conference.

For the years afterwards, Pitt fans were focused completely on getting to the Big Ten. Mainly because twelve seemed the magic number for conference size -- and that one opening in the Big Ten. Now fourteen works, while everyone waits for someone to go all the way to 16.

Since we're on the topic (and I know that you're written about this in the past), what are your thoughts of Pitt joining the ACC?

Overall, positive simply for the stability and security for Pitt that it brings. For the life of the blog, Pitt has lived under fear of the conference instability. The idea of not having to worry about the money or the conference imploding will be comforting.

And I can't wait to see what Pitt fans collectively choose to fill that void of angst.

With four head coaches in just a few years, Pitt football has certainly been, well, interesting. What are your thoughts on the state of the football program?

I just don't know. The program has been in such a state of flux that has been able to do little more than tread water for the last few years.

I want to believe in Paul Chryst. That he is the guy to bring the program out of the malaise. Not simply stabilize things at the head coaching spot, but make myself and others believe that the football program can do great things.

That said, I don't know. I don't know exactly how the adjustment to being a head coach is proceeding. It was a mixed bag last year as he learned on the job.

We still don't know what kind of recruiter Chryst will be in the long-term. How well he can develop talent -- besides at the QB spot. It's still one huge question mark.

Although this probably applies to football more than basketball, as a college sports blog, you almost have to write about recruiting. Is it tough or tiresome writing about the recruitment of 16 and 17 year-old kids and their unpredictable nature?

There's no choice, but I find it uncomfortable. More because the reaction by people -- and not just Pitt fans and readers.

It seems every kid's decision is treated as a referendum: on the coach, on the school, on the kid's very moral fiber, on the self-esteem of the fans.

Everyone understands that recruiting is the lifeblood of a program. Yet, it is disturbing to be how emotionally worked up people get about the decision making of a high school kid. No matter the talent, potential or what not. At the end of the day, they are still kids trying to decide where to go college in pursuit of their future (athletic and academic).

I had a hard enough time with that decision without multiple grown men being paid hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars actively recruiting me (aside from my dad gently pushing Penn St) and people talking about me on blogs and message boards; and sending me tweets telling me where I should attend.

Then people turn around and complain about how these same kids have such overinflated egos and are me-firsters.

Switching to basketball, there seems to be a good number of Pitt fans that want to see Jamie Dixon go because of the team's lack of success in the NCAA Tournament. What do you think about Dixon's performance as head coach?

I'm still a huge Jamie Dixon fan. Even with the disappointments in the NCAA Tournament, by any metric he has been the best coach Pitt has had since Doc Carlson.

No City. No school. No program. No facility is "entitled" to success. Not Notre Name. Not USC. Not Alabama. Not UCLA. Not Penn State. Not Kansas. Not Kentucky. Not Pitt.

You can expect it. Want it. Desire it. But it is not entitled.

Pitt rebounded from a disastrous year in terms of injuries, transfers and chemistry. They were not even a pre-season top-25 team. The big transfer that was expected to help this team (Zeigler) didn't pan out. A very limited offense.

Yet this team managed to go 12-6 in the Big East for 4th place. They started two freshmen and aside from losing to Rutgers their only losses came to NCAA Tournament caliber teams.

The NCAA Tournament is a huge issue. Without question. The way they got completely hammered by Wichita State left such a sour taste in people's mouth. That left everyone feeling a lot of rage.

But the other thing I think that has a number of Pitt fans thinking about getting rid of Dixon is the unwavering belief that with a snap of the fingers Sean Miller will leave Arizona for the Pitt job.

That Sean Miller is the better coach and recruiter. That the pull of the alma mater and hometown will do the trick. (Yet if Paul Chryst had gone home to Wisconsin...)

And I'm not down on Miller. He is an excellent coach, and if Pitt had to replace Dixon then Sean Miller is the first call that gets made. I simply don't think it is the slam dunk that he would come back to Pitt.

He's already making excellent money at Arizona (thanks in no small part because coaches like Dixon turned down the job and forced the money to rise). He has huge support from the administration. He's in a major conference but it isn't exactly loaded as far as the other teams. Plus Miller has shown that he isn't a coach that just leaves a program quickly.

Coaches aren't just up and leaving these days. The money is just damn good, and it takes a lot to pry a blue-chip coach from a good situation.

Finally, The Original Hot Dog Shop: Great or amazing? (I guess you can have other options if you'd like.)

Amazing


Thanks again to Chas for participating in this interview. Make sure to follow Chas on Twitter and read Pitt Blather regularly.

Interview With Neal Coolong of Behind The Steel Curtain

When I announced that there would not be a Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament this year, I wrote that I wanted to interview my favorite former and current Pittsburgh bloggers. Last week, I shared my interview with Cotter of One For The Other Thumb. Today, I'm proud to present my interview with Neal Coolong of the amazing Pittsburgh Steelers blog, Behind The Steel Curtain. Enjoy!

I believe that Behind The Steel Curtain precedes you. When and how did you start writing at BTSC?

Sort of a long, dumb story, but I got out of the newspaper business around 2005, but never lost the love of writing. Looking back on it, I think my real passion was reporting, which is why I think Behind The Steel Curtain has more of a news feel, but you don't really get much (read: no) access writing for a blog. I caught on with Steelers Fever, but it was more of a message board, which I didn't like. It didn't have that instant publishing ability I really wanted.

I moved to Philadelphia in 2007 for a job within the company I worked for in Minneapolis, and I couldn't get out of my lease, so I was paying rent in two places, and had maybe $100 to spare each month. Not that it was much of a change, but I basically spent my free time watching TV and movies, and wanted to do more writing. I got hooked up with a blog network that has since been shut down, along with it, a site called Die Hard Steel. I had no experience writing something that would be published immediately and without any kind of editorial oversight, and I absolutely loved it. I found myself writing four or five posts a day, and the reaction was pretty good. Steel City Insider publisher Jim Wexell reached out to me that summer, and I eventually would write a weekly match-ups column for him - something I still do.

For reasons that still haven't been explained to me to this day, the network's owner shut it down after the 2007 season (that asshole still owes me money too). I tried starting my own blog in 2008, but I didn't have the SEO knowledge or the design ability to make it look the way I wanted, or marketable at all, so I scrapped that idea. I had since moved back to Minneapolis for another job with the same company, and sort of a crisis situation with the job put me in Columbus, Ohio, for five weeks. I only had my work laptop as I lived in a Marriott Courtyard with a tube TV and basic cable.

I was pretty much going insane.

On a whim, I had come across a Request For Writers post on Behind The Steel Curtain from Founder Michael Bean. I responded, thinking "why the hell not?" Bean got back to me, said he remembered Die Hard Steel and brought me on board.

I wrote for the rest of the glorious season of 2008, and I've been there ever since.

Bean eventually was hired by the parent company of BTSC, SB Nation and Vox Media, as a network manager and video producer, so they gave me the editor job around February of 2012. I inherited a great staff and a great following, and I'm proud to say my main job is maintaining the most widely read Steelers site on the internet, and a phenomenally talented staff of writers. We produce lots of fresh and original content for a knowledgeable community with a sense of history.

How did you become a Steelers fan?

My family is all from Pittsburgh. I lived there as a young kid, but my parents were born and raised there. My mom's from Crafton (grew up down the street from Bill Cowher, and family rumor is my uncle, who's a few years older than Cowher, wouldn't let him play in the neighborhood pick-up football games because he was too small. Cowher also mowed my great aunt's lawn). My dad's from the North Side, and was coached by Dan Rooney in pee-wee football.

My dad's work transferred him to Texas and eventually Minnesota, where I spent my formative years. I started becoming "football aware" probably around 11 or 12, but my house was pretty baseball-oriented. I played a lot more baseball growing up than football, and the NFL was at a point where you really only could see teams outside your market on either Sunday Night or Monday Night football. The Steelers weren't all that great back then, so it was only a few times a year they'd be on nationally. It was a big deal in our house when they were, though, and I remember getting to stay up late to watch them.

My mom tells stories about how entrenched I'd get in watching a football game when I was an infant; the same thing my wife rips on me for a few decades later. But it wasn't until the creation of DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket around the early 90s that I really got into Steelers football. I followed the team in the newspapers and on ESPN, but I was more of a fan of individual players than teams. I loved "The Posse" in Washington (Gary Clark, Art Monk and Ricky Sanders), and the K-Gun offense in Buffalo. I really loved Lawrence Taylor and Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl, John Elway in Denver and of course, the Great Jerry Rice.

But I never really subscribed to a defense until we found a Steelers bar in St. Paul and aired every Steelers game.

EVERY Steelers game. I no longer had to wait for a primetime game. My naive affinity for offensive players shrunk hugely when I learned about Blitzburgh and saw Bill Cowher screaming at officials and cramming pictures confirming there was 11 men on the field into the pockets of officials. I saw Greg Lloyd and was absolutely terrified, but I soon learned the awesome feeling every die-hard fan has; he makes the bad guys scared. He's on MY team. Kevin Greene came in with his rock 'n roll hair outward personality, and Levon Kirkland who looked far too big to be as fast as he was.

I died a little when Dennis Gibson knocked that pass down. I died more when my name was forever ruined because of that moron O'Donnell. Then there was Bettis, Slash, Yancey Thigpen and the same swarming defense undone by Elway's 90 mph fastball that caught Shannon Sharpe on third and long.

For Steelers fans of my generation, we dealt only with heartbreak caused from multiple instances of being on the wrong end of playoff upsets.

None was worse than 2001, though. That loss to New England would probably be at the top of my all-time worst list. I still get a pang of sickness when I see replays of that. We saw lots of winning years after that, and I think of those years when we lose a bit like we are now, but more than anything, I'd say my fandom was forced in painful defeats, only to achieve the one true sign of success in sports.

The fans of every team in the NFL hate us. I love it.

Is it difficult being a fan while watching the game? Specifically, can you enjoy watching the game or are you constantly thinking about blog posts and topics for the day/week based on the game?

Interesting question. Haven't really thought of it that way, but to be honest, it's probably more like the other way around now - the writing comes first, fandom comes second. I probably have to take pause at least a few times each game to try to enjoy it. I'm constantly texting with my brother or emailing writers about different things to prepare for an article. In a perfect world, I'm watching the game as a fan; it feels almost like a reward for a long week of analysis of the previous game and previewing the coming game. It's nice to just let things happen and react instead of trying to produce content. But it's really hard to turn the reporter off, even if I haven't purely reported in close to a decade now.

Truth be told, though, the postgame analysis stuff is never really hard. There's always a bunch of storylines, and BTSC has such a great community, there are hundreds of comments on my postgame article (which I don't think anyone ever reads) and oftentimes you can pull story ideas from that.

Top to bottom, fan or reporter, the thing I've loved all these years about football is the fact there is so much that happens over 60 minutes of game time. Even people who dedicate 14 hours a day to watching one team can't fully tell everything. Much of this stuff writes itself if you know what to look for. I really enjoy the challenge of flipping between analyst and fan, though, and BTSC has always focused on hitting both of those markets. The things I set up with our analysis writers require a different interpretation of things than what I set up with my feature writers.

Long rant short, I guess the answer is I really can't be one and not the other anymore. Even when the Steelers aren't playing, and I watch Vikings games with my buddies, I'm analyzing Christian Ponder, but am shrieking like a little kid when Adrian Peterson gets to the second level. There's a balance, and I haven't perfected it, but I know each day I learn something new about this game, and that's always been the motivating factor behind what I do.

How you ever received any feedback on BTSC from the Steelers organization or any individual player?

Both on and off the record, yes. Most recently, I made some critical comments about OG Doug Legursky after the team's loss to Denver last year (I think it was Denver, maybe Tennessee?). He wasn't exactly pleased by those comments. He said I was stupid, which, of course, I am. I offered him an interview to clear the air. He declined, which is unfortunate. I have thick skin and by no means do I feel I'm an expert. I'm not patting myself on the back at all, because that exposure to the game has only taught me that I don't know anything about it. I'm always eager to learn and I would have loved to have heard why Mr. Legursky felt his performance in either of those games wasn't below standard as I felt it was.

There have been others, but I promised confidentiality. Some feedback has been good, but as any writer knows, they're always going to be ripped by those who are playing or coaching. And perhaps fairly so. If I rip them, I promise a full opportunity to air their side and rip me if they so choose. Readers deserve that. I don't want to hide behind the curtain, so to speak.

A few of them pointed out a few glaring misses I made. Again, more learning opportunities, and I try to remember (even though I often fail) humility when analyzing an extremely complicated game.

Do you ever get to travel for your work at BTSC or like the rest of us bloggers, are you stuck writing on your basement couch?

I've had opportunities, but to be honest, I've passed on them more times than not. The excitement of attending something live as part of a media source, and having that access is no doubt alluring, and something I would exploit perhaps more often than not if I had offers consistently. But it comes down to a general vision.

As a publication, where are we going? Where are we trying to go? We don't break news, we're not here to compete with the guys who's paychecks depend on getting those scoops. What is having that access going to do? It's good to have here and there for the sake of variety, but in the end, I don't think it gives us more than just a way to have what we hope is our pure, unfiltered opinion distracted by the subject.

A very Bill Simmons-esque mentality, which, ironically, is a good reminder I shouldn't take myself so seriously.

My overall point is the hardest thing for a blogger, or an internet writer, or whatever we're called nowadays, is to remember his/her place. That isn't meant to be negative, but it's safe to say no website-only publication can compete with the Mark Kabolys or the Ed Bouchettes or the Jim Wexells of the local media scene. The space we try to fill is simply in the analysis of the news. Opinion. Discussion. We can control our ability to react quickly and provide insightful analysis of news that breaks, but attempting to be on the front line of that news just doesn't fit. It's not who we are.

One might simply say I don't get paid enough to do that, but that's another argument for another day.

Consistency is the most crucial aspect of success of a writer in our space. You have to see the news, but you have to be committed to writing more than just headlines. Your copy has to be tight and interesting. It's hard enough to write out a high volume of content while focusing on quality without pretending to be Adam Schefter looking to "break" news about practice squad signings. One might argue your quality suffers if you don't focus on it, and none of us are credible enough to not focus on quality.

And I write on a chair in my living room, I'll have you know. Sometimes, I move onto the deck. The basement days are long gone, my friend. I've obviously moved up!

The time between the draft and start of training camp is probably the slowest of the year for you. Is it difficult to write during this time? Do you find that you'd like to write about some non-football topics (ex. Pittsburgh Pirates or some random TV show) during this time instead of having to write about football and the Steelers?

That stretch of time, maybe about two weeks after the draft until minicamp, then right after minicamps to training camp, yeah, there's usually nothing to write about. The front office and beat writers take vacations, players are nowhere to be found, and if anything, the news that breaks on the team isn't going to be good.

I think the idea surrounding "writing about football" can be fairly loosely interpreted, too. Last year, we did a running feature drafting an all-time 7-on-7 flag football team of Steelers players. Me and two other writers drafted teams of 10 based on the common rules of flag football.

There was no particular reason to run it, it had absolutely no news value and the picks themselves were even a little suspect, but we had fun doing it, the community interacted and we fit our basic goal of providing interesting insight with a sense of history.

Not gonna lie, there are plenty of times I feel like writing about something non-Steelers-related would be a nice change of pace, but those times are the most important to stay on task. Again, it's just about using some creativity and coming up with something fun. It's easy to sit back and make lists about everything, and it's even easier to continue to try to force "it could happen" news stories on your readers like some other sites do. We just try to find a middle ground between those two things, and take some creative chances with topics.

We have a very talented writing staff, and we brainstorm feature ideas frequently. We're not trying to pander to the audience and just run stuff because we can, but we're looking to get outside the box and try to showcase that talent in a broader spectrum of the team. We did a feature last year (I think it was last year) on the Pirates earning their place back into the Pittsburgh sports community. We based it around attending games in each stadium/venue, and how vastly different, yet very similar, those experiences are. It made for a good read, and while it's not directly associated with Steelers news, I think any site that's worth the time of an intelligent fan needs to focus on those kinds of stories. We don't want to be a site where our content is formulated solely from what's on Twitter, we want to actually create a compelling product.


Thanks to Neal for taking the time to provide really thorough responses to my questions. Make sure to read Behind The Steel Curtain daily, if not multiple times per day. You can also follow BTSC and Neal himself on Twitter.

Interview With Cotter

When I announced that there would not be a Best Pittsburgh Sports Blog Tournament this year, I wrote that I wanted to interview my favorite former and current Pittsburgh bloggers. At the top of my list: Cotter of One For The Other Thumb. While OFTOT is no more, you can continue to follow Cotter on Twitter at @OFTOT.



Looking back on OFTOT, did you have a favorite moment in writing the blog?

Well, first of all, Sean, I take umbrage with your use of the past tense here. No, kidding…obviously OFTOT has been dormant for a while now, and there's no guarantee it'll ever be revived since I'm still getting routinely violated in the most uncomfortable of body cavities by work, AND I recently somehow managed to convince a woman to marry me (without any threats or coercion, thank you very much). Anyway, um, favorite moment? I guess if I had to pick one, it'd probably be when the Steelers won Super Bowl XLIII, mostly because that happened during my reign, and because the Steelers won the Super Bowl (again). But in all honesty, I loved every minute of writing OFTOT. And what I really enjoyed were things like doing MPIE, and basically any time I had the pleasure of interacting with my Steelers fan brethren because of some words I wrote on the internet. So, I guess what I miss most is the camaraderie.

Did you miss writing about the Steelers last season?

Yes and no. I mean, I guess at least I picked probably the best season in the last few to ignore blogging completely. I'm still not even all that sure about what happened last season. Was that real life? But overall, yes, of course I miss writing about the Steelers. And making childish videos and photoshops, and giving players stupid nicknames, and generally being a pillar of internet jagoffery. Some part of me will always miss it... /sad face with tear

This could tie in to the previous question. You remain very active on Twitter. Did you find that this kept you involved with the Steelers last season?

Absolutely. The whole reason I started OFTOT in the first place was so that I'd have a place that would be globally accessible to my idiot friends where we could talk about the Steelers and make jokes that should only be funny to 14-year-olds. At least if I could do the same thing on Twitter on gamedays, I guess I figured that'd fill the void as best as possible. PS - follow me @oftot (#ihavenoshame).

I think I first learned about your blog through your weekly Meeting People Is Easy (MPIE) feature where you asked people, generally other bloggers, simple questions about the Steelers, Steelers players, songs and more. How did you come up with MPIE?

Haha, I almost wish you hadn't ask me that question, because the answer reveals how completely unoriginal and borderline copyright infringement it was. So, I used to have a subscription to Sports Illustrated (the print version...how cute, right?), and every issue they'd do this thing they called the "pop culture grid," in which they'd ask four athletes a number of questions about random [stuff] and print their answers. I guess it was an attempt to humanize them. Anyway, I doubt anyone really cared about it in SI (because it was generally about as exciting as a 2x4 to the face), but I saw potential. So, I basically decided to rip it off and make it better - give it some attitude, and ask questions that might actually lead to interesting answers. Thus, MPIE was born. Actually, even the title was a wholesale copy job. I took it from a documentary I saw in college about Radiohead of the same name, which, PS, if you're into Radiohead, watch that [stuff] ahora. But yeah, I just thought it'd be fun to get to know pillars of the sports blogosphere, and especially OFTOT readers better by asking them the most inane questions I could imagine. And it was. For me. And probably no one else, hahaha.

I really enjoyed your pregame videos with Tecmo of PSAMP. Any chance for a reunion for the 2013 season?

That's a better question for Tecmo. I'm ready when he is.

With the Steelers coming off of an 8-8 season, what do you think the Steelers need to do this off-season?

Alright, so I actually waited to answer this question until most of the free agency grabassery was behind us, but, all I would say is - fill the holes. They now have a pretty clear idea of where they'll either need guys to step up, or where they'll need to draft someone. I'm more concerned with the latter than the former. I think having a kickass draft is a big time necessity this year. Get some guys who are ready to contribute at least in the next couple of years. That, and regain control of the clubhouse culture, because whatever happened last season was a joke. Also, confiscate all of LaMarr Woodley's internet-connected devices, and teach Antonio Brown how translate hashtag into English. But most of all, for Steeler nation - keep the faith. It's easy to be a reactionary. And believe me, it's not like I've taken any of this offseason's events without pounding a few beers. But, what would Mike Tomlin do? There is nothing to get fired up about until there's something to get fired up about. Let things happen, and hope for the best. One of the best things about being a Steeler fan is that no matter how you think things will go, the Steelers often surprise you when you least expect it. And with that, I bid you all adieu. Until we meet on the internets again, I love you all. And especially you, Sean. Adios, bitches.


Thanks again to Cotter for participating in this interview. Make sure that you follow him on Twitter.