Better Know an OTE "Writer": Candystripes for Breakfast

Today marks the third installment of BKaO'W' (why we decided to make an acronym for this, I don't know). Past articles have focused on (and been written by) MNWildcat and babaoreally, the latter of whom I have actually met and can say without question that he's a pretty cool guy (for a Purdue fan). I can only hope that my attempt at this goes as well as theirs have.

Who Am I?: I'm Batman!

Well, OK, I'm not really, but I play him when visiting the fanshots. In real life, I'm a 2013 graduate of the Indiana University Kelley School of Business, having majored in marketing. The most notable non-sports related thing I did in Bloomington was discovering (or possibly rediscovering) my passion for tabletop gaming, which has been both a blessing, in that it gave me an identity on campus and helped me gather a good group of friends, and a curse (GenCon badges and Magic cards are not cheap things to keep buying), but certainly an experience I wouldn't trade for anything.

More related to sports, I was a 4 year season ticket holder for IU football and basketball, and only missed one basketball game that I had a ticket to in those four years (in my defense, I was in Chicago during that game, and it was only Minnesota, so it's not like it was a huge miss anyway). Of course, being an IU football fan meant there were a lot much gut-wrenching losses than notable wins, but just know, I was there for pretty much all of them.

How did I get here? As many folks may remember, a couple years back, ESPN decided to switch their commenting system over from their own chat to Facebook-enabled chatting. The people who at the time frequented ESPN's Big Ten blog comments were rather unhappy with that arrangement, and searched for a new home. Though I did not often contribute to their discussions, I visited those articles quite a bit, so a couple days after they left, I left as well. Luckily, I missed the biggest messes that happened over here when they arrived, so everything had pretty much settled itself when I appeared in a comments section here for the first time. The primary thing I remember about that appearance was vehemently denying any allegiance to Notre Dame, because reversible jackets fans are the worst. Not too long after that, MNWildcat was putting together the Indiana Closing Arguments and I volunteered to help, as someone who actually cared about IU football, and decided that I might like to write a bit more for OTE. As it happens, OTE decided that they wanted an Indiana writer. It was a perfect fit.

What do I do when not on OTE: First off, as anyone from the fanshots would tell you, I am always on OTE, just lurking. Second, since I am not actually on here 24/7, I still try to get out and game as much as I possibly can. What that usually means is going down to my local game store on Wednesday nights and play games for about 6 hours. Occasionally, I'll travel other places for a Magic tournament, but not nearly as often as I'd like to. Beyond that, I'm just trying to figure out how to get paid to do something productive with my life, as it's really the one thing holding me back right now. I tried working a sales job for a bit, but that's just not for me.

That's great and all, but this is a sports website. Right, getting back to the sports side of things, I've found that I root for a bunch of teams that are not good at winning championships. In 4 years in Bloomington, I saw one championship winning team (the 8th for IU Men's Soccer), one team get to their championship game before falling short (the 2009 Colts), and a bunch of teams not doing a whole lot else (the Pacers, Cubs, Avalanche, every other Hoosier sports team, and the Columbus Crew, though they had just won MLS Cup in 2008, so that was OK). I am still waiting for the next title winner out of any of those teams, and fear I might be waiting a while.

Anything else?: Other than having horribly shattered the image of Hoosier Batman for the fanshot folk, I haven't really gone into too much depth about me, so if you want to know anything else, drop it in the comments. I might answer it.