Taking the Torch at Stampede Blue

I am excited to announce that Joel Thorman and SB Nation has given me the opportunity to take over for Josh Wilson as the managing editor and lead blogger of StampedeBlue.com. I have long considered Stampede Blue and the SB Nation family of blogs to be the premier location for sports fan communities to stay informed about their teams and more importantly, interact with one another. I appreciate the opportunity and look forward to getting to know many of you much better.

By way of introduction, I will share that I have been an avid Colts fan essentially since they arrived in Indy. As my profile story will attest, my individual sports passions were set aside when I had the opportunity to attend a summer baseball camp at Anderson University while the Ted Marchribroda-led Colts held their training camp. Back then, there were not swarms of fans crowding to get in. Frankly, I don’t recall anyone being there outside of a handful of onlookers lined up outside of the fence along the old practice field.

One of my fondest memories from that experience was having the opportunity to sit down for lunch in the same cafeteria where the players would eat. The players were partitioned off so we could not interact with them while they were eating but much of the coaching staff would come over the eat among the kids. One of those days Ted himself came over to my table and sat down to eat his lunch. In our conversation I shared with him my astute scouting observations concerning an undersized linebacker who I thought had some spunk — his name is Sammie Burroughs.

By all accounts, Burroughs was a long shot to make the roster at 6’0”, 227 lbs out of Portland State. To my surprise — and of course due to my master negotiating skills with Ted — Sammie made the team as a special teams contributor and even found himself on the front of the Herald Bulletin after making a play following one of his games. My passion for following the game of football and its players only grew from those experiences growing up.

Fast forward to today, I hope to have a positive influence on the Colts fan community at Stampede Blue so more people can have the same kind of experiences I had at Colts training camp. In order to do this, I will need each of you and welcome you to provide your ideas, feedback, or content if you are inclined to write. The way I see this community continuing to thrive and to grow is by attracting an even larger group of people who are active members of other fan communities to make Stampede Blue their home and to attract the best “non-professional” writing talent to join this team and make regular front-page contributions.

In an effort to do that, I will be reaching out to people who are active members of the Colts blogging community, podcast community, and hopefully coming soon the video casting community. We want to generate some new content that can be even more interactive and will appreciate your feedback and ideas throughout the process.

To save your eyes, and because it’s weird to talk about yourself for a long time, I will invite you share any questions you have in the comments section about me or about how I plan to manage the community — I will do my best to address them. In the meantime, thank you again to Joel and SB Nation for this opportunity and for all of you who have made Stampede Blue such a great place to interact.