YGLS Reborn

We’re Baaaaack.


That’s right. After a four year hiatus, the Youvegottalovesports.com crew is back. And in this incarnation, we’re a blog. Now for those of you who just whacked your foreheads and exclaimed, “Why, why another blog,” we understand that we probably need some sort of explanation.


Let’s start out by explaining that there are people out there that are in the business of tracking blogs. What a joyous life that must be! Anyway, these esteemed folks estimated in 2005 that there were a total of 25 million blogs out there in cyberspace. These same folks were tracking a whopping 112 million blogs in 2007. If we extrapolate out at the current rate of growth in the blogosphere to, say, the year 2017 (which, by the way, is also the year that some experts predict that Social Security will become insolvent, if you believe all that ), there will be, according to my math, roughly sixteen blogs for every man, woman, child, and Jack Russell Terrier on the planet. We’re not just talking man, woman, and beast in the US. We’re talking about the huddled, unwashed masses in the third world as well.


With all these blogs bouncing around dat der fancy interweb, we need to ask ourselves, why another? Well, there’s no doubt that blogging comes with a healthy dose of egotism. We blog because we feel like we have something worthwhile to say. We can empathize with George Costanza when he said:


GEORGE: I like sports. I could do something in sports.
JERRY: Uh-huh. Uh-huh. In what capacity?
GEORGE: You know, like the general manager of a baseball team or something.
JERRY: Yeah. Well, that - that could be tough to get.
GEORGE: Well, it doesn't even have to be the general manager. Maybe I could be like, an announcer. Like a color man. You know how I always make those interesting comments during the game.
JERRY: Yeah. Yeah. You make good comments.
GEORGE: What about that?
JERRY: Well, they tend to give those jobs to ex-ballplayers and people that are, you know, in broadcasting.


Man, you should hear the comments we make during games. Fantastic stuff. So, a group of college friends got together and launched a new website for the rest of us to coincide with ESPN’s launch of its 17th network, ESPNU. We’d grown tired of ESPN showing poker and original series on Dale Earnhardt and athletes playing catchphrase on Sportscenter. We wanted a website that concentrated on sports, but with a funny and sarcastic edge to it. We also riddled our stories with pop culture references due to our obsession with that as well. Our website’s name was both an expression of our passion for sports, and also paid homage to our favorite show, Seinfeld.


Thus, a website was born. There are multiple narratives out there to explain the demise of our original website. Some say our founder was an idealist; you might even say a cockeyed optimist. He thought that a group of middling college students could not only launch and keep up a popular sports website - he thought it could eventually make a profit. The workload, along with finals and, you know, real jobs eventually killed the site.


Others contend that the URL was lost in a high stakes poker game with the model from godaddy.com.


The most likely story, though, is that our fine website was a victim of the housing bubble. For months, everything was going well. Our CFO talked us all into sinking vast amounts of our revenue into these credit-default swaps he said would buy us each a house in the Hamptons. He said it was like making sausage. You didn’t want to know what was in it, but in the end we would have a fine product. It turns out, much of the product we were purchasing was a combination of Detroit area mortgages and financing for a company that was building luxury homes in the Youngstown, Ohio area. We also met this charming financial planner named Bernie Madoff. Nevertheless, four years and a hellish Chapter 11 bankruptcy later, we’re all back in our parents basements – which incidentally is really where most blogs are created and updated.


So, like a Phoenix rising from Arizona we’re back with a vengeance and ready to take the sports world by force. Our original site was pretty awesome, but this one will be even better. We’ll have shorter, quicker responses to events. Let’s say Chad Johnson changes his last name to his home address. We’ll be all over that story with a mocking tribute in no time.


The original website made its debut when Facebook was an infant that no one really knew how to use. Youtube was still months away from conception. Our nation’s life expectancy has tripled in that time. We’re ready to make a big splash.


Our staff has (mostly) gone on to start distinguished careers. Just off the top of my head, I can list four Master’s degrees and two guys who are ABD PhD candidates. Those credentials will provide keen insights into both who will win this year’s French Open as well as who will win “I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!” (If there even is a winner on that show. This guy is not responsible for reality TV coverage). I am confident our readers will be pleased with our coverage of the various awards shows as well, from the Grammys to the Daytime Desi’s.


Feel free to comment below on items from your excitement level about the return of YGLS to possible reasons for its return. I’ll start us off with one erroneous reason for our return. We did not return to give Grove City College to give it some positive press in response to the Vincent DeSalvo debacle.


That’s all for now. Keep checking in for the best in sports coverage, replete with ridiculous allusions (try counting how many are in this article alone). Until my next post, Christoff, signing off.