TNIAAM 2.0 turns three years old: What have we learned? (and what can we improve?)

The 2019 Syracuse Orange sports calendar nearly broke me as a fan, I’ll admit it right now. Not because I haven’t sat through losing seasons before — we all have — but because of the “how” of it all, especially after a pretty spectacular 2018 before it.

Chances are you may have felt similarly. Based on the comments, it certainly appeared that way. We’ve been through quite a bit as a fan base in the last few decades (and especially the most recent one). But 2019 just seemed to be the year that broke down a lot of us.

What I’d like to make sure of is that TNIAAM’s not contributing to that feeling, and rather, is helping make it less awful where we can. This place was founded on trying to make everyone forget about the football program being moribund at the time (thanks, GERG!). The program’s much less moribund now, and as recently as 13 months ago, was actually good.

Basketball’s a different story, and we’re still getting our sea legs on how to talk about a truly bad Syracuse men’s hoops squad, just like the rest of world. But give us some time, and the jokes and garbage can find its way there too. There’s no blueprint for this, after all.

So I guess the questions now, as we’ve now reached three years of the “new” TNIAAM, is what have we learned about each other so far? What’s working? What isn’t? Obviously the internet’s changed considerably in recent years, and that contributes to many of the differences you’ll see. We want to embrace some new, less traditional ideas where possible to try to make engaging with us more fun (no matter how bad the teams are). So we’re certainly open to suggestions on how to do that in a way that both satisfies the current community AND helps us grow (which we still want to do).

Or if you’d rather just leave #CancelCassillo and/or #BringBackKeeley comments instead, that’s fine too. ‘Tis your freedom. Thanks for a fun last three years of running the show, and looking forward to more ahead.