The Life and Times of the Dawgvent, Episode Nine
This is the final installment in the history of the Dawgvent, with all its twists and turns. From a handful of football-loving computer geeks to the leading media coverage of the nation's top football power, this is the story of the board that started it all. Adapted from the book Sax Attacks, by Rob Suggs.
Final Episode: Dawgvent, the Next Generation
Just before 9/11, a poster named Radi Nabulsi joined the ranks of Dawgvent subscribers. His first memory of the board is that of posters sharing urgent news updates from across the country. Radi was working as a photographer for the UGA Athletic Association, and he had become friends with fellow camera ace Steve Patterson. Radi was a UGA journalism graduate, class of '95.
He clearly had skills beyond the lens. As the Vent kept on going and growing, Steve hired Radi in 2007 to help run the site and grow the subscriber base. Radi, with his sense of humor and easy congeniality, caught on quickly with the community and soon was a fixture. After only a month, Steve asked him to take over day-to-day operations—just as Jason had once asked of Steve himself. Running the Vent is consuming work, and if you doubt that, ask the wives.
Indeed it was an impressive team. ESPN was wanting to get into this fan site game. Just prior to the 2013 season, ESPN hired Radi and Kipp Adams, a recruiting writer. Eric Winter, head of Rivals, said goodbye to the pair, but promised to keep in touch—which he did. He'd been impressed by Radi Nabulsi's creativity; his driven nature, his insistence on getting things right and finding new ways to do them. That's what works in this industry.
ESPN’s fan board endeavor never quite took off; Radi ultimately left ESPN to pursue other opportunities. After a period of TV work in Atlanta, Radi was contacted by Winter, who had startling news. Steve Patterson had sold his rights to UGASports, and Rivals now wanted Radi back as the publisher.
This was a “dream job” opportunity for Radi. Having now worked for ESPN, Charter Sports, Sports Illustrated, and local Atlanta television, he had a strong enough résumé to find plenty of good media jobs, but his heart was with the Vent. He knew there was nothing else quite like it. The fan forum was a powerful new social media influencer in sports, and all that remained was to bring all the bells and whistles of "old media" to it as the technology rapidly improved.
“It’s a family,” he says today. “We laugh with each other, we cry with each other, we fight like brothers and sisters and estranged uncles at Thanksgiving. Sometimes our familiarity finds the tender spots in each other, but in the end, we all want the same thing: timely information, accuracy, and like-minded friends to talk to.” Radi offers a wistful smile very briefly, then resumes pounding the desk and bellowing, "Where's my copy, Dash?"
The Unique Shall Inherit the Earth
In just a few years, an obscure “Pluto board,” created as a hobby for posting fun facts about a team, had somehow grown into being a large company, employing an impressive team and having a global impact. Wherever there are Georgia Bulldog fans--and today, they're everywhere--there are UGASports subscribers.
What goes around comes around. Those same local newspapers who sneered at the Internet with its “fringe whackos” now scrambled to keep up with an onslaught of video, photography, interviews, up-to-one-second-ago recruiting rumors, and above all, the customer interaction that traditional media couldn’t hope to duplicate. Will the last newsprint jockey please turn out the lights?
A decade back, the old sportswriters had ridiculed them; now they were submitting their résumés, looking for Internet jobs.
Newsweek had written, upon declaring the inevitable failure of the Net, “What’s missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another.”
The writer had it precisely backwards. Or at least that’s what many of us decided. This scribe's newspaper subscription lapsed long ago. The sportswriter was just a font, but Roe Dawg and Cartersville Dawg, Tee Dawg, Opie, Dawg C, JCarbo, and Groo—these were people I knew well, though I’d never met most of them in person...until I did.
Ironically, Newsweek went out of business a few years later. I read its obituary (wait for it) . . . on the Internet.
Radi says, “I’ve laughed so hard from behind this keyboard, and I’ve sobbed uncontrollably. I’ve raged. I’ve been soothed. And hopefully, when I die, the Powers that Be will leave me logged in.” Twenty thousand Venters would tend to agree.
Like caretakers Jason and Steve before him, Radi talks about the friends and the stories, the slightly or even majorly weird world of online community. It’s not really surprising that none of them mention the sports part. You come for the football, but you stay for the friendship.
If the Vent has taught us anything at all, there you have it.