Linguist By Day-Soccer Blogger By Night
By: Ryan | April 6th, 2008
I’m sure many people here on The Offside have done a post on ‘blogging’ in general (why they got into it, why they do it, etc).
As all of you may know (and if you don’t, you will now) in my real life, I’m a Ph.D Linguistics student at the University at Buffalo. (Gasp, I do have a real job)
Well, someone from our student newspaper at UB ‘The Spectrum’ got wind of me, somehow, and approached me to write a story (mostly on the site Center Holds It) that I set up last August.
The piece was entitled ‘Soccer blogging, haven for hooligans’ (which I found to be a rather amusing title). I first read it online and was pleasantly surprised about the article, but when I read it in print today upon arriving in my office at school, the picture in the actual paper is gigantic. Seriously, its huge.
I guess doing this little interview,I never even imagined starting a small blog last year would have led to being sent free stuff, a bit of advertising revenue, and an interview on Spanish Radio (and soon with MARCA about the Sevilla Peña that was founded in the United States).
This soon brought me to realize something. I have absolutly no formal training in writing, aside from the mounds of research papers, conference presentations and abstracts I’ve written in my academic life. Yet, someone can start a blog, write about whatever they feel like, find a following, and take it from there.
I can’t be the only one that has had this realization. I mean, The Guardian said The Offside is the 35th most powerful blog in the Universe!!! (cue music)
Which is why I’m taking this time to write this post, So what kind of double lives to the Bloggers out there live? How did you get your blogging start?
I started blogging, last year when I lived in Spain to keep my family cued in what I was doing when I lived abroad. Then it started going into the Buffalo Sabres, and finally, I went to my real love, football.
So let us know why you do it.
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Comments
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It is said if you are gonna write then ‘write what you know about!! Thats why I started. I only know about football!!
I am interested why you called that article ‘Soccer Blogging – Haven for Hooligans.’ There is nothing about Hooligans – nice pitch! I fell for it!!
Posted from
United States
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Hrrrrmmmm, I got frustrated because there was a lot of news on the new new San Jose Earthquakes and no-one was writing about it. Now there are lots of people writing about the Quakes so I basically just ramble on about whatever and try to connect it to soccer.
I’ve been a Sysadmin for something like the last ten years and I’m kind-of at a plateau so I’m looking for a career change but have no clue what that change will be (yet). Anyways, blogging about footie sure beats discussing disk i/o and layer 2 networking. BORING.
Posted from
United States -
I didn’t do the article, I got interviewed by a reporter.
Posted from
United States -
I started blogging about Lyon because I liked the team, but I didn’t know that much about them. Blogging made me fall in love with them a lot more.
As for my double life, I’m getting my Ph.D in virology, so you can imagine how weird it is for me to be a soccer blogger on the side. No one in my lab knows I like sports (we talk about germs over the water cooler), and very few of my friends know I write a soccer blog. The ones that do think I’m going through a phase or something, especially because I never even talk about soccer with anyone (what’s the point because none of my friends even like soccer?).
So in my case, it really is a double life!
Posted from
United States -
Honestly, I started the Schalke blog because I needed something to do during my downtime between classes and track practice.
And on a side note Ryan, I go to school about and hour south west of you. haha
Posted from
United States
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