9+ years of FOF forums

[Hurst2112]

I got my first 'real' computer in June of 99. Found the original Sideline a few weeks after that. At least, I think it was a few weeks after. Maybe closer to July when I purchased my first copy of Front Office Football.

Anyway, I realized that I have been a member for over 9 years. Dang we're old.

Who else has been around since then? I know there were a few people but I can't remember. This would have been pre FOF2, pre Styxx and Dave Dial (lol). I think Tony was the only mod at the time.

[Huckleberry]

I certainly haven't been around that long, but I do know the first time I came here and posted, I then lost my registration info. I had to re-register the next time I came (at least a year of separation, maybe more). Seeing as how I try to use the same username everywhere I go, I've always wondered if there was a user database loss at some point. Anyone know?

[molson]

I wish there was some kind of FOFC/Sideline timeline where I could review the history, a lot of it's a blur.

I was definitely around in '99, but didn't post, and don't remember a lot of the "big stuff" that happened back then.

My first post was at the release date for the last FOF game that was only available by physical CD (the third FOFC, I think). Jim lived just across the NH border from me and I got the game one day before anyone else on the board, so I felt compelled to post some early impressions (and like a dope, I didn't get the copy protection right, and told everyone that the game was all screwed up).

[Hurst2112]

Originally Posted by Huckleberry

I certainly haven't been around that long, but I do know the first time I came here and posted, I then lost my registration info. I had to re-register the next time I came (at least a year of separation, maybe more). Seeing as how I try to use the same username everywhere I go, I've always wondered if there was a user database loss at some point. Anyone know?

with all the forum switches, domain moves, etc, I think I have registered 2 or 3 times. There was a big move in 2000. Also, I thought there was another in 2002 or 2003 were the older dudes kept their 2000 creation date.

[Huckleberry]

Originally Posted by Hurst2112

with all the forum switches, domain moves, etc, I think I have registered 2 or 3 times. There was a big move in 2000. Also, I thought there was another in 2002 or 2003 were the older dudes kept their 2000 creation date.

That 2000 move may have been what happened. I just looked after my last post and saw my join date is December 2001. You're right, time flies. I didn't think it was that long ago when I was thinking 1999 was way before I joined.

[Hurst2112]

Originally Posted by molson

I wish there was some kind of FOFC/Sideline timeline where I could review the history, a lot of it's a blur.

I was definitely around in '99, but didn't post, and don't remember a lot of the "big stuff" that happened back then.

My first post was at the release date for the last FOF game that was only available by physical CD (the third FOFC, I think). Jim lived just across the NH border from me and I got the game one day before anyone else on the board, so I felt compelled to post some early impressions (and like a dope, I didn't get the copy protection right, and told everyone that the game was all screwed up).

I remember that a lot of the talk was about FPS and the Football Pro 99 debacle. I think Jim released his first CD in 98 so by the time I got the game, it had been out for almost a year maybe? That was the jewel case version. I wanted the game so bad back then that I bid on 2 copies and won both of them.

[sabotai]

Originally Posted by Hurst2112

Anyway, I realized that I have been a member for over 9 years. Dang we're old.

Aye.

Who else has been around since then? I know there were a few people but I can't remember

I was around in '99, but I don't think I posted much, if at all. I didn't really become a regular until after FOF2 came out.

[Antmeister]

I was actually around in 2000 as a lurker and had only a few posts over on the OG board.

[Zelig]

Has it been that long, man, this has been a ride longer than I would have thought I would be hanging around on.

[molson]

I also remember that I bought FOF 1 on ebay, found the message board (through the Baseball Mogul board, like a lot of people did), and FOF 2 had just been released or was about to be released.

I THINK FOF 2 had an electronic download option, which didn't work out so well, and then FOF 3 (whatever it was called) was CD-only. I could be wrong.

[Hurst2112]

I think with a wiki history of the board, there should be a list of vaporware games that we've talked about. Man, that would a sweet read.

I'm still waiting for Black Ice Hockey to be released. hah

[Karlifornia]

Yeah, I remember stumbling across FOF and the Sideline when I was like 14 or 15....I had never been a part of an online community before...so I was a bit intimidated at first, and stuck with lurking for a bit.

[Zelig]

I remember my first day on the sideline, Hell Atlantic and I got into it about the need to have historical rosters.

[molson]

I remember checking out the sideline on web.archive or something once, not sure if you can still do that. It was bizzare - all the threads were about FOF, with maybe 5% "off-topic" threads, which were typically about other sports. The evolution into a completely "off-topic" board has been pretty interesting.

I wonder - what exactly did we lose and when? How far back does the archive here go? Is everything behind that lost forever?

[Hurst2112]

Originally Posted by molson

I also remember that I bought FOF 1 on ebay, found the message board (through the Baseball Mogul board, like a lot of people did), and FOF 2 had just been released or was about to be released.

I THINK FOF 2 had an electronic download option, which didn't work out so well, and then FOF 3 (whatever it was called) was CD-only. I could be wrong.

It did. What a pioneering aspect (digital downloading a game).

That's when Digital River was handling the game. There were a couple saints working at that company(EDIT: Not at that company. I think they worked for the other company that took over the licensing after Digital River disolved???). Some dude with the last name Daugherty and a Mary? They supplied many extra elicense gifts for us.

[molson]

Originally Posted by Hurst2112

It did. What a pioneering aspect (digital downloading a game).

That's when Digital River was handling the game. There were a couple saints working at that company. Some dude with the last name Daugherty and a Mary? They supplied many extra elicense gifts for us.

I remember how pissed off people were when FOF went all-download.

[Hurst2112]

Originally Posted by molson

I remember how pissed off people were when FOF went all-download.

well heck yeah. Downloading a game at 46kbps sucked!

[molson]

So when's the 10-year anniversary? Where's the party? I'll bring the chips.

[Hurst2112]

Originally Posted by molson

So when's the 10-year anniversary? Where's the party? I'll bring the chips.

Jim's house. That's what I heard.

[path12]

I had the original FOF and believe I lurked on the board around that time, then sort of forgot about the board for a couple years before lurking awhile more and finally registering.

[Passacaglia]

I remember ordering FOF2, I mean, EA Sports Front Office Football, at the end of the fall semester, December 1999. It was just before finals, and I thought I'd order it before, and hope it got there shortly after I was done with finals. I was surprised as hell that I was going to get the game right away, and I somehow managed to pass anyway (I think I won the Front Office Bowl in my 3rd season as the Lions on the easiest level, which was enough to satiate me for a while).

I found Front Office Football Central sometime later, probably like January 2000. I accidentally spelled my screen name wrong -- Pasacaglia.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Zelig

I remember my first day on the sideline, Hell Atlantic and I got into it about the need to have historical rosters.

what did the arguement consist of?


i just want to be able to read old Sideline threads. i've been in this community since the beginning (not like the 1st day it started, but this was back when Quiksand had < 1,000 posts and before the days of the uberposter JeeberD, so that should tell you something).

[Racer]

I think I discovered The Sideline sometime in 2000 when I was 15 or 16 years old.

[JeeberD]

I found The Sideline during the FOF2 era, but I don't really remember a date. I had found FOF2 doing a search for "football simulation" or something like that, dowloaded it overnight (it took HOURS for it to download), and then when I went to play realized I had no idea what I was doing. So I did a search (probably using Alta Vista at that time) for something like "Front Office Football strategy", and up came The Sideline. I didn't post a ton, but lurked a lot. I'm pretty sure I registered around the same time that MIJB first showed up, cause I remember having had a n00b kinship with him...

[TCY Junkie]

I heard about Dean Houston and then I found this site.

[DanGarion]

Originally Posted by Hurst2112

I think with a wiki history of the board, there should be a list of vaporware games that we've talked about. Man, that would a sweet read.

I'm still waiting for Black Ice Hockey to be released. hah

Did somebody say Wiki?

(points to signature).

[Racer]

Originally Posted by DanGarion

Did somebody say Wiki?

(points to signature).

I never realized where "dola" came from before.

[Bad-example]

Originally Posted by Zelig

I remember my first day on the sideline, Hell Atlantic and I got into it about the need to have historical rosters.

I remember posting in a similar (or the same) thread back then and being surprised that HA agreed with me.

I bought the first FOF game after reading a magazine review and found the Sideline soon after. Lurked, mostly. Didn't realize that much time had passed.

[Logan]

Originally Posted by Hurst2112

I'm still waiting for Black Ice Hockey to be released. hah

Oh man. That would've been the greatest game ever.

[Cuckoo]

Originally Posted by sabotai

I was around in '99, but I don't think I posted much, if at all. I didn't really become a regular until after FOF2 came out.

Me as well. I recall lurking a bit when I first read about FOF1 (had been searching for things after playing Football Pro 98, I believe). I bought FOF2 and began posting more after that.

[Dutch]

I was involved right after FOF1's patch and draft file came around...I was 27 years old....now I'm 37. Good grief!

[GreenMonster]

Got in around 4 so I am a noob.

[Zelig]

Originally Posted by Anthony

what did the arguement consist of?

I wanted the ability to have historic rosters, because it was a long term fantasy, and you were telling me, correctly, that there were 1000 things that needed to come first. This was sometime in early 98 I think.

I also remember the first couple of dynasty's that were created really was cool to follow. I remember Darkiller had his 49er one up pretty early, and someone, I can't remember, had one for the Saints that was really fun to follow as well.

[Ben E Lou]

I don't recall exactly when I showed up at The Sideline, but it was in the early days. I have a printout of the original Bear Bryant Challenge from there (started 2/10/2000). It covers 102 printed pages, several hundred hundred posts, 40 seasons of FOF2, and runs from 2/10 to 3/25. Based on what's in that printout, I have several comments

• Dynasties had been going for quite some time at that point.
• People already knew my first name, so it had become a "community" even by then. (I used "SkyDog" as my user name when I signed up orginally for anonymity, but obviously I was past that by then.)
• Cohesion was in the game back then. (I wouldn't have guessed that.)
• The brief time that we used Chubby's alternate board was in mid-March of 2000. (I referenced it in the thread.)
• Future ratings changed more than I remembered back then. I had a QB go from 38/100 to 69/94 to 96/100 to 93/93.
• Other users who posted in that thread: OldSchool, OldGiants, Daedalus, tdmaster, Thor, Z Drive, MG, Darkiller, f_monster

For those who asked about history/dates, here's a bit of that. October 2000 is when we moved from The Sideline to FOFC. Blackadar handed the board over to me in late Spring of 2002. (Don't know the exact date.) The upgrade from ubb to vbulletin was in January 2003. Oct-Nov 2004 saw the month-long outage of Gamespy's hosted sites. (The board came back up on election night.) And of course the move to OS was in early June of 2008.

[Ben E Lou]

Oh, and for those looking for a web archive, the printout has the following link on it, if this is helpful:

http://216.15.145.145/sideline/board...ML/001957.html

[Antmeister]

Wow...now that I think more about it, there has been a lot going on from when I first joined that are board related or personal...

1. We moved 6 times since 2000.
2. The first part of that year, we were on a 56k modem.
3. I had two kids during that period.
4. I remember being frustrated with FOF when it was with EA because the scroll bars were freaking tiny and there were some other interface issues that I can't seem to remember.
5. Saw the rise and fall of .400 Studios
6. The original creators of Championship Manager broke off and started Football Manager which took years off my life that I had to stop playing that game altogether.
7. 18 parodies were written.
8. The Joe Stallings/druez debacle.
9. Noop's fake girlfriend.
10. Maximum Football was first reported on this board in 2003, 2 years before the infamous thread.
11. Saw the rise of Grey Dog Software and then eventually Wolverine Studios.
12. Remember when Franklinnoble started the Front Office Football alternative message board and when that was not getting enough traffic, he began Sportsdigs and when that was not getting enough traffic, the Sportsdigs domain name pointed to some personal religious site.
13. A lot of great jbmagic moments (one was made into a parody and Thunderingherd made a version on the side of jbmagic). "Why you hate me?" "Ok bye" "Ping: SkyDog" "asswhite" and many more used sayings.

And I know there is a lot more I am forgetting.

[Mike1409]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

I don't recall exactly when I showed up at The Sideline, but it was in the early days. I have a printout of the original Bear Bryant Challenge from there (started 2/10/2000). It covers 102 printed pages, several hundred hundred posts, 40 seasons of FOF2, and runs from 2/10 to 3/25. Based on what's in that printout, I have several comments

One of the greatest dynasties ever. I remember checking this every day for updates back then. I even tried to do my own but my creative writing skills sucked so bad I stopped.

I probably could be a reporter for OS if I kept up with it!!!

[cartman]

Yep, I came around starting about the '99 timeframe as well. I was one of the big supporters of FPS '99, even hosting the official "unofficial" patches on my website for a long time. Someone over at the Sierra forums posted about FOF and the community now known as FOFC, and I checked it out. Unfortunately for me, it was literally a couple of days after Jim had sold out of the first run of FOF1. I ended up tracking down a copy on eBay, and was hooked.

I lurked for a long time, until I recognized Z²+, who was literally a grade school student when we were in a FPS Baseball league together in '96/'97. Since my time at FOFC, to steal off of Antmeister, I've:

1. Started a dot com dream job
2. Experienced the dot com crash
3. Lost my dot com dream job
4. Broke off an engagement
5. Moved to Europe
6. Bought my first house
7. Moved back from Europe
8. Lost all four of my grandparents
9. Met, in person, a lot of great people from this board
10. Became an uncle
11. But, believe it or not, I have had the same two cars over the entire span of time.

[zums]

I believe I was 15-16 when the Sideline was around. I was an owner of the original FOF as I asked for it for my birthday and had my mom call and order so I'm sure she personally talked to either Jim or his wife.

I really have no recollection of how I found the Sideline and was never a poster (and obviously am still not much of one). I was pretty young and still new at the internet but I remember being blown away by the concept of a message board and have been here ever since. I think I have read close to any thread that has been posted on any of the boards, temporary included.

I remember ez and Amoroq among the other names that SkyDog posted from his dynasty thread. And I remember there was a huge deal about putting together a strategy guide (not sure if that was FOF or FOF2) as well as the infamous "Grassy Knoll" thread.....

How time flies, I'm now 25 and living on my own w/ a career, family, etc... and have successfully gotten my younger brother hooked on FOF at a young age that has continued (he is now 18). Good Stuff.

[sabotai]

My turn!

Since I joined FOFC, I've:

1. Graduated from college

...

uhh...

[sabotai]

This is the earliest page on the archives I can find (searching for ga-sports). It's from Nov 30, 1999

http://web.archive.org/web/199911301...=10&LastLogin=

I tried several threads, but it doesn't look like they got saved.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by sabotai

This is the earliest page on the archives I can find (searching for ga-sports). It's from Nov 30, 1999

http://web.archive.org/web/199911301...=10&LastLogin=

I tried several threads, but it doesn't look like they got saved.

I don't think links in archive.org ever work. They usually serve you a page, then if you click on anything they send you to a pay-per-click landing page.

[Hurst2112]

Originally Posted by sabotai

This is the earliest page on the archives I can find (searching for ga-sports). It's from Nov 30, 1999

http://web.archive.org/web/199911301...=10&LastLogin=

I tried several threads, but it doesn't look like they got saved.

dude! that 'post new topic button' is a blast from the past! hah

[Ben E Lou]

Monkeying around, I found an older one....



http://web.archive.org/web/200006140...tartpoint=2000

[Hurst2112]

Originally Posted by Ben E Lou

Monkeying around, I found an older one....



http://web.archive.org/web/200006140...tartpoint=2000

nice work!

that sort of helps in my timetable search. Now I remember the game came out in august. So, i think June would have been my first time here.

Dan-EAsports was cool but I do remember him turning to the darkside after the whole 'piracy' accusations...when fof2000 came out (or 2k1. can't remember).

[Ryan S]

Originally Posted by Hurst2112

Dan-EAsports was cool but I do remember him turning to the darkside after the whole 'piracy' accusations...when fof2000 came out (or 2k1. can't remember).

You're all cut off - Front Office Football Central

[sabotai]

Hurst sighting!

http://web.archive.org/web/199911301...=10&LastLogin=

[PineTar]

I've been an "active" part of the community since the GA days.

[RendeR]

I came here in 2001 after finding FOF2001 on EA sports, I kinda miss that version, its what I came to know as FOF and then we reverted back to the drab, bad graphics style that we have today.

Love the game, just wish it was prettier.

[cartman]

Originally Posted by sabotai

Hurst sighting!

http://web.archive.org/web/199911301...=10&LastLogin=

I was so pissed off when that hack broke Ricky Williams' NCAA record...