News: BTB: Community Saturday: What Brought You To Blogging The Boys?

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What makes a community really great, is diversity. Well, let me amend that, what makes a community really great is accepted diversity. We all come from different walks of life, but somehow we all managed to follow this team known as the Dallas Cowboys. Even though we have had a rough last couple of decades, and for some it's all they know, I tend to consider us the fortunate ones.

Regardless of the coverage, is there a professional football team that's talked about around the world more often than the Dallas Cowboys? Can you imagine what it's like to be the fan of one of the team that never makes a SportsCenter segment? Yes, we all suffer when they manufacture headlines with a negative spin about our team, but just wait until this thing gets completely turned around. Why do you think so many fans of other teams despise the Cowboys? When things are right, the media simply can't get enough of us. And it's glorious.

Trust me grasshoppers, we will know that feeling (again) soon.

On top of that, at one point or another during our obsessive fandom, we navigated our web browsers to this small piece of heaven known as BTB. The experience is different for everyone, but speaking for myself I've enjoyed almost every minute of my time here.

I came to know of SB Nation through our Washington Wizards blog, Bullets Forever, run by the esteemed Mike Prada, who now is also an upper level SBN Basketball guy. I was not aware that SBN was building itself as a network of all things sports. At the time, I was getting my Cowboys fix via The Blue and Silver Report, which had transitioned from The Boys Blog. That's where I had planted myself for Dallas discussion. Prior to that, you could find me hanging out on the DallasCowboys.com Forums. This would have been during the Parcells era. I wasn't a mod, but I did participate pretty heavily over there.

So much so, that I was the one that organized the very first Lunch Break Fantasy Football league with Derek Eagleton and Nick Eatman. I guess I've always been a bit of a Cowboys Community Organizer.

Anyways, I lurked on BTB until it absorbed BSR and truly became the Mecca for Cowboys fandom. Not only with the writers, but the knowledge base of the two communities took things to an extraordinary level. As my knowledge base grew over the years, I decided to try my hand at writing and penned a couple fan shots. Soon after, our esteemed leader announced that he was looking for additions to the front page.

I submitted my "application" and, unsure of when a decision would be made, set about trying to set myself apart from what I assumed would be countless others interested in the position. When the 2010 season began, I started a weekly contest, known as "KDP's 10 For 10". As that contest grew, I began incorporating other aspects I was interested in; a Cowboys weekly recap, betting advice and fantasy conversation. Oh, and I also included some of the best eye candy pics I could get my hands on.

No one will ever accuse me of not knowing what sells.

As we all remember, the 2010 season sucked pretty badly from the team perspective. Around December, Dave reached out and asked me to join the crew. The rest, as they say, is history.

Writing for BTB has been a Godsend for me. The opportunity to write about my favorite thing in the world came at a really low point in my life. It had always been a dream of mine to write at some level, and here was a chance to write about Dallas; unreal. Two and a half years later, every Cowboys mini-thought I have can be read by over 10,000 followers on Twitter, 4,000+ subscribe to my Cowboys podcasts and I've recorded videos of which the most popular have been seen by as many as 14,000 people.

Being recognized in a CVS in my home state of Maryland as the "Cowboys Youtube Guy" will probably go down as one of my life's proudest moments. Likely, none of this fun would have happened if circumstances didn't bring me over to BTB. For that I am eternally grateful.

On each of my podcasts, I refer to the front page writers as the greatest collection of writers never to have access to a locker room or press conference. What I don't say is that all of us are a product of this great community. Dave has plucked each of us from the FanPost ranks and we are all shaped by the way we interacted, and still interact, with everyone here. This community is an awesome combination of knowledge, fandom and personalities. I love it here.

So that's my BTB backstory. What is it that brought you here? What is it that's kept you? Let us know in the comments how BTB became your internet home for Cowboys conversation.

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