You’ve hit on an idea close to my heart and to Rocker’s. We’d like to see if we can pull that off. I’ll bore everyone with some history:
I first started posting here in about 1998. The Internet was then still relatively new. A lot of us, like me, lived away from Utah and were accustomed to being starved for information about Utah athletics. Only the most dedicated fans could find it. I used to go to a local newsstand (remember those?) and buy the Sunday edition of the Salt Lake Tribune just to look for Utes-related stories. Occasionally my mother or friend would send me a clipping about a game.
So for me, and so many others like me, UF.net was a gift from heaven, a bonanza of information. This quickly became a fantastic board, which many of us remember, and many of us hope it will be once again, albeit in a different format and a different online sports world.
About divisive periods: I recall the era shortly after 9-11 as very united. Then as the Iraq invasion approached, and later unfolded in an ugly manner, tensions arose. In that regard the board reflected what was going on in the entire country. I believe there were a handful of regular posters, maybe three or four, who made that situation a lot worse than it needed to be. Again, we were a reflection of the situation in the country at large. UF.net’s population probably posted mostly from a left of center point of view, which most people accepted as the reality; I was OK with it. I recall discussions being pretty vigorous at times, but only rarely did they become personal and over the top.
Even when I became less active on this board because I had other things going on, I always checked in here almost daily, although I wasn’t interested in a lot of the things that went on. (I never got the horse-a-palooza inside jokes.) I did spend time on what was then called the CougarUte Forum because it was made up of mostly tolerable BYU fans who could take a joke and handle a rational conversation about the rivalry, along with other subjects. Interestingly, there was a large and fascinating contingent there who were disaffected from the LDS faith but were still ardent BYU fans.
Like @The_Jim_Fassel_Era said, it was an interesting board and a pretty good community. After Utah joined the PAC-12, they changed that board’s name and made it very inhospitable to Utah fans.
That led to the creation of Utah by 5, which consisted of the best Ute fans fleeing that board. There were some of the best message board folks there I’ve ever encountered. It became a great community, but nobody was available to run it after a while. I tried, but it was too time-consuming (and I am not a tech guy). Also, once UF.net began its rise from the ashes, I wanted to devote my message board time here. I still hope that at some point we can build a bridge between this community and what is left of the UB5 community. There are people who posted there who would contribute a lot here. (Quite a number of them actually do post here.) We just haven’t gotten around to that.
But I digress. At about that same time things were pretty bad here, because of the lack of attention the Webmonkey was able to give the site. Rocker and I saw that UF.net was circling the drain and we got talking. We acquired the rights and the rest is history. Rocker is the man who found this format and has made it work. We all owe him a lot.
We’ve gotten off to an excellent start. To borrow a phrase from the Urban Meyer era, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.“ With the pandemic’s effect on sports, and a very unusual POTUS and presidential election campaign, we’ve been without much to talk about except those two subjects, and we’ve had some tension. But…believe me when I say that any a divisiveness we’ve seen here in the last six or seven months is nothing compared to what was going on here between 2003 and 2008.
And that’s what I’ve got to say about that.
