Fan Blogs

Big Ten fans love to follow their school's teams on the Web. So we set out to interview the passionate voices behind your Big Ten blogs.

Q&A: BLACKSHOEDIARIES.COM

How did you come up with the name for your blog? Well, when I was thinking up names, I had to be careful. Because of copyright and because of trademarks, I couldn't use anything like Penn State or Nittany Lions. So I tried to think of signature things, kind of brand name things that apply to Penn State. Then, it's kind of funny, to me, a blog acts almost like a diary, and back in the 90s there was a show on Showtime called The Red Shoe Diaries. I changed it from red shoe to black shoes. When was the blog created? I started it up in August of 2006. I had blogged at a smaller independent blog for a few months before that – before Sports Blog Nation picked us up. What made you want to create a blog? As most bloggers will tell you, I kind of felt like I couldn't get enough out of the mainstream media. When you read an article about a game or about a team, they fill it with quotes and give you a good recount of the events, but I felt like I wanted to get more involved in the game. I wanted to see someone breaking down the depth charts, I wanted to see someone break down the offensive line play. So I thought why not start my own Penn State blog? How many hours a day do you devote to the blog? Probably about two. I'll spend about an hour in the morning just sifting through the headlines on my reader and google alerts. I look for things that are interesting, things that will cause debate. And then, I'll reflect on what I've found and usually take an hour putting the post together. How many people contribute to the blog? I have two co-authors. Their names are Chris and Kevin. They were each successful bloggers on their own when I invited them to join Black Shoe Diaries. What is the best part of the job? The best part for me is interacting with the readers, seeing their reactions, seeing their points of views. I've always kind of wanted my blog to have the atmosphere of a tailgate party. I'll just throw a topic out there and see if it causes debate. Hopefully it divides the group into two sides and we get some good exchange going.

BigTenNetwork.com editor Brent Yarina phoned Mike Hubbell, the blog administrator for BlackShoeDiaries.com, to get his thoughts on his popular Penn State blog. Hubbell, 35, is a chemical engineer who recently left Pennsylvania for Houston, Texas.

BigTenNetwork.com: First thing's first, what is the purpose of a blog, to you, and what makes a good blogger?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: I kind of view a blog as a record of history. That's really how I wanted this blog to be. A good blogger, they know how to put their finger on the pulse, on what the hot topic is. They know a good topic when they see it. They know what will spark some debate.

BigTenNetwork.com: You all have plenty of hot topics to discuss with Penn State football. How do you handle sensitive topics such as JoePa's future and his eventual successor?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: Those are issues I get tired of discussing. When you sift through the newspapers and traditional media sites, you just get bombarded with it. I get the sense from my readers that they just get burned out talking about it. We really don't discuss Joe Paterno's status that much. Now, we will discuss what effect his status has on recruiting. Like last spring, when he was coaching without a contract, we discussed what kind of impact that would have on recruiting. But overall, we don't discuss JoePa's future, other than reporting when he gets a contract extension or when someone hints at a succession plan.

BigTenNetwork.com: How do you all handle the sensitive issues and breaking news, especially being aware of all the competition that is out there?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: I don't post things that come in e-mail or any other anonymous tips I receive. If I read it on a message board, I don't post it. The three of us here have a rule that we don't quote anything unless we see it quoted from a traditional media source. I don't have any contacts on the team, I don't have any contacts on the coaching staff, so I go off what I read in the media. What we provide is a forum for the people to react to the news. The service we provide – we aren't going to give you inside access to the team – is a forum to which you can react and discuss the news of the day with other Penn State fans.

BigTenNetwork.com: Speaking of those Penn State fans, what do they get from your blog that they don't get from others?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: I can't really take credit for this, but I think our platform is superior to anything else out there. It goes to the credit of the SB Nation technical support guys. They put together a fantastic blog that is built to harvest and build communities. We empower the readers unlike any other blogs out there. We make it easy for them to upload pictures and links and we give them the power to post fan posts. In a way, it almost acts as a little message board for our readers and that really sparks a lot of activity and a lot of interesting topics.

BigTenNetwork.com: I bet. Talk about your comments section - I assume monitoring it is a job in itself?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: It can be. But it wasn't always that way. There's nothing more frustrating than when you're an infant blogger and you put together this thousand-word post that you think is a total masterpiece and you don't get a single comment on it. It's discouraging when you put all that time and effort into it and nobody seems compelled to say anything about it. Now, it's like we get a 100 comments per post. They scroll off the page before I get a chance to read them all. Those comments are like Christmas presents to me. When I open up the blog and see three new comments, it's seriously like Christmas Day. Sometimes, it's a brand new bike, and sometimes it's the tube socks. That was kind of my drug in the early going – just getting people to react to what we put up there.

BigTenNetwork.com: And do the comments ever get really ugly or distasteful?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: There's always going to be jerks out there, that's just the way it is, but we try to keep it to a minimum and the community we have out there does a real good job of policing itself. I don't really have to do too much moderating. In running the blog now for three years, I can probably count on two hands the number of people I've had to ban. Most of the people are trolls who come on after a big loss, like after the [football] loss to Iowa, we had the Pitt fans coming on and saying, "We beat Iowa, we beat Iowa." I had to ban five or six of those guys right a way that night.

BigTenNetwork.com: If you can, single out the one blog entry you're most proud of?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: Oh, geez! I don't know if I can name one I'm most proud of. My blogging style, I try to present both sides of the argument. Some of the best responses we get are actually issues not regarding Penn State. Like, we'll bring up a conversation about Notre Dame and that always sets off a fire storm. Same thing goes for the Pitt rivalry – that always brings up debate. Basically, it all comes down to controversy. Last summer when Daryll Clark and Pat Devlin were battling for the starting [quarterback] job that caused a lot of debate. The Nittany Lion fans were basically split on that issue. That was an easy one and we tried to play it up, do a series of point-counterpoints. As much as I hate to say it, the off-the-field stuff, that always stirs things up, too.

BigTenNetwork.com: Yeah, and there was a lot of that this past year, huh?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: Yeah, there was. If a player gets arrested, oh my gosh, the site goes through the roof. Everyone wants the latest news. They want to know whether he's going to get kicked off the team, how that will affect the depth chart and when he'll come back. You hate to see it happen, but stuff like that always gets a great reaction.

BigTenNetwork.com: On a football Saturday, what do you want your site to look like before your head hits the pillow?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: Saturdays on gameday are pretty laid back for us, actually. The night before the game, I'll post an open thread and the site kind of belongs to the readers. Being in Texas, I watch all the games on television. So I'll watch the thread, and once it gets to 200 or 300 comments, the site kind of bogs down, so I have to open up another thread. For me, the satisfaction is having to open two or three new threads. That's all I look for really.

BigTenNetwork.com: And how's the work flow during the rest of the week?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: We try to set the standard that we post something new every day. During the season, it may be more like two or three things a day. That's our standard, and then during the offseason, we kind of slack off (laugh).

BigTenNetwork.com: OK, enough about football. What was it like covering the basketball team's incredible turnaround season?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: That was amazing. I tried to cover the basketball team from the beginning, all the way back to 2007. The team wasn't very good then, so I wasn't getting a lot of interest. In fact, I used to get flak from other bloggers, from other Big Ten bloggers, that I would even consider blogging about Penn State basketball. It's been really neat to see the Penn State community grow and get excited about the team. For the games, we put up an open thread where people could comment as the game's going on, and it was just  amazing how the open threads were getting 500, 600, 700, 800 comments a game.

BigTenNetwork.com: How much did the good season, not to mention the NIT title run, help drive traffic during a usually slower period?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: I think it definitely helped the blog. Typically when the bowl season is over, we'd see the traffic drop pretty considerably, maybe 50 or 60 percent from [where we were at during] football season. This year, we saw a little bit of a drop off, sure, but we maintained probably an 80 percent level from where we were during football. It gave us something exciting to talk about from January all the way up to April. It took us all the way to Spring Practice, which helped a lot.

BigTenNetwork.com: Since beginning these interviews, it seems like each blogger mentions MGoBlog.com's Brian Cook as someone he tries to pattern his blog after. Are you in that boat?

BlackShoeDiaries.com: I think that's fair to say. I mean, Brian is definitely one of the best out there. He has some of the highest traffic and if you read MGoBlog for a week or so, it's kind of easy to see why. He provides some pretty amazing statistics. During the season, he'll break down every game, every play and tell you why something worked and why it didn't. He's also very witty, very funny and just really entertaining to read. I could care less about Michigan hockey, but I find myself reading a 2,000 word story on Michigan hockey because it's just entertaining to read. He's a guy I think all college football bloggers should aspire to be.

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