OT: OK - I'm curious - how old is the BY?

[KnightBridgeAZ]

I was wondering how old the BY is, and, if anyone wants to share, were you there at the beginning.

I don't know exactly when I joined, but I can pinpoint the era, maybe someone can help narrow it down, its been a while!
- T Emory was gathering donations and I want to say had it on an individual server, perhaps
- Fishy was doing biting daily men's BB recaps, and around that time had a child (and subsequently discontinued the recaps, but not without my favorite post of all time, regarding his kids onsie).
- Nan was (I'm pretty sure) the only women's mod; Biff was just starting (so far as I know) to do a lot with graphics and the "BY Magazine"

Anyhow, just got curious.

 

[diggerfoot]

I first came on the BY when it was administered by the Hartford Courant, but that lasted only a year or two before it became privately administered. I will guess 1994, but I am not sure. I was mapper back then. I don't think it existed for too long before I came on.

Because of entertaining posters like Fishy, maddog and rabidhusky, as well as informative posters like x and Jeff (somebody) the BY really took off from the start, often crashing servers and causing Fishy and temery to look for new platforms. Though mainly a men's board in the 90s, it got a lot of posters from other programs back then as well.

 

[Rocket009]

I think the combined age is about 3450

 

[HuskyNan]

From an Aug 2011 post on the men’s board. Not mentioned was a brief term as a Scout.com board. I thought the ‘yard started in 1994, the year my son was born, but I could be wrong. @Fishy - help! Did you write the history below?

Re: Boneyard History 1996 - The Husky Howl. This was the Hartford Courant's message board and it really was the very beginning. Believe it or not, some of the regulars here were around back then. RabidHusky and BadDog were the two biggest personalities on the board at that point. I'd point to them as the first real "Boneyarders". Deepster, x, suzyq, prankster, Deadrody (I think), Funster, uconnhenry - I'm sure I'm forgetting some people. It wasn't nearly as active as it is now, but it was a pretty clever board. At some point, the guy in charge of the board made a change from a threaded board to a folders-view board. A short discussion amongst the regulars followed and it was determined that the new board sucked out loud. It happened when I was on vacation and when I got back, I had around 20 emails saying that the board was on the move. (The Nomadic Horde). We wound up at a College Sports Insider board. We basically just took over one of their boards and used it for whatever we wanted. It crashed. We went to another and another and another until College Sports Insider basically took their ball and went home. We'd show up on one of their boards and just shove the folks there aside and make it a UConn board. I think the last straw was when we invaded their Big East board and crushed it. Through our travels, one user got fed up of the constant motion and he set up a board on a company site. His name was Frank and I believe he still lurks today. The name "Boneyard" was his idea. That was fine through the summer of 1997. One problem - that board was basically a free for all and it became unusable at some point. The traffic almost dried up. Sometime in the fall of 1997, I got an email from Tom saying that he had worked up the same script as the Boneyard used on his free ISP account. For a couple of weeks, basically all that site was was the two of us posting and observing various disasters that seemed to happen hourly. Eventually, we invited the rest of the people to the board and it actually worked well....for a while. At some point, the people at Crocker Communications discovered that 90% of their resources were being used by one of their ISP accounts. They pondered the situation for three seconds and pulled the plug. We lost everything and anything. Fortunately, we had planned to move anyway and we were able to jump to the new site one with the UConnfan.com URL. That was in April, 1998. That began the server jumping era. The site was (and still is) growing at a rate that boggled the mind. We'd pick a server contract and find that we were either crashing or just running over our traffic limits. At some point in there we discovered that Mindspring, above all others, really sucked. They were terrible .. Anywho, after a couple of years of that, it just got too expensive and too much of a general pain in the ass to continue that way. Somewhere along the way, the brilliant idea to start Syracusefan.com was hatched and that went vertical faster than could have been predicted. Twice the success, twice the headaches. Rivals had been pestering us for about a year at that point, so we decided to give it a try. (During the time Rivals' was pitching to us, we probably could have seen the handwriting on the wall in terms of how casually they handled their money - they offered to fly us to Seattle to look, yes look, at their servers.) That lasted a year and despite peppy emails touting the financial well-being of Rivals, they went belly up. Some of the smarter cookies from Alliance Sports bought up the remains and has produced what we're sure is a much sturdier ship. (Funny story about Rivals - they had a board for publishers to communicate and to share ideas with the muckity-mucks at Rivals. Tom and I were both banned repeatedly. To sum up, we were right and they are out of business :-p) So, in May of last year, we went back to the old way of doing things. Tom lost 1/2 his body weight, but things were going well. Unfortunately, when you're giving something away for free, the better you do, the worse you do. So, we're back here again. I'm willing to bet this will be home for quite a while - we have some plans for the place.

 

[Iowafan]

HuskyNan...
Thanks for sharing the history of the Uconn Board. I joined the board when Kiah Stokes from Iowa became a member of the Husky Nation. I loved watching her father play at Iowa. I love reading the posts from such dedicated fans with so much knowledge. I look forward to being able to enjoy the information on the board for many more years. Thanks for your leadership in making this work.
Richard Thompson

 

[SoFla Steve]

I suspected there was more than a casual connection to Syracusefan.com. I go over there occasionally to lurk, but on April Fools Day 2019, something odd happened . . . and it stayed that way for hours!! Thought it was a joke -- The Boneyard with a 'Cuse masthead and colors.

 

[HuskyNan]

HuskyNan...
Thanks for sharing the history of the Uconn Board. I joined the board when Kiah Stokes from Iowa became a member of the Husky Nation. I loved watching her father play at Iowa. I love reading the posts from such dedicated fans with so much knowledge. I look forward to being able to enjoy the information on the board for many more years. Thanks for your leadership in making this work.
Richard Thompson

Welcome, Richard. It’s always great to have new posters add their voices.

 

[HuskyNan]

I suspected there was more than a casual connection to Syracusefan.com. I go over there occasionally to lurk, but on April Fools Day 2019, something odd happened . . . and it stayed that way for hours!! Thought it was a joke -- The Boneyard with a 'Cuse masthead and colors.
View attachment 53861

Yes, Syracusefan.com is the Boneyard’s evil step-brother

 

[CL82]

Wow so we are coming up on 25 years? That is amazing when you think about all the trials and tribulations and potential pitfalls that could’ve killed it. You have to give a lot of credit to Tom, Fishy, Nan and the mods for keeping it together... and maybe a little to the rest of us for our obsessive interest in UConn sports.

 

[Steelerone]

HuskyNan, thank you for your effort. Especially now. The Boneyard has become a real lifesaver to many people who have grown a little weary of "Gunsmoke" and other retreads. Being able to come in here and share infor about the ladies who have given us so much happiness over these past years has been so enjoyable. But beyoned that, to be able to communicate and share things like movies, music, food recopies and other ideas with people like Carnac, Oldude, Kaizen, yourself and others has made this self-quarantine more palatable.

 

[SockCymbal]

Long time lurker here. I remember going to a site in the 90's called "Husky Hardcores" for great posts. The first time my wife saw the site in the history I had some explaining to do.

 

[MTHusky]

Wow, I never realized that I've been around from almost the start. Believe I first heard about it off another forum run by Brett? Been mostly a lurker for all those years as my total # of posts made shows, Thanks Tom, Fishy Nan and more for doing this.

 

[MilfordHusky]

I think the combined age is about 3450

A gross underestimate! That covers just a few of us.

 

[UcMiami]

I was living outside of the CPTV coverage area for most of the nineties and the first half of the aughts so finding news sources about the women was a constant. I stumbled on various iterations of the boneyard and lived as a lurker when I did find the site. Can't remember when I first posted but believe it was during the Rival's era. Have been posting ever since.

And because of the moderators keeping this place civil, it is the only board of any kind that I consistently participate in. And of course the other members have lots of good info to contribute - informative, lively, and civil, what a unique corner of this mad mad world.

The fact that it had so many visitors from other teams that s separate sub-board needed to be created to accommodate them is telling. I believe that is unique as well!

 

[HuskyNan]

Wow, I never realized that I've been around from almost the start. Believe I first heard about it off another forum run by Brett? Been mostly a lurker for all those years as my total # of posts made shows, Thanks Tom, Fishy Nan and more for doing this.

Brett ran the UConn mail lists. She had to start a women’s team list because some women’s team fans became obnoxious after the 1995 championship.

The Boneyard women’s board split off from the men’s about 2000 and in 2001, @Biff @JS and I became mods.

 

[HuskyNan]

See the long post above

i think Syracusefan came about because of @cto44 . For anyone that hasn’t had the pleasue of meeting cto, she’s an awesome person. Even if she does like the color orange

 

[Carnac]

Thank goodness for the Boneyard. It has become part of my DAILY life. It allows me to closely follow my favorite WCBB team, and all things WCBB. Thanks to all involved with it's evolution and maintenance. Thanks to all of the posters whose knowledge and input make this board the best and the most informative and friendly college fan/booster board on the web. You guys are the best!!!

 

[pacific 44]

The first time my wife saw that i was spending a considerable amount of time on a site called the boneyard she immediately jumped on here and typed in "So what are you wearin' Jake from State Farm?"

 

[boontonbomber]

what ever happened to the parson from Penn St.? can't remember he's BY name, but he was a prolific poster when I first joined.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

Brett ran the UConn mail lists. She had to start a women’s team list because some women’s team fans became obnoxious after the 1995 championship.

The Boneyard women’s board split off from the men’s about 2000 and in 2001, @Biff @JS and I became mods.

Thinking that would be about when I discovered the BY (2000 ish). Women were definitely separate from men, but as I mentioned above, my wife (more-so than me) was reading Fishy's daily men's briefings. Somewhere, I don't know where, I actually have a hard copy of the "Onesie" post I mentioned, but I don't know that it would have a year on it. That was fairly early on after I came aboard.

And yes, Nan rocks. I've on rare occasions exchanged brief conversations with many of the folks here, and have always found all polite and they don't seem to hold being a Rutgers fan against me. Just before he passed I had exchanged messages about something with HuskyBill and I'm so glad I got to say something nice to him. I miss Icebear, who was (is, I assume) a Pastor in my denomination and also WireChief, who just vanished away. One of the sad parts of message boards.

 

[Carnac]

The first time my wife saw that i was spending a considerable amount of time on a site called the boneyard she immediately jumped on here and typed in "So what are you wearin' Jake from State Farm?"

What time was it, 3am?

 

[stamfordhusky]

I miss Icebear, who was (is, I assume) a Pastor in my denomination

I see that IceBear last posted in early 2018 and his posts had become less frequent for a while before that. No idea why he stopped. According to his LinkedIn, he retired as pastor in Mifflinville a few years ago and now works as a spiritual counselor for UPMC.

 

[KnightBridgeAZ]

I see that IceBear last posted in early 2018 and his posts had become less frequent for a while before that. No idea why he stopped. According to his LinkedIn, he retired as pastor in Mifflinville a few years ago and now works as a spiritual counselor for UPMC.

Yeah, I always wanted to go to Mifflinville (when we lived in NJ) to hear him preach. His theological remarks were very close to other Pastors I knew in person.

 

[ClifSpliffy]

'Tom and I were both banned repeatedly.'