Behind the Stripes before Football Zebras

[hank]

I have been a member of this board for twenty years. My initial sign-up is listed as December 30, 2005. That is because Mark and his site-administration recognized that each account must have a registered sign-in account aligned to a username. They apparently realized that many “free” users were using this website as a platform to complain and toss mud at NFL officials and their work.

During those days FredFan7 was a regular yahoo like me; a high school official who posted five-times more than anyone else, always sharing about being a dad of young kids who escaped to this board to share his love for the on field work of Ron Winter, amongst other sharing.

This site was blessed with artbiter and intheknow, two highly knowledgeable accounts that shared insightful and truthful information about the work, action, and execution of NFL officials. NFL officials would openly post on this site. I will not share the names of those officials who shared their personal names in favor to these men and their loyalty to this site, and the league.

In 2013, I penned the rubric on how we grade officials. FredFan7 posted my work and the rubric remains; it needs a desperate upgrade. I shared this with the board as the grades shared before my work had no measurable language, grades were completely rooted in bias. Unfortunately, the game has evolved, rules have changed, and this board has remained stagnant in its breath.

This is because Football Zebra was planted. His arrival to this site was accompanied by the promotion of multi-poster, FredFan7, who became a secretary-administrator. Since, many quality accounts abandoned this website, or were silenced; posting, sadly prominently belonged to the two as this site that shared quality, historical information on referees determined to no longer invite sharing.

Since the plant, accounts are not allowed to freely challenge or question game calls. This site has become an obedient site. It has become contrary to the role of an arbiter; it has become the role of a potentate.

[bulldog6878]

Wow I had no idea about this information.

[goodgrr]

"Since the plant, accounts are not allowed to freely challenge or question game calls"

Who are the plant accounts that you mention?

[zebrablog]

Well, this certainly is a take.

The chain of events does not align with your narrative, hank . I joined the forum Nov. 24, 2010, midway through my 2nd season of having the website running. I lurked here previously, initially because I was confused that you didn't have to be an official to sign up for the board. In the summer of 2012, I approached Mark to join the website. Shortly after that, he sent me a PM asking if I was okay with posting a link to another site and that he didn't want to undercut me. My response to him was:

No objection at all. I could not possibly exist in a vacuum, and your link is a resource for everyone who shares our interest. You should be able to post without reservation, now and in the future.

I always feel that if I'm being undercut, then I am not doing my job to offer a product that people want.

Even this week, someone posted a link to Adam Schefter news that he ripped off from Football Zebras without attribution. I left that alone.

Remember in 2013, there was a lot of disruption after the Super Bowl assignment, and social media policies started to take a more solid form; in its day, this once was "social media." A lot of people with inside knowledge decided to go into lurk mode or delete their accounts entirely. But that was because of NFL policy more than anything, and in a roundabout way, some have used me as the conduit to provide some of that information.

But, yes, I am the "plant" that somehow "killed" the discussion on this board. If that's truly what you want to believe, but that doesn't make that true.

I have resisted moderating except for isolated inflammatory posts (like one every 2 years). I have been the moderator to give a poster the benefit of the doubt more often than not when we have a reported post. In one case that pushed the boundaries of the (very loose) forum rules, I encouraged the moderation staff to not ban and give the poster another chance ... FOUR TIMES. That said, there is very little to moderate here.

If you are suggesting that I altered the culture of this board that no one could challenge any official, then you are again mistaken. I will challenge someone who criticizes an official if I see that their argument is weak. That's not shutting down debate, but encouraging it. If you thought so-and-so did poorly, don't just say "welp, he's staying home for the playoffs," but explain your rationale.

As for the contribution, yes, I believe that has slowed significantly, but I cannot say there's anything that shows why this has happened. Three of the original moderators really stepped back, and two have rejoined in various ways. (We miss you, Ryan.) I imagine others have stepped away for various reasons. I have looked for ways to spur engagement on this board, because I do feel it's become Mark and myself driving the conversation, which is not what we intended it to be. I started to include some things in an exclusive content area for members with a certain post count to give something back to this community that is not (or is not yet published) on Football Zebras.

But, hey, if that's the consensus that Football Zebras is the problem, I will gladly step off here and let the ecosystem repair itself to its former self. This board deserves to maintain its legacy and if disengaging my account and website is the solution, so be it.

I really don't have the time to maintain a non-revenue-generating potentate.

[mike]

I have been a registered user of this site since 2005. Didn't realize it was that long, but I just checked in my profile. Criticism of calls is absolutely still allowed on this site and FredFan7 has agreed with them. I thought running into the kicker should have been called on Michigan and FredFan7 agreed and my post was not edited or removed in any way. I remember a lot of discussion here when Bill Leavy and crew had a horrendous divisional round match of Giants @ Packers leading up to Super Bowl XLVI. The admins did not shy away from that game. I believe it was FredFan7 again who called it one of the worst games officiatingwise that he could recall.

[russ]

Ben, I definitely do not share the same views as the OP and I would guess a majority of the people on the site agree. I have always said that criticism of Officials should be part of this site but it should always be logical and backed up rather than just general statements that "This Referee is having a bad game" or "This Referee stinks". It should be constructive which I think this site has done a very good job of getting rid of non constructive criticism.

I have been registered on this site since December, 2008. It is definitely true that the engagement is down across the board on this site. And that is true from me as well. While I like to provide a lot of information especially on non non NFL Sports like NCAAF. NCAAB and NBA where I have a lot of historical data. But as far as the weekly NFL discussions I am not as much a part of those threads as I used to be. I am really not sure why that is the case? I am guessing on Sundays it is because I am now a regular watcher of RedZone and never focus on one game or specific missed calls. But I would like to return to the weekly discussions more as that is where I started on this site and I have a lot of fun doing so. Just as I have a lot of fun providing information for non NFL Sports.

I post all this to say that my lack of engagement has nothing to do with Ben or Mark and more to do with my own viewing habits. I don't want to minimize how people feel and I know Hank has been part of this site since before I was here and used to be a regular poster. But I think to blame one person for the lack of engagement is not fair.

[zebrablog]

I have not been able to put my finger on why there is a decline in conversation, because I very much want the engagement to be community-wide. There are 2 things that I think contribute in small ways.

First, there used to be a flurry of activity early in the week to guess the white hat assignments. Around 2013-14, we started to receive that information directly, so it really ended that type of posting. Now that the officiating office has clamped down, there is more effort to cobble the information together, but the NFL does release that information on Tuesdays, so there aren't those regular midweek posts that might spur other conversation.

The second is how we engage online. It is not 2010 anymore, which seems such a short time ago, but it's a generation (or two!) in internet time. I was still using a BlackBerry then! People were still chained to laptops and desktops. Proboards does not offer a very useful app to engage. The way we consume information has changed, but this format is a relic. I contribute to other forums of my disparate interests, walked away from one, but the one I stuck with was a niche topic like this one.

I have attempted to create BTFS-centric topic starters, like this one: refereestats.proboards.com/thread/8520/quiz-officiating-numbers-playoffs
That is admittedly hard to do, because any content would usually appear on the website as well.

The floor is open for any and all suggestions!

Ben

[ryguy80]

Hello, this is Ryan that Ben had referenced in a previous post.

I guess you could say I am one of the OG’s (as the kids would say) here. This forum was founded around the turn of the century by four of us - Mark E., Adam, Michael, and myself. Of course, this was before social media was a thing. It would be a few years before Facebook and Twitter existed. I think Myspace was just getting off the ground. We really had a good thing going here in the pre-social media world. Great interactions and information being shared. As years passed, I was ready to pass the torch onto someone else and to generate some new energy for the forum. It was mostly myself running things at the time - Mark E. and Adam would occasionally chime in and Michael had stepped away pretty early on. FredFsn (Mark S.) was a frequent contributor and people seemed to like him, so I made him an admin. Not long after that, I was asked if the “keys” to the site could be handed over (I think it came from Adam) to allow Ben to integrate Football Zebras into this forum and give a consistent look between the FZ website and this forum. I haven’t really stayed in contact with anyone past or present that are in charge here after the transition.

I return occasionally to lurk at weekly assignments for the hometown team, but my interest in the NFL has sort of waned over the years with the various rule changes (I understand player safety, but at the same time it makes for a less interesting product, IMO), along with officials I grew up watching retiring. I’ll watch the local teams, but that’s about it. Playoff time is the best of the year to see who gets the big assignments comparing against my notes (mainly which officials created the least amount of noise within the media all season).

Yes, I have noticed a decline in forum activity over time, but I think the social media world is largely responsible for that. It’s just how the world has evolved over time. I participate in other boards with my various hobbies and it’s pretty much the same situation across the board (no pun intended). Social media gives you that near real-time reaction to what is happening in the world. Maybe I am a bit old school, but I miss the long form posts that a message board provides with the insight and information. The problem with social media is that it is largely unregulated and the danger of someone creating an account and bash and troll officiating to death and there is not much consequence. That also plays a big role in officials not participating on social media, including this board. Who wants to deal with that negativity/toxicity? Officials are better off not getting involved with it. I know Terry McAulay pulled the plug on his NBC rules Twitter account, but I believe his personality partially played a role in the account’s demise. He’s a very confident individual that some might say borders on arrogance.

The biggest challenge for the forum staff is keeping this place relevant and evolving with the times. Bringing in Twitter links to illustrate with video helps with that evolution, but at the same time you don’t want the forum to be strictly links to Twitter. You could just look at the FZ Twitter account for that. I wish for continued success here and wish the staff the best.