Happy birthday to us.
On January 12, 2009, I officially launched Bucky's 5th Quarter on the Blogger network. About a month later, we joined SBNation and the rest is history.
It's hard to believe it's been three years and I can't believe how much we have accomplished in that time.
The site started as a one man operation. Today, we have four editors and eight total contributors bringing you the latest Badger news every day.
In an age where journalism is evolving faster than anyone can realize, I believe Bucky's 5th Quarter represents that change more than any other Badgers news source. We walk the fine line between straight reporting and blogging, but I believe that is to our credit and not our fault. If you haven't noticed, newspapers are starting to revolutionize their content to mimic the blogosphere and not the other way around. We were ahead of the game in game analysis, daily link compilations and, maybe most importantly, Twitter.
But I have never considered Bucky's 5th Quarter to be a straight fan blog like many of the other great sites on the SBNation network. While I went to Wisconsin and started this site about eight months after I graduated, I came straight from UW's Journalism School and created B5Q with the goal of keeping my writing skills fresh while I got started in the radio and TV business at WGN Radio and the Big Ten Network. Because of that, the "fanatic" analysis has mostly been left to you -- our readers -- in the comments, FanShots and FanPosts sections.
That said, all of our contributors are Badgers at heart and it's only natural for that emotion to show itself at times. Thus, I believe Bucky's 5th Quarter has evolved into somewhat of a "sports radio meets the blogsphere" medium where discussion and strong opinions are welcome at all times. We've combined this with hard news reporting at games, giving the Badger fan a unique place unlike any other (this includes most of the SBNation network which is much more fan driven).
Of course to do that, we need access, and we greatly appreciate that the Badgers have given us that access. Many universities and professional sports teams have been reluctant to distribute credentials to web sites like ours (in fact, we might have the most access across the entire SBNation network) and we're lucky that Wisconsin has embraced this unique connection to their fan base.
Honestly, I never expected Bucky's 5th Quarter to become what it has. We've covered two Rose Bowls, three Big Ten Tournaments, two full football seasons and three full years of Wisconsin basketball (all while our contributors have been attending school or maintaining full-time employment elsewhere). This year, we also introduced our hockey coverage, which has been a great success. And, of course, we've published an in-depth 128-page football magazine each of the last two seasons.
But we are not content. We plan on continuing to make the site better and we'd love to hear from you on how we should do that (feel free to leave your suggestions below).
Finally, the last thing I want to emphasize is that our content will always be free to you. We have never charged you a subscription fee to access our content and we never will. If you haven't noticed, even the newspapers are starting to charge you to read their online stories. Not us.
So, on behalf of Phil, Chuck, John, Jake, Adam, Louis and Sam, I'd like to thank you for being here with us over the last three years.
We hope you'll stick around for at least three more.