Hill 364 Turns 1

Eric: It’s time to wish Hill 364 Sports a Happy Birthday!  Adam and I entered the internet’s murky waters with our first post one year ago today.  We’ve come a long way since then, and our style has evolved ever so much.  Mostly I'm just glad we have this outlet where we can share our passions with the world.

Now, this is the part where you, the reader, come in.  We love writing and posting all our content, and we can watch our hit counter keep ticking up and up, but the only way we can really know if we've reached you is if you interact with us and with our site.  Vote in our polls.  Like us on Facebook where we post links to all our articles, share other sports nuggets from around the internet, and even sprinkle in some commentary from time to time.  Get after us on Twitter where Adam goes by @AdamHocking and I'm the @jeuneski.  Lastly, please, please leave comments.  Tell us where we went wrong, what we did right, what you liked, what you didn’t like, anything.  We want to hear from you.

Now before I go, I'd like to share some of my favorite posts we’ve done so far.

This is my absolute favorite thing to do every year.

I liked all our Super Bowl coverage: the profiles of the Packers and Steelers, Adam nailing the prediction midseason, and The Pick.

I have an affinity for what I like to call trend pieces, articles that take one small example of an existing trend and blow it up to take in something on a much grander scale.  Adam did that particularly well when he examined Team USA's struggles in the FIBA tournament and applied it to greater problems in the basketball world at large.

This was a fun one.

The pieces of my own that I liked the best were when I discussed some of the rumored realignment that went down last summer in college football and looked at how it all turned out.

And this was maybe my favorite piece we've ever posted on the site, The Conversations We Aren’t Having.

What posts did you like?

So with that, here's what Adam has to say, and here's looking forward to another year!

Adam: Before we started this blog Eric and I would email back and forth about sports all the time; so really, it just felt like a natural progression to put our thoughts online.  The blog has been a great way to express my opinions.  The only drawback for me is that I hear less of what Eric thinks on these topics because he is busy editing my numerous errors and designing/formatting our site.

I have felt an evolution in our site in the way we approach topics and in how I approach writing a piece.  I definitely research more thoroughly these days than in the beginning, and we’ve seen additions to our site like the polls, quotes of the day, popular posts of the week, and the general look and design of the site.

I’m proud of the work we’ve done, and I think it’s been interesting to have both a friendship and a working relationship with Eric, one of my closest friends.  We’ve had arguments, disagreements, and the like, but it’s because we care about what we are doing and want to produce a quality product.

Ultimately we started this site because we wanted to be different; we wanted to stick to sports and not all the surrounding B.S. that gets batted around by ESPN and other talking heads.  I think for the most part we’ve stuck to that, and this year Eric and I renew the commitment of bringing pure sports talk to our growing audience.  Now here are a few of my favorite posts of our first year:

The Conversations We Aren’t Having: Because I felt passionate about the topic and feel that so many in the media and in our society are missing how significant this topic is, this is one of our most important posts.  In 50 years we are going to be ashamed of how we treated gay people in this country, just as we are now ashamed of our history with racism and sexism.

LeBron Turns the Page, Embarks on his Championship Chapter: This was fun for me because it felt like I was covering a landmark moment in the career of a player that has the potential to be as great as he wants to be.  Also, I always try to be open and forthright when I’ve been wrong, stubborn, or pigheaded about a topic, and as our readers know, I’ve been a LeBron basher for a long time.  I had to come around on him, had to give him credit, and had to assess if I really had a good reason to dislike the man.

Let's Play Two: The 2011 MLB Season Preview: I liked this because it was a back-and-forth between Eric and I, and we are basically a team of superheroes.  When we combine, the Earth moves.

NBA Fantasy Draft Ranking: I love lists, always will, and I love ranking players against each other.  It’s also fun for me to project into the future.  I can’t really explain why, but I just love it.

Who’s the Best MC: Comparing Hoops and Hip-Hop: I loved writing this because it involved two of my great loves: rap and hoops.  It’s fun to draw parallels between sports and pop culture and to find all those music clips and player highlights.

Repeat Offenders: The 2011 Green Bay Packers: I loved this because I got to talk about one of my favorite teams, the Packers, and because their future is so incredibly bright the piece just wrote itself.

Revisionist History: I share this because I still have vitriol for Ted Thompson haters and those that bitched about trading Brett Favre.  Those people were and are so blatantly wrong, and now with a ring on Aaron Rodgers’ finger, we have all the proof we need.

Have We Lost Our Minds?: I liked this because I think we went against the grain of what everyone else was saying when Nick Collins threw his mouthpiece into the stands after a tough game (where he was allegedly spit on by a fan who also directed a racial slur at Collins).  People are equal, and though athletes are on a pedestal, fans have to be accountable too.

Courting Greatness: I love putting things in historical perspective, I love Rafa Nadal, and I rarely write about tennis.  That’s why I loved this piece.

NFL Position Rankings: Rankings, lists, and the NFL: three of my favorite things.

Kobe's Place: Historical perspective is so fun, it was about probably my favorite athlete ever, and there was so much information to put together.  Lots of stats, awards, and my endless personal opinions on the subject made this a piece I loved writing.