I have a memorable little anecdote. Memorable for me anyway, and hopefully, humorous to you. It requires some context to make much sense, and that gives me an opportunity to reflect back on some site history. I don’t do that as often as I should.
I should probably do it more with next year being our twentieth year in existence.
The F2FA
Way back in the day, the site was part of something called the F2FA – The Fan 2 Fan Alliance. We were webmasters who were chosen – one per NFL team – to form an alliance that collectively provided coverage of the entire NFL. This is pre Bleacher Report / Fansided etc. Same exact idea though.
We provided links to each other on our front page, along with the F2FA logo. That was a big deal, as front page real estate was not only important, but linking offsite was not something you did much of back then. Crazy right? Now we live in a world that shares what they like every day. But it wasn’t always so.
I backup and archive pretty much everything, so here is the old F2FA logo that we all used to proudly post on the front page of our website.
F2FA Banter
As part of our F2FA agreement, you had to have a message board, and you had to link to each other’s message boards each week. This was of course designed to try and incite “banter”.
It was actually a big part of the reason that I opened the THN message board in 2003. To get into the Alliance. The internet was a very different place, and I viewed it as an incredible resource to learn things. And it absolutely was. For a few years, we each helped each other with truly important backend things like building Content Management Systems, and monetizing our sites. I wish I knew where they all were now. I wish them all well.
The linking to other boards was truly hit and miss. I personally never ventured into enemy territory much. I posted the requisite links, and if asked by the webmaster, would stop by. Otherwise, not usually.
The Falcons F2FA site was called Falcon Roost. There is still a website at FalconsRoost.com, and it does appear that it may be the same site, but it doesn’t appear to have been active for quite some time.
Awesome that it is still up. If the owner / webmaster reads this, please drop me a line.
Get To The Point!
Back story out of the way, we were playing Atlanta in around 2004 or 2005 if memory serves.
One of the FalconsRoost members was being a bit of a troll on the THN Message Boards. That was the miss part of the F2FA equation.
He had listened to our weekly podcast, and wanted to make fun of the way I talk.
I live in Canada. We say some things differently.
He was offended by the way I said Fal-con.
In Canada, we pronounce the Fal part like fall. Not Fal like pal.
Got it?
So the poster says to me on the Message Board…
“It’s F-a-l like pal you &$%&*%$ moron, not F-a-l, like Faaall.”
And I said:
“No it’s Fahl, like you’re a Fahl-con idiot.”
🙂 🙂 🙂
Yup. The 500 words previous to that line were just to set up that line.
Sorry.
I guess you had to be there.
The F2FA was also the reason we opened the Smack Forum on the Message Boards. 🙂
Good times.
Hail!
Let’s go kick some Fal-con ass!
Shout Out
Shout out to all the guys that used to rock the F2FA, and all the people that were board members back in those early days. There were some great guys and great websites, though most of them escape me now.
I remember that TitanJeff from GoTitans.com was the guy that originally invited me to be in the Alliance. I do believe he was a large part of the impetus behind the Alliance as well.
Not surprisingly Jeff still has the site and it is still active. It looks like he celebrated his 20th year last year.
From their site:
Established in 2000, goTitans.com is the place for Tennessee Titans fans to talk Titans. Our roots go back to the Tennessee Oilers Fan Page in 1997 and we currently have 4,000 diehard members with 1.5 million messages
I doubt most people really understand the grind it takes to accomplish running a fan site for two decades.
Congratulations Jeff.
I’ll make tracking Jeff and other F2FA members down, a project for another Flashback Friday.