This Day in Baylor History, November 11, 2011: OurDailyBears Goes Live

When/if you listen to last night's podcast, you'll hear Peter, Prashanth, and me talk about a momentous event three years ago today: the launch of SBNation's first and only blog dedicated solely to the Baylor Bears in OurDailyBears.com* after nearly three months of anxious preparation.  At the time, Baylor was the only BCS program without a blog (this was pre-Realignment and the addition of schools like Utah and TCU) on a network that, as a whole, looked quite a bit different (look at Iamron dominating the fanposts over there).  Like a garage band made of teenagers, we were at first small (just Prashanth, Thermhere, and myself), clueless, and virtually alone; GameThreads were at that time basically just me sitting in a room talking to myself, and I vividly remember thinking the first time we passed 1,000 pageviews in a day that we were getting somewhere and being ecstatic the first time 5,000 came and went.  I had no concept at that time that we might get to the point where I could fanshot a gif, post it to facebook, and very nearly get both.  Thankfully, we had a certain Heisman Trophy winner in the midst of the greatest Baylor season to date to help ease us in.

*Disregard the date on that post.  I pre-wrote it two days prior to launch.

I can't say enough about the progress we've made in three short years--since bringing in the now-departed (for Baylor Scout) Tim Watkins to run the basketball side, we've expanded into just about every Baylor sport and coverage area, added several forms of non-traditional media like a wildly successful podcast and hype videos, and grown from a group of three to one with at or around a dozen passionate contributors (and we're always looking for more...).  The goal when we started was, in my own words, build "a place where Baylor fans can come together to celebrate (and commiserate, the latter being more prevalent in our history), discuss, and hopefully learn about Baylor University and its athletics."  I can honestly say we've been successful beyond my wildest dreams.

For that, our overwhelming and completely unexpected success, two groups deserve a tremendous amount of thanks.  The first is the tremendous group of contributors and authors who have made this place their home and passion.  Without all of you, I'd probably still be sitting in that metaphorical room by myself like in the first few game threads of the 2011 season.  The second is the members and readers of ODB, the single biggest reason this place really even exists beyond my own desire to just talk about the Bears.  This place has become special to me and others not because of the content written or the videos posted.  It's special because of the community, the people that inhabit it on a daily basis.  In the words of Kevin Durant, you the real MVP.