Before this board

[SupaDave]

Well the season is over and I'm back to yakking with my boys about a whole lot of things that we hear on the streets that aren't really suited for the boards. However, b/c of the boards I've pretty much become the resident know it all in my circle of friends on all things Duke basketball. We used to argue a lot, now we sit back and wait. And b/c they don't visit the boards - I am THEIR board - so I get all kinds of questions, many weeks after the fact.

Before I actually started leaving DBR's main page, other than real life acquaintances, the only real way I could get info was through the god awful message boards on CBSSports, ESPN, and the local newspaper. I also would hit up my folks at Dime Mag and Slam. I knew about kids in certain areas, to watch the Mickey D's game, and to hope for anything to fall our way from Oak Hill Academy but other than that I relied on word on the street.

There are many new posters but I can see some getting the feel of things so I ask...

...how did you satisfy your Duke basketball "fix" before the DBR boards?

Supa "like I'm dropping twitter bombs" Dave

[uh_no]

...how did you satisfy your Duke basketball "fix" before the DBR boards?

Supa "like I'm dropping twitter bombs" Dave

being a duke hater eliminated a need for a duke basketball fix :)....oh how times have changed

[superdave]

I used to have incredibly long email arguments with Unc fans. It's helped me tolerate Wheat and Kong here.

[jimsumner]

Well the season is over and I'm back to yakking with my boys about a whole lot of things that we hear on the streets that aren't really suited for the boards. However, b/c of the boards I've pretty much become the resident know it all in my circle of friends on all things Duke basketball. We used to argue a lot, now we sit back and wait. And b/c they don't visit the boards - I am THEIR board - so I get all kinds of questions, many weeks after the fact.

Before I actually started leaving DBR's main page, other than real life acquaintances, the only real way I could get info was through the god awful message boards on CBSSports, ESPN, and the local newspaper. I also would hit up my folks at Dime Mag and Slam. I knew about kids in certain areas, to watch the Mickey D's game, and to hope for anything to fall our way from Oak Hill Academy but other than that I relied on word on the street.

There are many new posters but I can see some getting the feel of things so I ask...

...how did you satisfy your Duke basketball "fix" before the DBR boards?

Supa "like I'm dropping twitter bombs" Dave

The town crier would ring a bell and we would all gather in the town square for the latest updates.

[mickeysgotagun]

Having grown up in the internet age, I always wondered how people got their (apparently very needy ;)) recruiting fix without being able to read websites dedicated to recruiting and player twitters.

[cf-62]

Having grown up in the internet age, I always wondered how people got their (apparently very needy ;)) recruiting fix without being able to read websites dedicated to recruiting and player twitters.

It was called the "Poop Sheet" -and it was published personally by Bob Gibbons. For less than an annual ESPN Insiders ID, you got the skinny on who was good - and where they were going.

If it wasn't in the Poop Sheet, it didn't matter.

There really wasn't a widespread "recruiting fix" need - when Danny Ferry picked Duke over North Carolina, the only people that cared were the Maryland fans that thought all MD high schoolers should stay in state. The recruiting wars of the 80s/90s would have been massive board fodder today (Ferry, Laettner, Hurley, Hill, Henderson, Ranzino Smith, Scott Williams, Dante Calabria, Stackhouse, Capel, Capel II, Brickey - the list goes on - if they were a major recruit, they were being recruited heavily by both schools). They would literally leave one thinking "that's where I want to go" and change their minds 24 hours later after visiting the other.

But back then, nobody knew jack about what was going on except the very few that were intensely into it.

[yancem]

When I was in college (prior to the internet becoming mainstream) I used to pick up the Recruiting Handbook which came out 4 times a year (IIRC). It was a nice little mag that had several articles on different recruits and had rankings of the top senior and junior and where they which schools they were interested in or where they were signed. Then in the mid 90's they had a subscription web site that I joined for a couple of years.

[Duke: A Dynasty]

Well for me it has not changed much... I still am a member of Scout.com, rivals.com, and an espn insider, I still troll other fan boards who have the same recruit we do just to get their side of things, I still get slam magazine and espn mag, I still troll youtube looking at recruits highlight reels and actual in game footage. Anyway I try to be as informed and unbiased as possible for someone who is in college and does not live close to Durham and not have the money to drive to watch recruits play.

[ACniner]

Well the season is over and I'm back to yakking with my boys about a whole lot of things that we hear on the streets that aren't really suited for the boards. However, b/c of the boards I've pretty much become the resident know it all in my circle of friends on all things Duke basketball. We used to argue a lot, now we sit back and wait. And b/c they don't visit the boards - I am THEIR board - so I get all kinds of questions, many weeks after the fact.

Before I actually started leaving DBR's main page, other than real life acquaintances, the only real way I could get info was through the god awful message boards on CBSSports, ESPN, and the local newspaper. I also would hit up my folks at Dime Mag and Slam. I knew about kids in certain areas, to watch the Mickey D's game, and to hope for anything to fall our way from Oak Hill Academy but other than that I relied on word on the street.

There are many new posters but I can see some getting the feel of things so I ask...

...how did you satisfy your Duke basketball "fix" before the DBR boards?

Supa "like I'm dropping twitter bombs" Dave

I remember just talking with Duke buddies about things they heard with announcers in games. But for me, when the basketball previews came out in like August or so (Athlon sports etc), I would buy all of them up and immediately flip to the Duke section. This is how I found out about Deng coming, so I remember thats all I had to talk about for months to my buddies.

[Newton_14]

Great thread Supa!

So, I was a late comer to the DBR party. "Discovery" story first. One day at lunch I am reading on ESPN.com and come across an article about a former Duke player currently playing overseas. (Seems like it was Nate James but not 100% sure). In the article the writer asks Nate? how he keeps abreast of the happenings in the Duke program and he responds that he is a daily reader of Duke Basketball report. I had never heard of it at the time. Nate says that that is how he stays informed on who is being recruited and most anything else related to the hoops program.

So I googled and started reading daily. That was sometime in the summer of 2007.

Prior to DBR, I relied on contacts I have made over the years living right here in the heart of Tobacco Rd, talking to friends who had contacts at Duke, and reading ESPN and 850 The Buzz Website, and listening to the local talk radio shows on 850 The Buzz.

Funny how things work out, but I could not imagine a world today where I could not click on DBR daily to see what is going on. Like Supa I despised the ESPN blogs, 850's Blog, and others like them. Constant juvenile bickering and name calling between opposing fans. Just never appealed to me personally.

I do recall the "Dark Ages" though, when you found out who Duke had signed via the Durham Morning Herald, News & Observer, and Tom Suiter on WRAL. How did we survive in those days! :)

[ACniner]

Great thread Supa!

So, I was a late comer to the DBR party. "Discovery" story first. One day at lunch I am reading on ESPN.com and come across an article about a former Duke player currently playing overseas. (Seems like it was Nate James but not 100% sure). In the article the writer asks Nate? how he keeps abreast of the happenings in the Duke program and he responds that he is a daily reader of Duke Basketball report. I had never heard of it at the time. Nate says that that is how he stays informed on who is being recruited and most anything else related to the hoops program.

So I googled and started reading daily. That was sometime in the summer of 2007.

Prior to DBR, I relied on contacts I have made over the years living right here in the heart of Tobacco Rd, talking to friends who had contacts at Duke, and reading ESPN and 850 The Buzz Website, and listening to the local talk radio shows on 850 The Buzz.

Funny how things work out, but I could not imagine a world today where I could not click on DBR daily to see what is going on. Like Supa I despised the ESPN blogs, 850's Blog, and others like them. Constant juvenile bickering and name calling between opposing fans. Just never appealed to me personally.

I do recall the "Dark Ages" though, when you found out who Duke had signed via the Durham Morning Herald, News & Observer, and Tom Suiter on WRAL. How did we survive in those days! :)

It would be more stressful, and my health would suffer, but sometimes I wonder how my reaction would be when I know nothing about it then a guy like Irving comes on the scene balling his heart out.

[tieguy]

I still am a member of Scout.com, rivals.com, and an espn insider...

It makes me feel slightly old that I know DBR predates all of those things, though I think that insider existed (and I subscribed) for a few months in late '96/early '97 before I knew about DBR. Wayback machine has some very old DBR (http://replay.waybackmachine.org/19970404155333/http://www.juliovision.com/dbr.html) for you young whippersnappers. ;)

~tieguy (my insider subscription was so old that they hadn't figured out renewals when I signed up, so I got my first seven-eight years for the price of one)

[throatybeard]

Well the season is over and I'm back to yakking with my boys about a whole lot of things that we hear on the streets that aren't really suited for the boards. However, b/c of the boards I've pretty much become the resident know it all in my circle of friends on all things Duke basketball. We used to argue a lot, now we sit back and wait. And b/c they don't visit the boards - I am THEIR board - so I get all kinds of questions, many weeks after the fact.

Before I actually started leaving DBR's main page, other than real life acquaintances, the only real way I could get info was through the god awful message boards on CBSSports, ESPN, and the local newspaper. I also would hit up my folks at Dime Mag and Slam. I knew about kids in certain areas, to watch the Mickey D's game, and to hope for anything to fall our way from Oak Hill Academy but other than that I relied on word on the street.

There are many new posters but I can see some getting the feel of things so I ask...

...how did you satisfy your Duke basketball "fix" before the DBR boards?

Supa "like I'm dropping twitter bombs" Dave

Brill wrote a book about it. Then I read and re-read it.

[Wheat/"/"/"]

I used to have incredibly long email arguments with Unc fans. It's helped me tolerate Wheat and Kong here.


Um, thanks,.....I think....:)

I used to get all sorts of interesting opinions on Duke from Dave Chen's old
Tar Heel Talk" board. It was the wild west of early hoops bulletin boards for sure.

I know all you old timers remember that place. It was legendary.

[jdk]

When I first got the internet in early 1998, I found DBR and TDD in the Yahoo directory. I also found rec.sport.basketball.college on Usenet, where I believe TwoDukies started out. That's about half of my life. The other half, I was too young to care.

[Lord Ash]

Hm, good thread!

I guess I was on campus, so I just found stuff out there? I found DBR just a year after I graduated (around '98 or '99?) Before that, I didn't find out about basketball except in the paper, so I didn't know much:)

[devildeac]

Stone tablets handed down from mountain tops. Ask Ozzie, he read the same ones I did.

[superdave]

Um, thanks,.....I think....:)

I used to get all sorts of interesting opinions on Duke from Dave Chen's old
Tar Heel Talk" board. It was the wild west of early hoops bulletin boards for sure.

I know all you old timers remember that place. It was legendary.

I knew you would appreciate that, Wheat.

I first stumbled across DBR while trying to figure out when the players would return to Cameron post-title in 2001. Been a regular since.

[Klemnop]

It was called the "Poop Sheet" -and it was published personally by Bob Gibbons. For less than an annual ESPN Insiders ID, you got the skinny on who was good - and where they were going.

If it wasn't in the Poop Sheet, it didn't matter.

There really wasn't a widespread "recruiting fix" need - when Danny Ferry picked Duke over North Carolina, the only people that cared were the Maryland fans that thought all MD high schoolers should stay in state. The recruiting wars of the 80s/90s would have been massive board fodder today (Ferry, Laettner, Hurley, Hill, Henderson, Ranzino Smith, Scott Williams, Dante Calabria, Stackhouse, Capel, Capel II, Brickey - the list goes on - if they were a major recruit, they were being recruited heavily by both schools). They would literally leave one thinking "that's where I want to go" and change their minds 24 hours later after visiting the other.

But back then, nobody knew jack about what was going on except the very few that were intensely into it.

Barry Jacobs' Fan's Guide was my bible. Along with PooP Sheet and The Recruiting Handbook.

Used to be good times trolling the newstand and hoping for a new edition of The PooP Sheet - although there was rarely anything exciting in it for a Clemson basketball fan.

Jacobs' write-ups for unknown Clemson freshmen (mainly recruited during the Cliff Ellis era) were hilarious. There was always an anonymous coach or two who provided feedback on another team's recruits. Barry found a way to turn their quotes into a verbal shoulder shrug. ;)

In 1990 I managed the nerve to walk over to Barry while he was sitting on "reporter row" prior to the Clemson-UNC game in Littlejohn and speak to him. I thought I was big stuff. In 1991, while writing for The Tiger, I got to speak to him at greater length while covering the Clemson @ Duke game (which was also Senior night.) Getting to talk to Jacobs during that period was like talking to an immortal. I was always appreciative of his time...and he was an exceptionally pleasant, thoughtful man - for some random kid walking up to him and chatting him up.

I got chastised at The Tiger for using some of Jacobs' euphemisims. "Bonusphere" was the one I recall vividly.

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

Klem

[roywhite]

It was called the "Poop Sheet" -and it was published personally by Bob Gibbons. For less than an annual ESPN Insiders ID, you got the skinny on who was good - and where they were going.If it wasn't in the Poop Sheet, it didn't matter.

There really wasn't a widespread "recruiting fix" need - when Danny Ferry picked Duke over North Carolina, the only people that cared were the Maryland fans that thought all MD high schoolers should stay in state. The recruiting wars of the 80s/90s would have been massive board fodder today (Ferry, Laettner, Hurley, Hill, Henderson, Ranzino Smith, Scott Williams, Dante Calabria, Stackhouse, Capel, Capel II, Brickey - the list goes on - if they were a major recruit, they were being recruited heavily by both schools). They would literally leave one thinking "that's where I want to go" and change their minds 24 hours later after visiting the other.

But back then, nobody knew jack about what was going on except the very few that were intensely into it.

When you mention the "Poop Sheet" I assume you are talking about a publication that has since become known as the ACC Sports Journal and is owned/published by David Glenn. The original publisher was actually former UNC basketball player Dennis Wuycik.

It was great for fairly accurate information on recruiting and behind the scenes stories on ACC teams. Bob Gibbons may have been a contributor, and certainly Brick Oettinger was an important writer.

[hudlow]

Stone tablets handed down from mountain tops. Ask Ozzie, he read the same ones I did.

Amen...!

I had a friend who had an aunt that had a sister that married an ex Duke player who played for Coach Bubas. We believed anything that supposedly came from him...or his general vicinity.

[OZZIE4DUKE]

Stone tablets handed down from mountain tops. Ask Ozzie, he read the same ones I did.
LOL! Yeah.

Recruiting info? When I was in school and the later 1970's, whoever showed up on campus in August is who we recruited. Gene Banks? Really! Wow! Then word of mouth when I was on campus for a game, be it football or basketball. Then I subscribed to the Poopsheet. Once I found the DBR in 1997 or so, and I got to know Carlos, Arnie and the other recruiting guru's of the day, life got a lot more interesting. :cool:

[weezie]

The town crier would ring a bell and we would all gather in the town square for the latest updates.

:D:D:D I know it's against the rules but man, that had me laughing. Much better than my planned comment on waiting for the traveling tinker to wheel his ox-cart into our hollow with news and the latest potions.

[jimsumner]

Before the internet, Caulton Tudor of the Raleigh Times and Thad Mumau of the Fayetteville Observer regularly covered hoops recruiting. Both of these newspapers were afternoon newspapers, so this shows you how long it's been. Along with the Poop Sheet, this pretty much covered the folks doing speculative print recruiting in this area.

And the late Gary Dornburg would host recruiting experts like Oettinger and Gibbons on his Raleigh radio call-in show a few times a month. Eagerly awaited.

[OldPhiKap]

I would wait for the Blue Devil Weekly to recap the games (by then about a week and a half old) because ESPN only showed lumberjack competitions and there was no such thing as "the deuce".

As far as interchat, I perused IC a bunch because I could not get the hang of the tree-branch chat format on this forum. Acually, back in the day, there were some pretty knowledgeable posters if you could pick through the cracks about rodents, back problems, and the inability to spell Duke correctly. Of course, that was during the Doh! years as well so it was kind of entertaining as well.

[HaveFunExpectToWin]

I had a subscription to Blue Devil Weekly and used to cut out the box scores and articles from the N&O. Discussion of the teams was limited to talk amongst like minded folks around middle and high school lockers and during lunch. A fellow poster who went to school with me in Durham did the stats for the games in Cameron and would bring in printouts from time to time.

[robobevan]

Several years ago someone came up with a great idea for a service which would fax stories from each game along with the box score. It was great for us outside of north carolina who received scant coverage. So the next morning after each game I would receive the fax at work. Unfortunately the year of this service was 1994-5 when Coach K had to take a leave of absense and the losses were piling up. My co-workers, who were already on the "anti-duke " bandwagon after years of final four appearances, took great joy in these faxes. It got to the point where I would walk into work and find my office walls and door entirely covered in copies of the fax. Needless to say, I did not renew the service.

[HaveFunExpectToWin]

One of my favorite pre-Internet rumors was of Carmen Wallace's 40" vertical.

[94duke]

One of my favorite pre-Internet rumors was of Carmen Wallace's 40" vertical.

Wait, he didn't? Are you sure? :confused:

For one thing, Wallace is considerably smaller than the 6-foot-10, 245-pound Domzalski--and virtually every opposing power forward whom he has faced. But Wallace can also outjump the big men whom he battles in the paint. After all, the Duke forward has a 48-inch vertical leap coming off of two steps, and he can jump 43 inches without a running start.
http://dukechronicle.com/node/108100

[HaveFunExpectToWin]

Wait, he didn't? Are you sure? :confused:

http://dukechronicle.com/node/108100

Awesome, that's right, it was 48". I remember getting excited about the possibilities during a 1st period German class. Of course this was before the Blue White game.

[OldPhiKap]

The better question is -- how could we tell the height of players before cinder blocks?