Ten years ago this week, Kennesaw State played its first-ever football game. You might’ve missed the anniversary, as it was largely ignored by a program that’s operating as an expansion team all over again. Everything’s brand new for the Jerry Mack era — even the helmet acronym.
I remember watching that opener after spending a long day working the mines of the North American Soccer League. I drank somewhere between 2 and 12 Rolling Rocks while watching the game on my laptop, using a stream that made First Row Sports look like IMAX. What a surreal night all around, one that felt like a validation.
I had already started thinking about an Owls blog long before the Owls destroyed ETSU that night. My brain was chemically altered by spending most of my childhood on Rivals and other college football message boards. That graduated to places like Run of Play, Grantland, and EDSBS during college. I always wished somebody would write about the Owls in that way, so I tried things like live-blogging the first signing day at the Sentinel and talking to Brian Bohannon about Migos.
As a journalism student, I wasn’t very good at writing on deadline, especially about high school sports. My brain doesn’t work well in those situations, so I could never be a real sportswriter. You shouldn’t try to emulate Wright Thompson while describing a thrilling 12-6 victory for Deerstand County Christian School. Families just want to see their children’s names in the paper. That never quite clicked for me while typing game stories in McDonald’s parking lots across metro Atlanta.
Newspaper life wasn’t for me, even on a freelance basis. The idea for a KSU site stuck in my brain, though. This particular domain belonged to me for probably 4 years before I ever posted anything, and there were a couple predecessors before that. The timing never felt right. My first post finally went up in 2023, inspired by the manufactured chaos of the final FCS season.
Maybe I am a sicko, I wrote at the time. That part held up better than anything, as it took a 1-4 start during a meaningless season to get me in motion. My only goal was to write about the Owls in the same way that I’ve always wanted to read about them. That might be the main success on here, to a fault.
It feels like the website, in the current form, has run its course. The stories never came out enough to grow, especially without the kind of personality to do well at self-promo. Some of the stuff was almost anti-clickbait, in a way that gave plausible deniability about how hard I tried. Lmao this is so dumb and definitely not serious, meanwhile I’m up at 2 AM comparing basketball scores to KenPom spreads to see if the Owls really do play better at home. Can’t fail if nobody thinks you care.
The whole exercise has started to feel pointless with the lack of focus and clear goals catching up to me. To spend this much energy on something, you better know exactly why. Was it legitimacy — credentials at KSU, access, etc.? Brother, that’s never happening unless you’re friends with a main character booster. Making money eventually? I never cared about that, because you’d throw up if you did the math on how much each click cost me in labor and subscriptions. I don’t really have an answer for Why, which seems to be a problem. These posts have basically morphed into a one-man ball-knowing competition that wasn't really accessible or easy to read.
I will literally never log off when it comes to Owls takes, but that’s not enough to sustain a website. Plus, newsletters are actually bad. What a relief to get that confession out in the open. I do not want to read about sports on Gmail, so my sincere apologies for forcing that upon you.
With all that in mind, this will be the last Hoot State post on Substack. We’re going back to the drawing board to figure out something new.
Can bloggers get the yips? That’s where I am. Even with the limited public output, I’ve written and deleted plenty of posts over the course of Hoot State’s short existence. There was an Amir tribute scrapped because whatever I wrote didn’t meet the moment and do the man justice. A Terrell Burden career retrospective didn’t make the cut. Two axed Bohannon pieces probably went too far, written before and after the firing. A postmortem on the semifinal game against Liberty was missing something. Looking back, they all would’ve been fine — just not good enough to live on the internet forever.
The correct play is to shut down this version of the site and spend some time thinking about what’s next, whether that’s a new website, a podcast, learning enough to focus on analytics, etc. I’m messing around with a couple different platforms that seem promising. A fresh start, with a reliable schedule, is needed whenever it’s time to come back, with potential to build a community. Gotta stop hunting perfection and cure the yips somehow.
Kennesaw State’s fan base really does deserve more coverage and analysis, no matter where it comes from. The athletic department almost entirely misses the boat on fans in my age group, the early/mid-30s crowd that grew up obsessed with college football but didn’t attend KSU while Owls football existed. The Los Reyes generation. Hopefully I can play a small, small role toward figuring that out.
For now, I’m liquidating all Hootcorp assets except the intellectual property rights to the Veer and Hoot name. You can have the Plankamania stickers. If I find a Hoot 3:16 shirt lying around I’ll hang it up in the rafters.
In all seriousness, thank you to everyone who spent any amount of time on Hoot State 1.0. I truly did not think there was anyone else out there who cared enough to read this stuff. We’ll be back soon enough.
By the way, the Owls are definitely beating Indiana this afternoon. Dexter Williams legacy game on Big Hoot Saturday.