A Look Back At SportsAgentBlog.com

Four years ago today, SportsAgentBlog.com was born. But not quite. It originally started as a subdomain of the company I owned while I was an undergrad in college. Upon choosing the University of Florida as the institution where I would earn my Bachelors in Arts, I told myself that I would spend my time focusing on classes and forego any opportunities to make some money while in school. That did not last for long. As a Freshman, I worked for somebody who was a marketing consultant for various Gainesville, FL nightclubs. When he left Gainesville, I started my own company – DHP – which stood for “Darren Heitner Promotions.” The money was good, which allowed me to eventually start up my own sports agency (Dynasty Athlete Representation) without the help of any outside investment. DHP was established in 2005, just after I had finished interning at Career Sports & Entertainment in Atlanta, GA. A few months after that, I would make a New Years Resolution to start a blog, which was originally titled, I Want to be a Sports Agent.

The blog was added as a subdomain to my website for DHP. It’s original URL was http://www.dhpromo.com/blog (which no longer exists). It was officially established on December 31, 2005.

I figured it would be fun, on our four year anniversary to look back at how the site has grown over time. I’ve made mistakes along the way but I’ve learned from them and feel good about my blog now. From changing web hosts (take a look on Hosting Foundry if you want to find the best hosts available) to marketing my blog on forums to putting out higher-quality content, I have made lots of positive changes. Thanks to something called the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, I have been able to go back in time to different dates in this website’s history. Make sure to click the links below to see what the site looked like.

On June 14, 2006, we were still posted up at http://www.dhpromo.com/blog. As you can see, our color scheme has remained constant since day one; dark red with a light blue. No specific reason other than I liked the mixture. We had a quirky layout, but it was way ahead of its time. Back then, it was just me and our original contributor, Nicholas Shwayri, running the show. Nick went on to intern at Octagon under Patrick McGee (who split off to create ProVentures), graduated from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, and currently works for the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington D.C.

By December 31, 2006, we were rocking a newer looking header and covering more sports agent related stories. For instance, we were hot on the trail when Ryan Howard made a switch away from baseball agent, Larry Reynolds. Notice that the header had our new website address: SportsAgentBlog.com, but the site was still titled, I Want to be a Sports Agent. I was also linking to videos of the topic of conversation for every post. Nicholas Shwayri had already left his position as a contributor, but we picked up two new people: Matthew Vuckovich and Chris Lesley. Vuckovich was running our Interview with the Agent segment and Lesley was covering international issues, but mostly soccer. Vuckovich and I would eventually start Dynasty Athlete Representation as partners, but I later bought his shares of the company.

On May 15th, 2007, we had expanded to include the aforementioned Interview with the Agent segment, a new Internships page, and started kicking around the idea of including advertisements. The posts were becoming more rich in content and the page views started to ramp up. Website visitors were also beginning to actively comment on the stories. I had just graduated from the University of Florida and was enjoying my break between graduation and the beginning of law school. At the same time, I was busy organizing Dynasty Athlete Representation, which was created only a month before the May 15th post.

By November 19, 2007, we were starting to create our Agencies database, which is now an excellent resource for anyone looking to reach a particular agency by name, state, or sport. Additionally, we had a Forum where people could discuss a variety of topics. The Forum was eventually disbanded, mostly due to my inability to control the crazy amount of spam, but it was fun while it lasted.

Forward to July 6, 2008, when for the first time ever, this site officially changed from I Want to be a Sports Agent to SportsAgentBlog.com | Sports Agent News. We did a gigantic overhaul of our theme, made it more user friendly, pretty, and rich with features. This is about the same time that the blog started to really pick up steam. We saw a huge spike in feed subscribers, daily page views, commentators, and emails coming from agents letting us know that they either loved the site or wished that it would go away. Unfortunately, this is where the Internet Archive Wayback Machine stops recognizing our CSS Styles, so clicking on the link does not do the site justice. Advertisers started seeing real value in associating their products with our site, PR specialists started to send us books, products, movies, and stories to review, and the website started to be referred to as SAB.

And here we are today. December 31, 2009. In four years, there have been a lot of changes around this blog, but there have also been a few constants.

1. I am still here and actively posting. While we have some of the brightest minds writing stories at SAB, I still try to contribute at least one post per weekday. No post gets published without being reviewed by me. I also add most of the images and spruce up the links on individual posts. If you were hoping that I’d be leaving sometime soon, you better think again.
2. We have never sold out. From day one, our focus has been sports agents, sports law, and sports business. We have expanded to include a lot of contractual negotiation analysis and occasionally drift off to some more “general sports topics.” But we have never used any techniques to gain cheap page views. This is one of the few blogs that has stayed true in that regard.
3. This site is nothing without you. My New Years Resolution on December 31, 2005 was to attempt to publish at least one story per weekday. I am happy with the amount of discussion on this site, but it could be greatly enhanced. If you read this site regularly, make it one of your New Years Resolutions this year to attempt to comment on each post in 2010 if you have something even marginally intelligent to say.

You may like this site now, but you better believe that there will be a lot of changes in 2010. Be a part of it. Thanks for being a part of me.