- Feed the beast. That's what John Bonnes called it one night over his sixth Guinness at Bryant Lake Bowl. A blog really cannot work without entries. Shocker, huh? Sounds simple, but the single most difficult aspect of blogging is finding the time and energy to write what even you consider interesting material.
- Blog on a set schedule. Writing an entry every day is extremely difficult, but you need consistency both for yourself and your imagined audience. Every weekday or specific days during the week is best. This will be really difficult for me, as I am more apt to get my material from my comments on other blogs, which I read haphazardly.
- Find your voice. There are many issues with my first attempts at blogging, but the foremost one for me is that I could never find my writing voice. In other words, what persona will you take on? I post on Gopher Illustrated quite often, and my persona there ranges from philosopher to cynic to the anti-fan because, as one example, I've never found anything good to say about Rashede Hageman's play. But at least it's a voice.
- Somehow make your blog unique. The last thing you need to waste your time at is doing something that someone else already does. Many bloggers are unique simply because they possess the tool of information. Others do very fine analysis. I hope I can eventually find that which makes this blog unique.
Mostly what I do here in this blog is find fault with decision-making. I am an advanced-degreed statistician who has studied game theory, and it blows my mind how horrible the decision-making can be from people around here who get paid millions to make decisions. Terry Ryan, Ron Gardenhire, Tubby Smith, Flip Saunders, and many others have made and continue to make some of the worst decisions one can imagine. How's that for hyperbole? It's no coincidence that sports in this town have basically been crap. Teams that should be competitive are not, teams that are somewhat competitive should be winning championships--I'm looking at you, Twins org c. 2002-2010. It's hard to believe we've stayed fans all this time. Some things are changing, though, and when I look at the sports leadership now installed at the University of Minnesota, I get genuinely excited. They get it now. There are still likely some issues, but the decision-making from President Kaler to A.D. Norwood Teague to coaches Kill and Pitino is light years above the old regime. That's a start, and I'm looking forward to a sports renaissance in this town.
