NYT article about the history of cfb message boards

phatcat_rivals223240 said:

Not riveting, but hey it's offseason

The origin story of college football’s most unhinged corner of the internet: Message boards

Message boards are ubiquitous with college sports, and have been since the late 1990s. Here's how it all began.

www.nytimes.com

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Speaks to the tribal nature of fandom. Message boards are far from perfect, but why be a part of a fan base if you don’t appreciate the community?

Agree it’s a pretty “meh” article as it just talks about a few examples and couches it with hokey humor about how big computers were. There were the Usenet groups (like rec.sports.football.college) and then I don’t recall what was the precursor to Rivals (or the pre-precursor). But it does spark the memories of the earliest discussion boards during the Rose Bowl year. There were the Big Ten Fan Forums, may the able to find those in the Archive).

This GIF sums it all up for me:

Fanaticat98 said:

and then I don’t recall what was the precursor to Rivals (or the pre-precursor).

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I have no idea. but from the article:

While on a FaceTime call in the On3 offices in Nashville, Tenn., Terry walked from closet to closet looking for the original three servers he kept as a keepsake to the bygone era that eventually evolved into what the corner of college football internet is today. The first server had a name. It was called Rubicon. It hosted Terry’s original site: AllianceSports, which was launched on June 6, 1996, and was later renamed Rivals.

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I was in a lot of usenet groups in the 90s, but I don't think sports entered into it. For me it was music and CAD.