Claret And Cobalt • a Real Salt Lake blog

To you who find this site:

You may notice I have not posted anything here for two months. I initially wanted to start a full-on, honest-to-goodness, update-every-day-with-links-and-news-and-commentary, Real Salt Lake fan blog. I'm a journalist by trade, a writer at heart, and I thought I could do the job well.

And I still do. But in the two months since I created this site (the result of one of my frequent bouts of insomnia, due to my late-night shifts at the office), things have gotten busier in my life, my attention has been directed elsewhere, and perhaps most significantly, I realized just how many RSL blogs there are out there. Most of them have been running for months and years, have already built up contacts and followers, and are doing really stellar work. (And I invite and encourage anyone reading this to check out the "RSL News" sidebar to see what I mean.) Sites like Keepin' it Real are on top of every scrap of team news (even scouting reports from Argentina!), and other sites like RSLfm are invaluable for their streaming game videos, community and archive of links. And that's to say nothing at all of the excellent supporter groups like the Loyalists, RCB, Section 26, and their respective communities and team websites.

I have looked at all these things, and I have thought to myself, "What can I really do that they aren't doing?" And I came to the conclusion that I didn't want to fight off these good and committed fans for posts, didn't want to over-saturate an already amazing RSL blogosphere by duplicating what others were already doing.

So, what does that leave me? What I should have focused on from the start: my own fandom, my own personal relationship with the team. And my personal writing ability.

Now, I'm not as crazy or committed as many RSL fans. (I would like to be -- things like money, time, and guilt prevent me from doing so.) I've been to two out of three homes games this season, with intent to go to as many more as I can afford or times allows. I watch every match, either live or replayed, via the MLS video archive service. I sit here at the office late on a Saturday night, wearing an away jersey and mourning the evening's miserable result in Colorado. And I feel that these things qualify me, at least as much as the average attendee at Rio Tinto, to speak about my feelings as a Real Salt Lake fan, and how the team relates to my life (or how it doesn't).

As many sports fans, I sometimes feel that RSL have an inexplicable and inextricable tie to my own life -- that somehow the events in my life, my mood and my personal and professional experiences, influence the team's form, or vice versa. If you have read the book "Fever Pitch," by Nick Hornby (and I cannot stress enough that I am speaking about the BOOK, the autobiographical diary about Hornby's obsession with Arsenal, not the execrable Jimmy Fallon/Drew Barrymore chick flick about the Red Sox -- it's not even the same sport!), then perhaps you will have an inkling of what I am getting at, the way that life and sport seem to be connected.

It makes no damn sense. I get that. But I believe it all the same. Sometimes, anyway.

So. What can you expect to find here, you happy few who arrive at this space? A somewhat self-serving, personal, and I hope entertaining account of my own relationship with the Claret-and-Cobalt. I invite any of you who may read this to share your own stories, and comment or write about how RSL have, for better or worse, intruded on your own lives.

Being a fan is so much more than just showing up and yelling. I feel like there's a lot of stories that deserve to be told.

So I'll start with mine, and we'll go from there.