War update

As a lifelong Husky fan and season ticket holder, I grew up crazy about Husky football. From watching Sunday morning highlights on my black and white TV, to climbing the North East fence to sneak in the Husky practices. If the Huskies were in the stadium I was there watching. I knew everything about Husky football and college football. The problem was there was nowhere to go talk about it, just with friends and what you could gather from scarce resources.

When Jim Heckman started Sports Washington, I'd be the first one at his little publishing company to get the issue firsthand, rather than waiting for the mail. I was the first one to show up at his little downtown office asking for the recruiting videos. For those who know what I'm talking about, the videos took forever to come out. Student Sports Magazine was really the only other source for recruiting information aside from the national hackjobs, parade, northwest nuggets etc.... However, In 1994 I searched out a little fledgling website called dawgtales, operated by Dave Samek, a former U dub band member. It was a painful process downloading this new style of recruiting information on a 14.4 modem, but it was worth it to me and is what arguably started Scout.com as we know it today. It was Jim Heckman's brainchild; recruiting websites for every school in the country. Heckman was brilliant with this idea, but on a local level, dawgman.com, formerly dawgtales, had formed a very loyal fan base and Heckman could not overthrow it.


The website was the first of its kind. The message board built a strong following, a place where ardent Husky fans could go to share their thoughts on the program. I was the first one in line to talk Husky and just college football in general. It was great, the war of words I had with cfetters, dawgdawgdawg ( Kim) and Fleenor were epic. Fleenor would always gloat about his close friendships with Bruce Snyder, John L. Smith and others...which of course I called him out on. You could say whatever you wanted then, you could call a spade a spade, an idiot a idiot and most often I directed that label at cfetters (A guy, who in my opinion, knew nothing about college football), Dawgdawgdawg (Kim Grinolds) who just showed up to be a part of the club, but I believed had no clue Washington even had a football team.


Because of my keen eye for observing and reporting on practice to the message boards, I was asked by Dave Samek to write articles on practice and submit them to his website. I agreed and was set to meet this guy named Kim Grinolds at practice the next day. Here comes this teeny little guy with a “members only” jacket, cheap wrinkled trousers and a God-awful set of infomercial sunglasses that took up half his head. He asked me to take a walk with him so we could talk about covering UW sports.. I said sure and watched him walk down the stadium stairs and onto the track while I stayed sat in my seat telling myself, “no way am I going to get a writing assignment from a chimp like that”. The rest is history. A real estate agent with no clue about Husky football shouldn't be giving out marching orders to anybody. Biggest geek I'd ever seen, and if you look at him today not much has changed. Now he's just a pretend wine connoisseur, with the same knowledge of Husky football. And in my opinion, it's his small-man complex and ego that is in part what's bringing dawgman down.


Welcome to September 2014. Dawgman.com hasn't just fallen so low, they've hit rock bottom. Somewhere along the line Dave Samek gave the keys to Kim Grinolds, who has in turn run dawgman into the ground in my opinion, and that of many others. He let his ego get in the way of business. Censorship on dawgman has reached its precipice, where few sentences get past the board of seemingly communist moderators. After 18 years at dawgman and dawgtales, I was banned for saying Sark's 2009 team (i.e. Tyrone Willingham's) was just as good as his 2013 team...I was right. But even if I wasn't, shouldn't I or anyone be able to say things like this? NOT at Kim's dawgman (unless he's saying it of course). I stopped giving money to kim over 2 years ago because I got tired of the constant “bannings” and countless childish “time-outs” for honest and harmless criticism. It went from a place where one could criticize the head coach for poor decisions, players for poor play, The AD for poor scheduling, fellow posters for stupidity and most importantly criticism aimed at the “dawgman insiders” (the largest oxymoron known to man) for speculation, rubbish and massive hypocrisy .


A loyal paying member was repeatedly banned for voicing fair criticism towards Sarkisian , while Kim made it his mission to have Tyrone Willingham fired, and wrote about it every other thread.. There are countless other similar stories which have since sent dawgman scrambling for subscribers People are sick and tired of Kim's routine. As a result, longtime dawgman subscribers like Tequila, Puppylove-Sugarlove-Steelheader, Tailgater, Mike Damone, Race
Bannon abondoned ship years ago, now countless others are rushing to the exits, faster than a Sarkisian blowout loss, to the new and true Husky website (HardcoreHusky.com), put in play by one Derek Johnson. The irony here is, Kim and Fetters are the ones burning down bridges, and the survivors are landing at HardcoreHusky.com. Derek Johnson, the new site's founder, was also sent to the gas chamber by Heinrich Kimmler long ago. Thank the Lord Derek took his superior knowledge of Husky football from the losing team (dawgman) to the national champions (HHB).


As a college football fan, and more specific a Husky fan, would you rather receive your information from a band member, a real estate agent, a nobody who went from flipping burgers (I heard) to writing articles and a recruiting “guru”, who cut his teeth in Pop Warner, and whose speculation has been off nearly 81% of the time ( of course I'm speculating on the speculation, but nothing new to dawgman)? Or would you rather read a site where true knowledgeable Husky fans gather to talk football and recruiting at an accurate level, in other words, all of the available information that dawgman uses, less the worthless speculation and obvious agenda, Plus being able to speak your mind altogether, with whatever language necessary to get one's point across. Sheesh, a fan could read the Seattle Times for the same information DAWGMAN provides, Less the $10.95 tab. Kim, maybe you should take a look at yourself and your failing endeavor before criticizing others. And Jim Heckman, you're the brilliant businessman... when unlimited breadsticks and salad aren't attracting customers anymore, and haven't for years, you should do what the investment group at Olive Garden did, fire the board! Can't you see what Kim and Co. are doing to the customers at dawgman??