It's been a rough patch for the St. Louis Rams since we hung out the shingle for Turf Show Times back in September 2006. That year, as you may recall, the Rams were a team holding on, barely, to the touchstones of past glory, scratching out an 8-8 season under a rookie head coach. Gradually, the past collapsed on the team, and the Rams became a young team with an all new front office, a rookie head coach and one win. Through it all, we managed to build a nice little community of the team's most dedicated fans.
Now, were a big community of the team's most dedicated fans. This afternoon we passed a significant milestone: 1,000,000 unique visitors. We're on track now for one of our biggest months in terms of visits and page views too, and I'm pleased to report that we get more and more fans stopping by everyday to join in the conversation here.
You don't need me to tell you for the umpteenth million time that the time they are a changin' in terms of the media environment and how fans experience the teams and sports they love. Fans are rejecting the newspapers and the other traditional outlets because they lost their relevancy, becoming nothing more than the place to go for reprinted talking points and the mindless prattle of the occasional columnists, columnists who can't even get players' names right, e.g. Fletcher Bradley, who aren't fans of the team so much as they are just guys assigned to write about it. You come here to parse the news with other fans, you come here to experience the events that make us tune in religiously every Sunday and beyond. And we're about to take the next step forward; SBN is now able to leverage press credentials for events like the Combine, the Draft and will be sending writers from the relevant sites to the Super Bowl this year. Stay tuned for more on these kind of opportunities as they relate to TST specifically.
Anyway, I want to thank SBNation for giving us the opportunity to make something here. I want to thank the Rams for giving us the team we devote countless hours to, despite the fact that there hasn't been much to cheer about lately. I want to thank 3k for jumping on board and expanding the conversation. Most of all, I want to thank all of the readers and the fans; without you this would be just another web site, lost in the sea of voices.
Give yourselves a pat on the back Rams fans and TST readers, YOU earned it.