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Wednesday, December 29, 2021

Top 15 Posts of 2021

The end of the year is a time for reflection and re-commitment, for thinking about what worked and what didn't, and how we can improve in the months ahead. 

My sense is that 2021 was a lot better for most folks than was 2020, but as we head into yet another year amidst yet another surge of the coronavirus, we are again reminded that we are still a long way from normal. Whatever "normal" means in the year 2022. 

Among other things, it seems like the nation's overall psychology has deteriorated. We've spent so much time physically isolated from one another that we've now become emotionally isolated as well. This has not been good for anyone. Somewhere there's an inflection point between physical health and mental health, and as a nation, I feel like we're already teetering.

I know what this means for my family and my career. It's less clear what it means for my writing and/or As For Football.

I've done year-end wrap-ups like this before, but this is the first time that I've ever tried to integrate my writing for AFF with either my social media footprint and/or with my personal blog. It's been a somewhat fraught experience, introducing even more subjectivity into the process than normal. It's never been the case that the "best" posts of the year were necessarily the most widely read, but when we add in the effects of social media influence, we exacerbate the weird, giving potentially widespread voice to some truly random thoughts.

Making this list was therefore something of a balance. Some of it spoke to me. Some of it spoke to you. Some of it was randomly retweeted by the rich and much-more-famous. What can you do? My all-time favorite post on any platform has had just 387 readers since July 2016.  I don't know what that means other than that what speaks to me doesn't always speak to all of you.

Anyway. The Top 15 Posts of 2021 are after the jump.

15. Post-game toast commemorating Senior Day & a great season at Michie Stadium. (74 views; 4 replies)


Two big take-aways here. First, I really should have written this down because I flubbed it badly in the middle. Second, my Instagram account is tiny compared to everything else, even this blog.


14. FINALLY watch #AEWDynamite & just for the record, @IAmJericho is a national treasure… (38,960 impressions; 81 engagements)


Tweet gets randomly retweeted by Chris Jericho, and it winds up with more impressions than anything else all year. 

Not that impressions are necessarily worth much. I've written about pro-wrestling a few times this year, and none of it has gotten any traction. It's crazy to think, but more people write about pro-wrestling than write about college football despite the fact that the overall wrestling audience is maybe 10% of the overall college football audience.

Wresting's audience isn't big by any measure, but it is super-interactive.


13. Class of 95 at @armed_forces_bowl. (31 likes; 1 reply)


I didn't take this picture, nor am I in it. However, I did tag both BG Mark Quander (the Comm) and my friend Amber as well as the Armed Forces Bowl itself, and that put the post in front of a ton more eyeballs than my Insta normally sees.

I also ran this pic on the Class of '95 Twitter account, where it was similarly popular.


 12. It's a Barcelona Soccer Stadium, If You Can Believe That. (159 readers)

"We've had some staff turnover at As For Football in recent months, and that's fine. Rob has been stepping away for a while now. He'll be taking command fairly soon, so we've been working to transition to a place where we can continue to operate the business without him for a good long time now. It's tough because Rob built a good amount of our infrastructure personally. But we're -- slowly -- getting there. I'm finally starting to feel like I understand how all the behind-the-scenes stuff works, to the point where I've lately been putting some of my own touches on a few of our fundamental operations..."

A post from early in the relaunch of the College Football Roundtable podcast. The post itself was mostly about choosing cover art for the podcast, but I think folks were more interested in AFF's managerial changes.


11. It’s 2021. Let’s Turn the Page (124 readers)

"People keep saying that this was the worst year ever. From a certain point of view, that’s probably right. We’ve all struggled with a global pandemic that’s killed hundreds of thousands here in the U.S. and which the country itself has wholly failed to confront on any kind of serious, rational basis. We’ve all been trapped in our homes, and like you, I’ve watched my kids struggle with the isolation of remote-schooling and quarantine. We went through months and months where we didn’t even have sports to distract us, and even now, we still can’t actually go out to anything, save in limited, inherently isolating ways. We suffered through race riots, war scares, and an economic collapse that, let’s be honest, may yet get exponentially worse. My own wife lost her job this year -- twice -- and my favorite professional wrestler just died.

I gotta be honest, though. I’m trying to keep it all in perspective..."

This one speaks for itself. I think it serves mainly to remind us how far we've come in a year.


10. Undefeated Wake as the winners of the ACC should definitely get in… (8,236 impressions; 490 engagements)


It's a real shame that Wake Forest couldn't close out that perfect season. I stand by the statement that they'd have deserved a shot at the CFP if they'd actually pulled it off, however.


9. What a day it’s been for other people’s assumptions about Army Football… (5,418 impressions; 305 engagements)


This came shortly after Miami-Ohio's Coach Chuck Martin's wacky press conference where he low-key accused Army players of illegal play *and* future war crimes as Army officers.

I despise "Thank you for your service..." culture and anything that takes away from the players on the field during Army Football games. Martin managed both in a ten minute time frame, plus he insinuated that the guys themselves were little better than thugs with rank, and this tweet was my response.

WTF, America? I get that you don't know your Army, but holy shit. This was ridiculous.


8. Quick Thoughts: Army Out-Shoots Western Kentucky (961 readers)

"Well friends, that was a wild one. Army won, and I got to see a bunch of my classmates and meet a bunch of cadets, and all of that was truly awesome. Candidly, though, I did not mean to live it up quite that hard..."

This post marked the upper-end of an "average" Quick Thoughts post. No idea why people cared so much about Army's win over WKU. If I had to guess, I'd say that maybe some of the interest came after the fact, once Western Kentucky qualified for the Conference USA Championship.


7. Beer Pic: VT’s Conehead IPA (17,622 impressions; 90 engagements)


Ross Tucker randomly retweeted this picture of a beer one afternoon, and here we are. What a world.


6. Emergency Feedback: Who Can Be an Army Football Fan? (825 readers)

"I got a note today from a longtime Army Football and AFF fan, and it was so singular and so touching that I wanted to share it. We get versions of this question fairly frequently. Much more often than you’d think, at any rate. "We’ve talked about this on the podcast a few times, but let me talk about it here, too, once and for all."

This was a really big post from the offseason. I thought it might get more play as the year went on, but unfortunately, it kind of peaked and then fizzled.


5. Quick Thoughts: Coach Monken to Remain at West Point (1,200 readers)

"It’s official, friends. Kansas has hired former Buffalo Bulls Coach Lance Leipold as the Head Coach of the Jayhawks Football Team. Happy as I am to have Saint Monken continue on as Head Football Coach at our own rockbound highland home, I confess that I can’t help but feel for the man as well..."

No surprise that this one blew up. I was personally proud of it, though. I mean, I too thought it was a decent piece of writing.


4. Quick Thoughts: Madness at Camp Randall (1,432 readers)

"Well folks, for the first three quarters of this game, I honestly thought that maybe I just wouldn’t write anything this week. I didn’t want to come across dispirited, and more to the point, I wasn’t sure what there was to analyze about a game in which the Black Knights did virtually nothing on offense. It was a big stage, and the Army Team definitely got their chances, especially early, but somehow, they never seemed to capitalize despite getting the best possible start and the wildest possible finish. "But then Army turned in a fourth quarter for the ages, and well, I just can’t quit this team, you know? Maddening or not, they laid it all on the line, and even with all the setbacks and everything else, they still somehow got within a handful of plays of pulling off one of the craziest upsets I can remember..."

The AFF Crew knew that our coverage of the Wisconsin game would garner a larger-than-normal audience, and it did. The game's ending didn't hurt, either.


3. Quick Thoughts: Army played like Navy, & Navy played like Army, & the result was exactly what you’d expect. (12,410 impressions; 627 engagements)


This take holds up even better now that we've all seen Buchanan dominate an SEC defense.


2. Hannah’s Move-In Day (231 readers)

"We dropped our oldest off at college this week. Hannah is now a freshman at Manhattan College. Go Jaspers! I’m not gonna lie. It hit me a lot harder than I thought that it would. This old house of ours feels a little too big and a lot too empty right now. Because Hannah’s the one who tends to hang out with me the most. Over the past year or more -- since the pandemic hit, forcing Sally to start her own fitness studio out in our former garage -- Hannah has been the one helping me make dinner most nights. She’s the one who always wants to tell me about her day, who goes to the beach with me when it’s 90° outside, when we’re all sweaty and miserable because our 100-year-old house doesn’t have central air conditioning. Hannah’s the one who’s really been around during the pandemic. I don’t think I’d realized how much I’d come to rely on her company until she was gone. It’s all too easy to fall into these little routines of domesticity when you live together as a family. But man oh man, once those routines are disrupted, you really feel it. I did, at least."

This was my favorite post of the year and probably the year's best piece of writing. I think almost everyone I know must have read this thing.


1. As For Football’s Guide to Michie Stadium (2021 Edition) (4,784 readers)

"Michie Stadium is the main football stadium for the United States Military Academy at West Point. It serves as home to Army Football and Army Men’s and Women’s Lacrosse and is consistently ranked as one of the best, most scenic college football stadiums in the entire nation. Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in 2019. It has been updated for the 2021 season..."

There are two keys to running a site like As For Football successfully.

1. Generate quality evergreen content. Blogging doesn't quite follow the 80/20 rule, but it's close. Thus, having a few popular posts that never go out of style becomes absolutely essential. AFF has a handful of these posts, but this particular post is the only one from the current calendar year.

2. Podcast from an outline. That helps you both stay on topic and remember all the points you wanted to make when you're on the air.


That's a wrap for 2021. We'll see you next year!

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