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Our Thank You to Dawg Post

April 6, 2020
3,601

ATHENS - I have a photo of my daughter eating a sundae that I’ve kept on my phone over the last two years. 

The shot is personal for me and not exclusivly because she was so happy in that picture - just being herself, and having the ability to eat and be a normal four-year old. We can’t go eat sundaes right now - I have to make them here at home. And that’s fine because we are all here making it happen while we can. 

I don’t complain about this because I am here. 

And the truth is thousands of folks aren’t with us any more, and several thousand more seem destined to depart this world here soon, too. This is a tremendously sad trajectory we are on. One day soon we will get back to normal - I just don’t know when. 

There is even more I know I don’t know now than ever before. I just hope what I don’t see coming in the future isn’t so bad, but we shall see. 

We live in a challenging time. Small business, which Dawg Post most certainly is, has been popped hard with the new reality of coronavirus. The health of our countrymen and man kind in general is more important than our outlet and community and the passionate sport we cover.

But Dawg Post certainly matters to folks. It is their home away from home; their escape; their online world for 20 years. Their “I-can’t-wait-to-read-what-this-guy-posts-next” release. It is our dysfunctional home - focus on the “fun”. 

If someone in our industry says that they know we will survive the unpredictable space we live in, and that they know they will be here in the future… they are lying to themselves and you. We don’t know. If there is something people can live without it is what I and we do for a living here at Dawg Post

But I do know what we’ve accomplished over the last two years at Dawg Post, and it is not insignificant. We owe our success to our faithful audience and persistent subscribers. We, very simply, would not be here without our subscribers. Full stop. End of story. 

When my precocious daughter was destroying the sundae in front of her like only a Legge can, she was there with me live as Dawg Post took a leap into a great unknown - like meeting my in-laws for the first time, getting a root canal or other traumas we survive only to tell the tale of later. 

Dawg Post literally restarted at zero two years ago… zero (that’s the number below one). I made the decision to leave the life of a network to take Dawg Post on its own. It was a massive risk, but the smartest business move I have ever made. Frankly, I should have done it sooner. 

Thankfully it didn’t take long to move from surviving to thriving. But that didn’t take away from my nervousness and trepidation sitting in that McDonald’s burning time. But my daughter kept the main thing the main thing, and attacked her sundae... defeating it once and for all. I was nervous. She was competing. 

I’m not a giant fan of online blowhards and their metics… “Look at me!” was the way a good friend of mine who passed away in the last two years put it. He was right about the online jibber jabber of folks. Very few people care, but our audience deserves to know a little about what we’ve done over the last 24 months, so here goes:

We had more users on Dawg Post in 2019 than any time on record in the last 19 years - beating out the decades when we were with two large networks (take that Fletcher Page). November 2019, December 2019 and January 2020 were three of the largest five months ever in our outlet’s 19-year history (Todd Gurley in 2014 still takes the cake). 

Traffic on the site has more than doubled year over year. I don’t talk about subscriber numbers or give specifics on that front because that’s proprietary information I’m not willing to disclose - and all too often subscriber numbers are not apples-to-apples comparisons (we don’t have 60% off or nine-month off sales at Dawg Post... not hating... just saying). 

Think about the fact that Dawg Post has been around 19 years - that’s amazing. 

I was 23-years old when I was naive enough to start this outlet. I knew absolutely nothing, but it helped me that I did know that I knew so little. And our subscribers and readers were patient with me… and they continue to be as we enter our 20th year of covering the Dawgs. 

Again, we can’t accomplish these things without the support of our subscribers. If you are a subscriber, or have been, you should know that you are the reason we are here. I can’t thank you enough for making our hard work matter - and it actaully is hard work at times. Magic doesn’t allow us to travel to Pasadena, Philadelphia, Jacksonville, New Orleans, and beyond for coverage and stories. Payroll isn’t met because a network is supplementing our income.

Either you subscribe, and we stay in business, or you don’t and we don’t. You have, and we can’t thank you enough. We really do appreciate that you choose us as your outlet, and your dysfunctional home. Because there are many good, quality places to rant about Georgia, and we thank you for choosing us. 

Again, we can’t know what tomorrow will bring, but we plan on being here as long as the Bulldogs are slipping on Silver Britches. 

Until then:

Compete.

“Look at me!”

Thank you, and we plan on more sundaes here soon. 

 
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