WaitingForNextYear is a sports blog dedicated to Cleveland and Ohio State sports, owned and operated by Waiting For Next Year, LLC. It was formed in January of 2008 when the authors of three of Cleveland’s finest sports blogs decided to combine their efforts into one cohesive site in order to better serve the readers and fans of the area’s sports teams. WaitingForNextYear’s mission statement is to provide fans with unique perspectives and insights, daily news briefs, recaps and previews, as well as entertaining and informative special features and columns. If you have any questions, comments, complaints, praises, concerns, and/or issues about this site, its authors, or anything else pertaining to WaitingForNextYear, please feel free to either use the comments section below or drop an email to any of the authors and we will be more than happy to listen to whatever it is you have to say.
ADMINISTRATORS
rick (rick@waitingfornextyear.com)
Some kids had fancy posters of Walter Payton and Jerry Rice hanging on their walls as a kid. Rick used to cut out pictures of Browns’ defensive linemen from the newspaper and tape them to his. That will probably tell you more about him than anything else a Bio ever could. Rick is originally from Akron, Ohio. He grew up memorizing stats for names like Sipe, Byner, Kosar, Swindell, Tabler, Carter, Price, Daugherty, Nance etc. Every friday night he went to a high school game. Every Saturday afternoon was Ohio State football. The Browns ruled Sunday. During the winter when there was no football to watch, he cut his teeth on a crappy Cavs team that eventually gave the Bulls a run for their money. The Indians were a summer fling until the Browns were kidnapped in the middle of the night. Then they were the only game in town. And he learned how exciting the whole baseball season could be.
“When the Browns had Denver pinned at the 2 yard line, my dad called me screaming from work. He said we were going to hop on a plane and get tickets to the Super Bowl.” Rick is still waiting…
Scott (scott@waitingfornextyear.com)
Born and raised in NorthEastern Ohio, Scott has been through the same thick and thin that the majority of his generation has endured. Too young to remember most of the Kardiac Kids, but old enough to recall the exact words that came out of his father’s mouth during “the fumble.”
Said words are not suitable for WFNY print, however they have instilled the spirt of Cleveland fandom that he still holds to this day. Whether it is Mesa blowing a save, Ehlo not having six-foot long arms, or John Elway being John Elway…It’s all fuel for what ultimately comes out every day on this site. A bitter fuel, but one that will make that championship that much better once it arrives. Whenever that may be.
In March of 2010, Scott was voted “Ohio’s Best Sports Blogger” by FOX Sports Ohio, the flagship television network for the Cleveland Cavaliers. His work has been featured on FoxSports.com, Yahoo! Sports, SI.com and various other blogs throughout the Intrawebs.
Andrew (andrew@waitingfornextyear.com)
Andrew grew up in a small town in NorthWest Ohio, where his father passed on to him the love of both Ohio State and all Cleveland Sports Teams. This love of Ohio State sports is part of what drove Andrew to attend The Ohio State University from 1998 to 2003, where he was fortunate enough to see the basketball team make a terrific run to the Final Four in 1999 and the football team win a miraculous National Championship in 2002 (well, technically 2003). Upon graduation from OSU, Andrew landed a job in Columbus and resides there today.
Andrew’s first memories of sports include debacles such as The Drive, The Fumble, and The Shot. Later memories include The Jose Mesa, multiple crushing loses to Michigan, the 1998 Michigan State game, the Modell Move, the 1999 AL Divisional Series loss to Boston, the 1995 World Series spanking, the 2007 ALCS, 2 straight football National Championships losses, the basketball National Championship loss, the 2007 NBA Finals sweep, the 10-6 failure, and the 2003 AFC Wild Card loss to Pittsburgh. It was in this climate and under these conditions that Andrew decided he needed an outlet for his frustrations and perspective on these teams, and so in October of 2007, he started the Cleveland Sports Authority site. Now, Andrew intends to continue providing the same kind of well-researched, in depth coverage that he did at CSA to this site.
EDITORS
DP (dp@waitingfornextyear.com)
DP was born and raised in the podunk northeastern Ohio town of Wooster, and his love of Cleveland sports was branded into him by masochistic parents at an early age. Some of DP’s earliest memories of Cleveland Sports Heartbreak include: the Browns blowing a 21-3 third quarter lead to the Dolphins in the playoffs following the 1985 season, and the tragic death of Don Rogers a few months later; watching the Tribe lose a 16-inning game in his first stadium experience on July 4th, 1986; and watching Craig Ehlo crumple into a heap as Jordan celebrated The Shot. A novelty audio tape of the parody song “Bernie Bernie” still resides at DP’s parents’ home to this day.
DP went to college at Mount Union in Alliance from 1995-1999, where he developed a love of watching his football team dismantle inferior opponents to the tune of a 54-1 overall record, including three straight national titles. He landed a job with a large publishing company in Columbus, where he has lived since 1999. He is an avid follower of the Tribe, a Browns’ season-ticket holder since 2002, and has followed the Columbus Blue Jackets religiously since their inception in 2000. Seeing the Jackets as a perfect match for the “Waiting For Next Year” mindset of the Cleveland Sports Fan, DP aims to drop all the Blue Jackets knowledge on you that you could ever want.
Craig (craig@waitingfornextyear.com)
Craig gained his love for Cleveland sports, like most Cleveland fans, at a very young age by way of his father. But, Craig didn’t gain a true perspective of what it means to be a Cleveland fan until he left the friendly confines of Northeast Ohio for Boston University. There, Craig met many East coast sports fans and learned a lot about what it means to have pride in a disrespected city. If Craig seems argumentative sometimes, it is because he has had a lot of experience arguing, most commonly with Yankees and Red Sox fans.
Craig is now back in the safe haven of the Cleveland’s Eastern suburbs where he enjoys many hobbies including music and pretending to be a real sportswriter. As a blogging veteran who now concentrates on sports, Craig is a generalist, but the Indians are probably most securely in his wheel house. He doesn’t believe in curses… except when he does. He is not superstitious unless the seat he is currently sitting in feels unlucky. Consistently inconsistent would be a fair description of Craig, but he would certainly argue the point.
TD (td@waitingfornextyear.com)
On an early March morning in 1976, a beautiful baby boy was born at the McDonald house in Cleveland, Ohio. What spawned was a unique brand of Cleveland Sports fan. TD came out of his mother’s womb with a full head of hair and was immediately wrapped in an Indians Oscar Gamble jersey on instead of a blanket. The rest as they say is history. He is a dyed in the wool Indians, Browns, and Cavaliers fans, as well as a loyal follower of the University of Kansas Jayhawks basketball program. He has seen his fair share of sports disappointment. TD’s earliest childhood memory is watching Ahmad Rashad catch a hail mary from Tommy Kramer to defeat the Browns late in the 1980 season and seeing his father kick one of his toys across the room. He was in section 37 for “The Drive.” He saw “The Fumble.” He was in attendance for “The Shot.” He watched Mike Hargrove allow Jim Poole to make a failed bunt attempt and then give up the World Series deciding HR to David Justice in Atlanta. He was relegated to vomiting profusely in his Lawrence, Kansas apartment as Edgar Renetria’s single went just past Charles Nagy’s glove. In his four years at KU, he watched a 60-0 home record, three #1 seeds and a #2 seed crash and burn miserably with no Final Four apperances. All of this has helped his craft and a realistic, and sometimes bitter, columnist. You may have read his stuff at The Cleveland Fan, My Teams are Cursed, Dump David Dellucci, and The World According to TD. Now, you can find him here at WFNY.
Jacob (jacob@waitingfornextyear.com)
Jacob is a weekend author for WFNY and the sports editor for the University of Dayton’s Flyer News. Jacob is an Akron native who majors in applied mathematical economics. He worked in the Akron Aeros media department during their championship summer of 2009. For several years he has maintained an e-mail based Sports Report where he has analyzed the world of sports from a statistical perspective. He usually focuses his sports articles on the Cavaliers, Indians, Buckeyes and Dayton Flyers.
Growing up in the 90′s, everything in Cleveland was about the Indians and they were his first love of any kind. Over the ensuing years, his passion for college football led him to create his own college football ranking system imitating the initial design of the BCS. Now a college student, he loves analyzing the wide world of sports, instead of simply ranking teams, but he still uses tons of statistics to back up his sports arguments. His favorite sports memories include witnessing the Buckeyes 42-39 victory over Michigan in 2006 en route to the National Championship, and hearing Eric Snow for MVP chants after the Cavaliers game 6 victory in the 2006 playoffs against the Wizards. Go Cavs, go Tribe, go Bucks and now go Flyers!
Kirk Lammers (kirk@waitingfornextyear.com)
A Cleveland sports fanatic from the beginning, Kirk was raised in North Central Ohio on the Marblehead Peninsula. There, he began ritually browsing the Plain Dealer for Tribe boxscores and statistics while helping his father run his fantasy baseball team from age seven. Guided by his grandmother, father, and uncles, his fanhood only increased, attending dozens of games at The Jake and embracing the new Browns despite their ineptness. He was at Bottlegate, and to this day, he has never been happier to be in the top row of the upper deck.
While baseball was his first love, Kirk’s greatest love is hoops. Playing in high school, the only claim to fame he has is one of the fiercest screeners to ever put on a Danbury Laker uniform. In college (at THE Ohio State University), he took an officiating class and officiated one memorable season of OSU Intramurals. He recently graduated from Ohio State with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer and Information Science.
In 2008, Kirk and two of his friends started Curse Of Cleveland, which was a labor of love for two years until other commitments limited their blogging. With the sports writing bug still present, Kirk has contributed to the Cavalier blog Stepien Rules. While fair and willing to listen to all sides, Kirk is a fierce and loyal defender of Cleveland’s sports teams and his Buckeyes.
Ben Cox (ben@waitingfornextyear.com)
Ben is a weekend editor at WFNY and a sometimes blogger at BenBlog.net. Born and raised in Northeast Ohio, Ben fell in love with basketball and the Cavs during their 91-92 run to the ECF and hasn’t looked back. Not that he doesn’t love the other Cleveland teams (he stayed for the Tribe’s 12 run comeback vs Seattle) but the Cavs are his first love.
From 2001-2006, Ben studied Music History at The Ohio State University and developed a love for writing while a columnist for their student paper, The Lantern. Out of all his Buckeye related memories still with him, nothing quite beats rushing the field after beating Michigan in 2002 (and rushing back into the stands to avoid the cloud of pepper spray).
From 2007-2008, Ben studied Library Science at Kent State University, because apparently companies aren’t enthusiastically looking to hire music historians.
Words that Ben has typed have appeared at his blog Random Thoughts (now defunct), TheClevelandFan.com, RealCavsFans,com, and LandLoyalty.com (formerly LeBrownsTown).
Brendan (brendan@waitingfornextyear.com)
[Brendan] Bowers (bowers@waitingfornextyear.com)
