Our first installment of the story of TheSabre.com left off with Mike Ingalls leaving the hospital early to get back to work on his fledgling web site, VirginiaFootball.com. So now we begin this episode with Mike sitting at his computer at home, still in his hospital gown with his backside airing out. Not a pretty picture, but this history is pulling no punches.
Okay, so that’s not entirely accurate, but you can’t have a hospital story without mentioning those silly gowns they make you wear. Mike really did get dressed before he left the hospital. He was very anxious to make his web site better and immediately commenced work on it upon his return home.
After healing well enough to drive, Mike started covering UVa athletics more aggressively. VirginiaFootball.com soon carried more original stories of interest to UVa fans. July 1997 was a busy month. Like a good investigative reporter, Mike traveled to see UVa recruits Antwoine Womack and Dan Ellis play in their respective high school all-star games.
One glaring difference from the site Mike was working on in the summer of 1997 and today’s Sabre is that there was no message board in those early days! Why? Simple. Mike didn’t know how to build one. But he was undaunted. Much of the interaction by UVa fans on the web was taking place on the AOL message board at that time. Many still-familiar posters, including mingalls, had been sharing their passion for UVa since 1995 on the AOL board. ZBIII, VBHOO, MooHoo2, WahoosU, Beachoo, HanoverHoo, and others had come over to AOL after several years on the Prodigy UVa message board. There was a problem though. Experiences on the AOL board taught Mike that for message boards to be more valuable, controls were required.
The AOL message board for UVa fans often degenerated into a free-for-all of Hokies vs. Hoos. Anarchy reigned. There were constant battles by Mike (and many other UVa posters) with DihrdHokie, the bete noir of AOL’s UVa fans. The AOL board was ablaze with flames to such an extent that true fans were prevented from enjoying a mature conversation about their team.
Mike Ingalls wanted his site to be flame retardant. The raging fires on AOL also impelled WahoosU and Mikeysurf to launch the WahooWagon in August of 1997. Mike Ingalls and Mikeysurf discussed what was needed to help promote UVa sports through independent websites. Mikeysurf recalls discussing with Ingalls how: “We were both motivated, though with different approaches, to accomplish the same goal — create an electronic community for UVa sports fans and promote fan interest.”
In the summer of 1997, Fred Polli’s UVa site, Hoopsonline, did offer a message board and many faithful fans learned of Mike’s brush with the criminal element in Charlottesville through Fred’s site. Longtime poster grillswith remembers that summer as follows: “One day I pulled up Fred’s board and the only message was that it had been shut down due to lack of ‘Fred funds.’ This, near as I can tell, led to the whole bunch of us emailing Mike Ingalls and begging, ‘please, please use your money and talent to keep us poor slobs up to date and give us a forum to bitch about the turmoil all our programs are in.'” The swelling tide of interest in Mike’s site was becoming a tsunami.
For the Virginia sports fan in 1997, unless you lived in Charlottesville, good information about the Hoos was harder to find than a virgin in Chapel Hill. Zac Powers was publishing his short-lived Orange & Blue Magazine, which did not have an internet presence. Zac did have some good recruiting information, which was almost non-existent in other media sources. Mike and Zac both attended Womack’s last high school game and shared their enthusiasm for providing Virginia fans with the material for which they so hungered. Zac tried to feed the fans in the written media, while Mike was fully committed to the internet. After all, Mike was a professional web designer.
In August 1997, while delivering Chinese food, Mike received a tip about a web design company that might be looking for help. The next day, Mike called and the response he got was, “We’re really not looking for anyone right now, but we’ll take your name and number and call you later.” Yeah, right. Back to the Kung Pao chicken.
One week later, Mike’s phone rang, and he was pleasantly surprised to hear that the company, BITS, could use a part-time web designer, if he was still interested. Good-bye Kung Pao chicken. Mike was officially a full-time web designer as of September 1, 1997 and getting paid for it.
September 1997 found Mike busily engaged. He was working full-time at BITS, delivering Sunday morning papers for the Washington Post, and back to taking more classes. His true love, irrespective of what he told that Friday night fling, was his VirginiaFootball.com site. Like any good parent, Mike wanted his baby to have the best of everything. He realized that a top-notch, flame-retardant message board was the much needed guest house for his many visitors. Now, if only he knew how to build one. No problem. Find someone who did know. At BITS, Mike spoke to his co-worker, Tim McDaniels, about building a message board.
Mike explained that funds to pay for the building of a message board were scarcer than hen’s teeth. Tim replied, “That’s okay, buy me a couple of beers at Orbit billiards and we’ll do it for you.” Mike thought, “Wow, who knew that my routine for courting chicks would also get me a message board!” On to Orbit billiards on The Corner it was.
Mike contends that he did the politically incorrect thing and beat Tim at billiards each time they played. Tim disputes this version saying, “Mike is a big fat liar, I’m sure I beat him a few times.” Tim acknowledges being satisfied with the free beer though, and began working on the very first message board for VirginiaFootball.com in September of 1997.
Tim hadn’t actually built a message board before this project, but he was a young cocky programmer convinced that he could do anything anyone else could do and do it better. Without any personal history as a message board user, Tim embraced the new project in his spare time, peppering Mike with questions about what Mike wanted. “I really thought it was just a hobby site that a few of Mike’s friends were using,” recalls Tim. “It was originally set up without a database, it was just a flat non-binary format.” (Translation: it was using files on the server instead of a database for the messages). The system wasn’t designed to handle heavy message board traffic. As the volume increased, stored messages were cut off because the volume was slowing down the system.
Tim recalled: “The first day the message board went up I was shocked at the volume of traffic. I started seeing all the messages, the new accounts, the suggestions, the positive feedback, and it became apparent to me that this was not just a hobby site but a real going concern. I realized that people were actually relying on this site.”
This inspired Tim to work on streamlining the efficiency of the message board. It also created a new UVa sports fan. “I didn’t follow UVa sports until I built the message board and started following the board. I got hooked on ACC basketball, and I am a complete UVa homer now,” says Tim. That original message board design is still in use today, though with many improvements behind the scenes. Some consider it to be the best format to this day for message boards. (Inside information: enhancements are under way to make the best even better.)
To prevent the raucous conduct that plagued the AOL boards, Mike had Tim implement a password-only message board. “I have to be honest,” said Tim, “Mike had a vision of how he wanted the message board to be, and I just incorporated his vision into that original message board.” Terms of service on the message board promoted strict accountability and loss of accounts if the rules were broken. Mike was determined to make this a message board that true fans could enjoy.
AOL users were invited to join this new message board. Word quickly spread that there was a UVa football site with a great forum for fans to discuss their passion – The University of Virginia and its sports team. The board took off, and within months, the site was receiving tens of thousands of visitors per month.
Up to that point, the site’s home was at Cornerstone’s server as a “hobby site,” which meant no real costs to Mike. With the onset of the message board, the traffic to the site quickly exceeded what Cornerstone considered a hobby site. BITS allowed Mike to move the website from Cornerstone to the BITS’ server. This was Mike’s first encounter with the costs associated with high-traffic websites and the bandwidth that’s needed to support the demand. It was eye-opening. With his history as primarily a consumer of websites, Mike never really considered the costs of maintaining and running a commercial site. This new understanding enhanced his appreciation of BITS’ offer to serve as the first sponsor of VirginiaFootball.com by using their server. This allowed Mike to continue to operate the site, even with the increased traffic, at a lower cost to him.
Gerry Capone, Director of Football Operations for UVa, was one of the early fans of Mike’s site. Ever the visionary, Gerry saw that Mike’s site was boosting interest in UVa football. Gerry recalls, “The electronic format Mike gave to UVa football was seen by me as a positive that our print media couldn’t provide to all the people that might be interested around the country. So, I put in a good word for Mike with Rich Murray.” Rich Murray, UVa Director of Sports Information, gave Mike a complimentary access to the press box for the Duke football game in 1997. This opened Mike’s eyes to what he could provide his website visitors in terms of access, information, stats, etc.
Constantly striving to improve his website, Mike applied for press credentials with UVa Sports Information. The request was turned down.
Mike knew that to give his website visitors the information they wanted, he needed press credentials. If Gerry Capone’s juice wasn’t enough, Mike thought, maybe the message board readers could help. He didn’t know what he was unleashing with his next move. Mike explained his difficulty in getting press credentials on his new message board. Hungry fans that were lapping up the website like it was their first meal in ages were more than ready to come to Mike’s aid. Posters deluged the Sports Information office with emails and letters encouraging them to grant press credentials to Mike.
Rich Murray remembers the flood, “Yes, I do recall that, because I did get a few emails, enough to get my attention.” Press credentials were not immediately forthcoming, though. As Rich explained, “The large number of emails and letters supporting Mike’s request for press credentials didn’t really address our concerns about giving press credentials to a web site. We weren’t sure at that time if we provided a credential for that site if it meant we would be deluged by other such sites. Not knowing the level of professionalism of that site or others that might seek credentials, we had legitimate concerns.
“One fear is the lack of accountability for these sites. Do you know who is running it? Mike has been willing to work with us over the years and I know TheSabre.com has become a very popular site,” explained Rich. Press credentials were not issued to Mike in 1997 but that did not keep him from working to improve the site. It also didn’t keep him from continuing to seek press credentials, but that story is still to come.
Football wasn’t Mike’s only interest. In late October 1997, Mike launched VirginiaBasketball.com. This was in response to many emails suggesting that he create a basketball page for the web site. Mike registered the name www.virginiabasketball.com and added similar features as those found on VirginiaFootball.com. While the demand wasn’t as great as it was for football (this was near the end of the Coach Jones era at UVa), there was ample interest in a basketball site. For some time after the creation of VBB.com, there was only one message board, and when Mike asked posters if they would like to have a separate message board for VBB.com the majority response was affirmative. Always attentive to his guests’ desires, Mike opened a second message board in late 1997 for basketball.
The message boards quickly became the pulsating life blood of the sites. In our next installment we will cover reactions about the site in the early days from some long time posters; how Matthew Welsh got involved with the site; the continuing saga of the press credentials; how posters rescued the site; Hokies and Hoos unite; and much, much more.
