Ballhype: It?s over. Go Home. Go!

If you love sports blogs, like I do, then you loved Ballhype, like I did. It passed away earlier this week. Many people have already gone into great details on the ins and outs of the abrupt end to Ballhype. I just want to talk about … how much I miss it, and what it meant to me.

I first learned about Ballhype after I had been blogging for a few months, and I was blown away. Every sports blogger was there already and they were all a buzz about blogging about sports, and the sport of blogging.

I quickly met all these cool people that turned out to be sports bloggers. The owners of the site, Erin and Jason Gurney, were so incredibly nice. As I fumbled through my first years of sports blogging, I must have sent them more than a few emails talking about the front page, edits that I wanted to make to my submissions, and basically bugging them.

They were always, almost to a fault, nice, encouraging, responsive, and cool. I say “almost to a fault” because that gave me a false sense of security. I thought that every sports blogger was a really nice/ cool person. Even though, after 3 years, I have had a few bad experiences with “Big Timers” I continue to believe that the easily irritated/irritating people are far outnumbered by the truly awesome, constantly nice, sports bloggers that are a fountain of resources, wit, and knowledge.

I met so many friends on Ballhype. I know that “friends” is not a word that anyone with an IQ is supposed to use when referring to someone that they just met on the Interweb, but it is true. I met so many sports bloggers, Hyped their well written posts, I left them messages, and they left me messages. I visited their blog and soon I made Google groups and Twitter lists where I interact with hundreds of Sports Bloggers every day. A lot of these people are, and will continue to be, close personal friends. This could not have been possible without Ballhype.

Someone said that Ballhype was taken over by Twitter.

Twitter is like yelling on a New York street corner, and hoping that people will hear you. ( unless you are famous, then I am sure Twitter is a blasty blast. ). Ballhype was a family. Erin and Jason were the cool parents. Every blogger was a sibling. Every day was Thanksgiving. If you didn’t feel the love, then you are dead inside.

After the site was sold, to Daily Radar which must be an amazing company, you could tell that they wanted to make the site into a Billion Dollar idea. It turns out that it was just a several Million Dollar idea, that got messed up.

I honestly can not say enough about how much I used Ballhype in my every day blogging. There were countless blogging tools and resources. Erin and Jason and the rest of the original Ballhype crew can not be thanked enough.