Blog News Update

As I begin to gear up for another season covering Michigan football, I have a lot of big and exciting news to share with you regarding my humble little blog.

New Blog Design
First of all, I'm very happy to present to you the latest design of the site. It's still a slight work in progress, but the main pieces of the site are now functioning like they should be. There will be small tweaks here and there throughout the weeks/months leading up to September. But what you see here is pretty much how things are going to look for a while.

Sponsors and Ads
Currently working to add a huge new sponsor to the blog as we speak. This is a local business and anyone who lives in or around the A2 area will surely know who they are. Once it's official (when you see the banner on this site), I'll make sure to inform you again with the official welcome.

As with most sports blogs, it's honestly a labor of love for the authors. For me, I love Michigan football and do my best to try to share that with the readers who come to my site. However, it's not easy running a site like this year-in and year-out. Plus, unlike a lot of other sites, I run this completely by myself. And not to mention I work 40+ hours a week at another job and my wife and I are preparing to add a 3rd member to our family any day now!

(Yeah, freaking out a little bit!)

Content is key for any blog, and the more content you create, the more people start to notice you. Fortunately, businesses and advertisers also take notice. I've been able to partner with organizations such as Yardbarker, a community of sports blogs, who also run banners such as the ones you see around my site. Even with my affiliations and ad space that I sell, I remain a completely independent site.

The banners and ads you see on this site make it possible for us to continue to sail this pirate ship in the choppy waters of the online sports world alongside the ESPN's and various newspaper sites out there. Your clicking on those ads and buying the products you see advertised here keep sites like mine running. So please continue to patronize these businesses.

And of course, please continue to visit our site, our Facebook page, our Twitter feed and please, please, please tell your friends!

Live Blogging Coming This Fall
This is a feature that many bloggers out there use during the season to allow readers to actively participate in the commentary and discussion going on during games. Clearly, computers aren't going anywhere for a while, and fans are more and more engaged online than ever. So starting September 4th, I'm bringing live blogging to MBN.

How it works is simple, just make your way to our page on gameday, and look for the "Cover It Live" window which will be displayed right in the middle of the page. Log in or create and account and you can chat with me, other Michigan fans, and anyone else who wants to participate during Michigan games.

New Forum Page
This feature is one that I hope will grow over time. No one's really knocking down the door yet, but hopefully it will start to see more traffic. It's always been my goal to try and grow a sense of community here with more readers participating in the discussion. Hopefully this will do just that. And, I'll also try and be a little more active in promoting it.

Media Access
Last season I had the great thrill of being able to attend a couple home games with a media pass (Delaware State and Purdue). Thanks to the fine folks at the media relations office in the athletic department for granting me access. I was also able to cover the spring game this year as well. I'm not counting on it becoming a regular thing, but hopefully I'll get up to the pressbox again in 2010.

New Old Banner
I'm very happy to bring back an old friend to the site...our old banner image. This is the same image I used up until recently when I switched to the Desmond Heisman pose image. I liked the Desmond banner, but clearly the image I have up now not only looks better, but more defines what this site is all about.

I stumbled on to this image a couple years ago. It was taken by a Michigan band member, and posted to his Flickr page. This was taken at the Penn State game in 2005...a game which no Michigan fan will ever forget. As soon as I saw it, and then discovered the story behind it, I had to use it for this blog. I contacted band member and asked him permission to use it for our purposes...which he was more than happy about.

I'm happy to have it back up on the page again, with a slightly re-worked title on it.

Guest Author?
I've got some irons in the fire to get some help developing some content for the site. For now, I'll just say that I hope to have a regular guest author. If and when that happens, I'll make sure you know.

Thank you!
Again, I can not stress enough how grateful I am to all of the readers who visit this site. Whether you come here everyday, once a week or just wandered in from God knows where...I'm very happy you're here! Ultimately, it is because of you, the reader, that I continue to do this.

Go Blue!