I was digging around in some of the oldest files I have from the history of 3rd Degree and decided to throw together a timeline of the history of the site. There may not be a whole lot of people curious about our history, but it was a fun exercise for me and I though I’d share it.
And yes I wrote it in 3rd person.
| First week of Oct 1997 |
While looking for a job having just moved back to Texas, Buzz Carrick decides to make a website to learn basic HTML encoding. He decides to make the site about a topic he enjoys, soccer, or more specifically the Dallas Burn. |
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| 2nd Week of Oct 1997 |
Buzz Carrick picks the name 3rd Degree and finds some space on a free web server site. |
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| 2nd Week of Oct 1997 |
3rd Degree goes on line with two or three pages, one of which is about the TV camera coverage of MLS games. |
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| February 1998 |
The first ever Fearless Predictions feature is written by Buzz Carrick. |
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| Early 1998 |
3rd Degree hits 1000 page views. |
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| Late 1998 |
3rd Degree hits 10,000 page views. |
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| August 21, 1998 |
The red circular logo debuts and Buzz Carrick starts to use Front Page to make the website. Prior to that Microsoft Word was frequently used to make the site.
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The oldest article that can currently be found that appeared on 3rd Degree: MLS Year Three. It’s about the level of play, broadcasting quality, and fan interest; three issues that are still relevant. |
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| Early 1999 |
Buzz Carrick first goes to Dallas Burn training and the Practice Observations feature starts. |
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| Feb 18, 1999 |
3rd Degree moved to http://3rddegree.webjump.com/ a site now defunct. |
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| Early 1999 |
After writing the first ever letter to us from a reader and several more over the first years, Viking asks if he can write something for the 3rd Degree, becoming the second contributor to the site. |
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| April 12, 1999 |
The funky circle logo makes it’s debut.
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| Mid 1999 |
Buzz Carrick buys the URL http://www.3rddegree.net/ and moves 3rd Degree to a independent server owned by a friend. Server space is paid for by exchange for a simple ad on the site. |
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| 1999 |
3rd Degree begins a rapid expansion starting with a news tracking page, the first of many features and additions to come. A Schedule & Results page is created and the season results are tracked. |
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| 2000 |
Reader polls are added to the site, a feature that lasts through 2004. |
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Sean Brockett asks if he can write something for the site, beginning a short lived but controversial stint as a contributor with a series first called “Daisy Killers” and later “From Where I Stand.” |
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Buzz Carrick approaches Kevin Lindstrom, mainly because Kevin never agrees with him, and asks him to come on board as a contributor. Kevin suggests that he write about some very specific subject and also suggests Parish Glover as a possible writer. |
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Kevin begins his “Power Rankings” feature which continues until he went to work for FC Dallas in 2006. Parish Glover starts a feature called “Doin the Math” and Viking changes his work to fan issues commentary and titles it “Fan, the Passion, to Burn.” Buzz Carrick coins the name “120 Fahrenheit” as the title of commentary he writes, but also continues to write the bulk of the news and normal site content. |
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3rd Degree hits the 50,000 page views mark. |
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| Early 2001 |
3rd Degree begins to track rumors, but that feature is abandoned after 2004 to focus on more professional quality features. |
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Mike Jeffries is hired by the Dallas Burn and tells Buzz Carrick, “We read your practice reports in Chicago to get the Burn lineups. So I need you to stop writing the exact lineup on Friday in your practice reports.” |
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| Feb 16, 2001 |
3rd Degree switches over to a more complex Front Page set up with column menus on the side of the page for all our standard features. This is the first modern 3 column set up that 3rd Degree basically still uses today. |
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| 2001 |
Top Ten lists make their first appearance on 3rd Degree; sometimes serious, sometimes funny, almost always a bit. |
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Ryan Suarez writes a series of short pieces for 3rd Degree called “Inside Stuff with Ryan Suarez.” It is the only recurring feature by a active FC Dallas player to appear on 3rd Degree. |
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Peter Welpton, host of Inside Soccer with Brad Sham, shuts down his “Burning Sensation” site and joins 3rd Degree. |
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Dustin Christmann, a.k.a. El Jeffe, writes a couple small pieces for 3rd Degree. |
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3rd Degree turns down an offer to join Rivals.com over ownership of content issues. |
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| April 2001 |
Photoshop helps in the creation of the cleanest, yet still amateur, 3rd Degree logo to that point.
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| End 2001 |
3rd Degree hits 100,000 page views for it’s lifetime and 50,000 page views on the year. |
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| January 2002 |
Dallas Burn General Manager Andy Swift invites Buzz Carrick to come to the MLS SuperDraft in Kansas City. The 3rd Degree Draft Day Chat Room is born. Due to a server crash there is a window during the early rounds where 3rd Degree is the only on-line live source for draft coverage. |
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| 2002 |
Rags Gardner starts shooting Dallas Burn games and allowing 3rd Degree to use his photos. |
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Chamo Jones first joins 3rd Degree as a guest writer. |
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3rd Degree agrees to enter a Co-op of MLS news sites that eventually evolves into the MatchNight Network. |
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Michael Lamb first starts to create graphics for 3rd Degree, starting with the page header. The debut of the 3rd Degree horse logo comes soon after.
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| Early 2003 |
The first Roster Dance appears on the site. |
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Chamo briefly takes over Vikings “Fan the Passion” series. |
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| March 2003 |
Burn GM Andy Swift offers Buzz Carrick a spot on the Burn Spring Training trip to Chile. This is the first 3rd Degree Road Trip with the team for spring training. |
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| October 2003 |
Jordan Stone writes a short series of pieces from the road with the U23 US National Team. Jordan is the second active player to write something for 3rd Degree. |
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| End 2003 |
3rd Degree likely breaks the 100,000 page view mark for a single year. |
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| Early 2004 |
Chamo begins his series of Hispanic focused pieces, frequently written in Spanish, called “Quemando Fan.” |
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| March 2004 |
3rd Degree Road Trip with the Dallas Burn to the La Manga Cup in Spain. |
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| April 2004 |
Buzz Carrick is notified 3rd Degree’s current server host is being sold and 3rd Degree will have to move. |
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| July 2004 |
3rd Degree joins the MatchNight Network and moves from a hand coded HTML set up to a database system. |
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| Oct 14, 2004 |
Steve Jolley writes a letter to post on 3rd Degree to reach Dallas fans in support of a local charity Dallas Scores. Jolley is the third active player to write something that appears on 3rd Degree. |
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| End 2004 |
3rd Degree does roughly 220,000 page views on the year, not including pages views inside the MNN set up for the second half of the year. |
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| January 2005 |
Buzz Carrick makes his first trip to a MLS Combine, this one in Los Angeles. |
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| Early 2005 |
The 3rd Degree Bull Logo is born to coincide with the re-branding of the franchise. The name 3rd Degree is retained despite the end of the Dallas Burn name.
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Ed Bazan starts doing Match Reports for 3rd Degree. |
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DJ Walker brings his “Steam of Consciousness” to 3rd Degree, things will never be the same again. |
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Jamie Fougerousee starts his “Behind Enemy Lines” series of game previews which runs through 2006. |
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| March 2005 |
Gina Zippilli starts doing reserve game Match Reports. Chris Murphy leaves ESPNsoccernet and starts writing his “Next Level” features for 3rd Degree |
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3rd Degree Road Trip to La Manga Spain with FC Dallas |
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| 2005 |
Professional photographer John Rivera starts sending occasional photos to 3rd Degree because he likes what we do. |
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| End 2005 |
3rd Degree does 508,797 pages hits on it’s own in the year. There’s likely another 100,000 to 200,000 page hits on the MNN pages of 3rd Degree content. |
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| Early 2006 |
Kevin Lindstrom departs to accept a job with FC Dallas and Daniel Robertson takes over his “Power Rankings.” |
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JT Elliott joins 3rd Degree and begins his limited but much admired “Who Is” series. |
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| March 2006 |
The single biggest traffic month in site history with 87,546 page views on www.3rddegree.net, most likely due to the 3rd Degree Road Trip to Spain/England with FCD and the addition of Kenny Cooper to the team. |
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| Late 2006 |
Jason Gulledge starts shooting FC Dallas exclusively for 3rd Degree. He’s the first photographers to shoot exclusively for 3rd Degree. |
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John Carlton starts contributing articles on a part time basis including the “FCD Lore” series. |
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| October 2006 |
Lee Smith decides to shut down the MatchNight Network and notifies Buzz Carrick he has until the start of the next season to find a new server. |
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| End 2006 |
3rd Degree traffic begins to plateau, with 589,602 hits on the primary URL and perhaps another 200,000, give or take, on MNN. 3rd Degree accounts for roughly 1/3 of all traffic on the MatchNight Network. |
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| January 2007 |
Buzz Carrick begins the build and implementation of a Word Press set up on a new independent server with the majority of the important, complicated work being done by photographer, cum database manager, Jason Gulledge. |
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| March 30, 2007 |
The most recent version of 3rd Degree goes live on our new server using Word Press & MySQL as the backbone setup and database. This move allows the creation of the “Under the Lamp” blog section of the site. |
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Chamo Jones begins his FCD News Recap blog posts on 3rd Degree. In addition to Buzz Carrick, Peter Welpton and DJ Walker also both blog from time to time. |
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| April 2007 |
Ed Bazan has to depart for personal reasons, and Jamie Fougerousee takes over “Match Reports.” |
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| April 6, 2007 |
Jason Benfield begins his “Matchday” series of game previews, replacing “Behind Enemy Lines.” |
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| December 2007 |
3rd Degree Road Trip with FCD to T&T for the Shaka Hislop Tribute Cup. |
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| Dec 31, 2007 |
3rd Degree does 617,476 page hits on the year on 271,388 unique visits. The traffic is a combination of January to March on the MatchNight and March to the end of the year on the new independent server. |
Congratulations Buzz. We all appreciate the much needed coverage. Good Luck on 2008
Yes, thanks for the history — I enjoyed reading it! And thanks for all you do. I’ve learned a great deal from you and this site.
MH
Very interesting read. It’s amazing how you’ve grown even since I started following your site a mere 4 years ago. You’ve come a long way since 1997. Congratulations…I look forward to the day you can make this your full-time job. I recommend that everyone who reads this site make a donation to Buzz periodically.
Good stuff Buzz, only wish more teams and media would follow your lead.
Thanks for the history and the memories.
Looking forward to 10 more years of great coverage!
keep at it, grasshopper. this is a great site…actually, better than the official site IMO. i like the insight and all the possible moves you guys report to inform the fans. it get’s me really excited about what could be for next season.
As someone about to embark on a not entirely dissimilar website (not about FCD, or MLS for that matter) you’re an inspiration!!
KUTWG Mate
Al
(Aljarov)
I thank you because you are what gave Brian at Oz City Soccer the idea to do the same thing with the Wizards and before that we had nothing. So while I hate FCD, Thank you!