Um, so yeah, four years later

Four years ago, this blog started with this simple post:

This site is for fans of the Indianapolis Colts. We offer opinions and insight on not just the Colts, but the NFL in general. I'd like to give a shout out to all Colts fans, and any fans of other teams that take the time to read and post here. Yes, that includes you New England fans out there.

We posted that on February 21, 2006. The post generated a grand total of three comments. Two of the comments were from Windy City Gridiron writer WCG, and the third was from me. The irony is that season our Colts would beat his Bears in the Super Bowl. Back then, when we posted our first article, SB Nation had a total of five football blogs. Only three of those five original writers remain. After a month of blogging, I might have had maybe 150 total page views a day.

Today, when traffic hits its normal regular season stride, he hover near 40,000 page views a day. Each year, we have doubled the size of our audience. I used to average, maybe, five stories a week. We do five to six stories a day now. We've attended NFL Drafts. We've live-blogged from Super Bowls. We've interviewed players, coaches, TV personalities, etc.

So, yeah. We've done a lot in four years.

I forgot to do an anniversary write-up because, in all honesty, I always get the date of when we started confused. I think that it was March 21, 2006 when we started, but that simply is not true. We began all the way back in February of 2006. That was two MVPs and two Super Bowls ago. It was pre-Joseph Addai. A lifetime ago.

One element of our first post is something we continue to believe in and trumpet to this day:

With football transforming into a year long event (with the Indianapolis combine, the draft, free agent signings, rookie signings, mini-camps, and preseason) we plan on posting a lot of content leading up to Kickoff Weekend 2006.

We encourage you to create an account with us, post comments on our diaries, and create diaries of your own. Blogs only work when the you speak up and participate.

That last line is the core of our blog. I admit I'm a loud-mouthed jackass who enjoys stirring up "trouble." I enjoy getting into the middle of things and speaking my mind. I relish opportunities where I can walk into a room say something that starts a conversation. I was taught that the truth often has consequences, but those consequences are necessary because people often work very hard to suppress the truth. So, when you speak it or write it, positive things can happen. Dialogue begins. People debate, discuss, and connect.

That's what we do here. We start conversations. We do not tailor to any "one voice" mentality. Debate is essential. Discussion is our life blood. We are, in essence, community builders first and writers second.

When I write an article and I see it has generated something like 150 comments, and then I see the comments are all adding to the article's substance, it is a very gratifying feeling. And after four years of doing this, I think we've done a good job generating some great dialogues. This site has gotten bigger than I ever thought it would. I guess the appropriate thing is to say "Here's to four more years!" My goodness. Four years?

Seems like it was yesterday.