Jeremy Wahman: Blessings

Blessings

     As I sit down to write this post I’m amazed at what we have done at CardinalSportsZone.com (follow us on twitter too @CardSportsZone) and i just can’t believe how far we have come in such a short time. In July me and steve toyed with the idea of starting our own UofL sports site. Since the University of Louisville was something we both loved it only seemed natural that we go into the venture with our eyes wide open and ready to go. There was only one problem, neither of us knew how to run a site. We pushed the idea to the back of our head and didn’t think about it again for a couple of months. Steve called me up and asked if I wanted to go to the John Lucas Invitational in October, I said sure. The very next week I run into my buddy Justin from college and he tells me he is working for a sportsite. An idea came to me as I was talking to Justin. Why don’t we talk to Justin about trying out for his site by covering the event we were already going to. He talked to his boss and got me and Steve the tryout we had requested.

     We head to the J.L.I., and immediately we are in awe. Some of the best under 18 basketball players in the country were there. Jabari Parker, The Harrison Twins, Troy Williams, Soloman Poole and Thon Maker (8th grade) among others. We talk to some former UL greats and talk to several of the recruits and we fit right in. Heck at one point we are standing next to one of the best High School Prep coaches in america, Rob Fulford, and he thinks with our demeanor and by the way we are talking to everyone that we were scouts from UL. that was a confidence booster. Those of you all that know me tho know that im never at a loss of words. So how did all of this lead to this site…

     The place that myself, Steve and Justin were all working at had come to be unbearable to an extent for us. To be honest none of us were having any fun anymore. Without going into many details out of respect to the guy that was running the site, we just couldn’t do it anymore. First Justin left,then Steve and I tried to hold on as long as I could but I left too. The idea was born for this site. We wanted to be creative and innovative and do big things, things that hadn’t been possible before. Justin decided to pump up the site on our twitter for a full month going into the launch so we could get more hype going. Set up a Facebook page and a Twitter handle and it was Lights, Camera, Action. We decided to start the site on Christmas day. We felt it would be a great start date with UL’s Bowl game and the UL/uk game on the Horizon. At our old site we were getting 300-400 views a day so we were thinking we would be happy with 200 views since we weren’t known. at the end of the first day we looked at our totals. 636 views on the first day,on Christmas day, on a Sunday! We were real excited and we got ready to brace ourselves because we knew at that point we were in for a ride. we averaged around 300 views the next 4 days and we were satisfied with that because we knew we would have more the first day. But I started thinking we need to get the word out and remind people when we get new stories up. So on Friday we go full steam ahead on promoting our rivalry series. After hours of reminders and promotion on Facebook 1,503 viewers come and check out the site that Friday. Once again we knew this was special.

     The day of the game we seen a drop in viewers, of course, because we lost, and we kind of expected that. But what we didn’t expect was the momentum from Friday to carry over. Three straight days in the low thousands made us happy and brought our spirits up. On Tuesday Jan 3rd, I decided I was gonna inundate twitter and Facebook with reminders and messages asking people to check out the new blogs and content on Wednesday. Justin and Steve also promoted the next day like it was going out of style. When Wednesday ended we were all shocked and thrilled at the same time…2,410 views. Words couldnt express how taken aback we were. We said this is amazing, we need to soak this in because it may never happen again. Well I’m here to tell you that the next night we did 3,001 and the rest is history….So why am I rambling along about how this started again? simple…Blessings

     Tomorrow we embark on a new chapter in the young, young life CardinalSportsZone.com. We welcome in a 4th contributor to the site. You all know him as……well youre just gonna have to wait until tomorrow but what I can tell you is that he will be our Kobe, Lebron,Rose or Rondo. We will be the guy who makes us a better team. You may have thought we had connections before, which we did, but this guy can and will open more doors than we ever imagined and along with us 3 he will take us to places we never imagined. His first Cardinal Rewind will drop tomorrow and when it does it will elevate our status instantly. After he’s been named I will go into further details but for now, I digress. WIth unlimited possibilities such as contests,A Webshow, Press credentials for us and other innovative ideas, we will go to the next level and there is no doubt in any of our minds. This is why I feel so truly blessed at this time. So sit back and enjoy the ride we are about to go on with you the fans, and keep supporting us and we will keep reinventing the game and do our very best to provide the best and most accurate information on UL cardinal sports. Not bad for a couple of guys and a dream…huh?

 Jeremy (#55)