Just curious to us older crowd, I guess non-millennial. I was born in 1969 and can remember the sweet innocent days of fun in the sun without the internet. Now, my youth was the 80s of course, watching Lawrence Taylor and shit.
Um, what was the offseason like for you? Did you follow the Giants all year long or did you start to become more of an intense fan because of the internet, Bigblueinteractive.com, apps, etc? I never remember even following who the Giants drafted, maybe I read about it in the paper or my father told me.
Did you listen to WFAN religiously during summer days? Sometimes, I'll admit I didn't know who the Giants were playing until Sunday came around, maybe even didn't know if they had a bye week lol
I do miss the days of no internet (because I didn't know what it was) but I love reading stuff when I'm at work or my wife is bitching at me and I'm pretending to be working "on projects"!
The good old days,
In Florida in the 1970s, the day-old NY Post and NY Daily News were available at the Palm Beach newsstand.
Basically newspapers as a kid. And TV.
It was so much easier to be a fan then, actually. You’d watch the game without dissecting it in the media—every pass, every missed tackle, every freakin’ stat imaginable—the whole next week. And now it’s hard to tune out.
In Florida in the 1970s, the day-old NY Post and NY Daily News were available at the Palm Beach newsstand.
Christ, you were stuck with the Utica Dispatch for sports news?
I grew up in Binghamton, which was very definitely GIANTS territory, but except for an occasional story about the draft picks or camp opening in the Binghamton Press, there was generally nothing available. Once in a great while there might be something of interest in a magazine, but it was always more feature material or in the case of the draft annuals, not very good about any specific team. And this stuff was always pretty dated by the time it got the the newsstand. In those days (50s & 60s) baseball was bigger than football anyway.
By the 1980s, team newspapers were available and you could subscribe to them and get a much better info flow, if always a week or ten days behind what was currently happening due to the time required to print and mail the publications.
Then cable TV became commonplace with NYC sports coverage all over upstate, followed by the internet, and they provided more detailed, up to the minute information.
Not satisfactory but in a different way
I was happy for any scrap of news
Now with the Internet you get scraps all of the time and it is not satisfactory in a different sense in that it is difficult to discern the overall plan - the big picture if you will.
Sometimes it all seems ad hoc - you get the sense that management is just making it all up on the fly
Why were they? Because they were mostly NY/NJ transplants starving for NYG news.
A few months later, a tech guy came by my desk and said, "You've got to take that site down, you are getting more hits than us."
I was born in 1976, and I was lucky enough to meet some of the posters here on BBI in the early 90's on the old Giants "message board" on Prodigy - waaaaayyyy back in the day. I was a junior or senior in HS at that time and remember posting about the 93' Giants and I'm pretty sure that was the first year it was up and running.
People like Eric, Patty Traina, and many others that are still around here posted there. It was a very big thing back then!!
I was born in 1976, and I was lucky enough to meet some of the posters here on BBI in the early 90's on the old Giants "message board" on Prodigy - waaaaayyyy back in the day. I was a junior or senior in HS at that time and remember posting about the 93' Giants and I'm pretty sure that was the first year it was up and running.
People like Eric, Patty Traina, and many others that are still around here posted there. It was a very big thing back then!!
That's how I met Patti...on the old Prodigy boards. I still remember the endless Phil Simms vs. Jeff Hostetler debates.
Hilarious.
Why were they? Because they were mostly NY/NJ transplants starving for NYG news.
A few months later, a tech guy came by my desk and said, "You've got to take that site down, you are getting more hits than us."
Was this bad for his site or something? I know nothing about computers or was he "offended" that the Giants were more popular than his company?
The tribune would have a 20-30 word writeup of US sports. Fortunately, my dad would send me a vcr tape of the Giants game.
Rarely used international land line at $10/minute!
My bad... not Giants Insider, it was Giants Newsweekly. I got Giants Newsweekly, Giants Extra, and Inside Football (this was before Patti was involved in it... used to be an English professor who owned it).
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Giants Extra and Inside football were a great resource as were the sporting news, ourlads, the local papers, etc.
I was born in 1976, and I was lucky enough to meet some of the posters here on BBI in the early 90's on the old Giants "message board" on Prodigy - waaaaayyyy back in the day. I was a junior or senior in HS at that time and remember posting about the 93' Giants and I'm pretty sure that was the first year it was up and running.
People like Eric, Patty Traina, and many others that are still around here posted there. It was a very big thing back then!!
That's how I met Patti...on the old Prodigy boards. I still remember the endless Phil Simms vs. Jeff Hostetler debates.
I was on Prodigy too and remember Eric, Patti, and a guy I think was named Paul Gregory.
Why? Because I was running a sports info website off their server and the traffic was something that couldn't be hidden. It was an ethics issue.
I was just screwing around back then. BBI didn't even have ads until five years later. At the time, it was called "The Big Blue Home Page."
I would fake sick and get my draft magazines out and circle who the Giants drafted.
My Dad, a huge Giant fan knew what I was doing and would come home and ask how we did.
It was the early days of ESPN.
I couldn't wait to get the Giants insider draft recap.
I got lucky my heavy fandom started when we drafted LT.
Still have all the magazines and newspapers from the playoff runs, draft and Superbowl.
And of course all the football card sets.
If I recall, Paul HATED George Young.
I’m pretty sure all of us had a generic code and then a handle - mine I believe was “AFG” or “AG”
Wow those were fun times. Many of us were convinced that 93’ team had one more run in them (Simms and LT) and we suffered together through the Dallas loss and then the game in candlestick.
The first one I remember getting was Inside Football. Then I think Giants Newsweekly came out. Then Giants Extra appeared on the scene.
I forget if it was Newsweekly or Extra, but I swear one of those two would come on Monday AFTER the next game.
Best stuff was the once-a-year interview that the Inside Football professor did with George Young, who was very honest and straight forward with him. They were great interviews.
Same.. News daily... insider & extra monthly? holy fluck
Who was Pete as Pete's Corner?
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Paul was a legend on the Prodigy board.
Who was Pete as Pete's Corner?
a friend of Eric's I think.
And I always got a weekly sports magazine - at first Sports Illustrated then The Sporting News which was a sports junkies dream in those days. There were also the annuals like Street and Smiths and various guides and digests.
One change I see is that in those days you spent more time following the league as a whole. You just couldn't get the level of info about your team that you got starting with 24/7 sports talk and then the internet.
Well, it was the dawn of the internet and almost all websites were comical.
I kept mine for a decade at my folk's house. I eventually said, "I'm never going to look at these again" and tossed them. I kind of wish I kept them but they would just be collecting dust.
We also received some publication a few times per year, maybe Giants Touchdown or something? It was trifold on glossy paper, that’s pretty much all I remember. Other than being really psyched when it arrived as it was dedicated to the Giants.
Married with Children?
Married with Children?
Never realized the Married with Children influence there. Ha
I loved the Sports Machine. Check this baby out on YouTube from 1986.
https://youtu.be/VjHAEGGszkw - ( New Window )