A guy named Jason Svoboda aka Svo, boda, Irish Envy, and a half dozen other names, from Indianapolis started the board almost 6 years ago. He had a brother, cousin, or somebody he knew well who ran another board (Big 10?) his entrepreneurial spirit led him to give it a go. IE started slowly. Same software as today but plain Jane. It was about a year before the logo got developed through a contest. Then a guy was hired for something like $100 to finalize the logo. Members had a lot of suggestions. Membership grew and the site became a recruiting Mecca. We had members from around the country that feed in info on recruits in their local area and we had others that subscribed to recruiting services that shared info.
A year or so later (I'm not going into precise dates, details, and who) this board (and one or two others) was threatened with legal action by Mike Frank (his company before ISD) and another recruiting service (Jack Freeman's if I recall correctly) for posting premium articles and other articles from there sites. They threatened lawsuits and as the the sites they went after were all shoe string operations that didn't have the resources for legal battles and all caved. I think all the threatened companies were put up for sale over time as the owner (one was a HS kid) couldn't live with the threats.
Svo put this board up for sale and it was bought by a Canadian entrepreneur purely as an investment opportunity. Svo was to provide administrative assistance for some time period as part of the sale which he did but not under his own name. He used a clever nom de plume. Officially he left because of unspecified job or family demands on time. No details were provided. As people learned of the new absentee landlord with no interest in ND except making a buck off the site. Readership waned. A volunteer administrator Tiger something or other, turned out to be an MSU fan. He wasn't a troll but that didn't help. Then some mods and members took it upon themselves to trash the site "to get even with that Canadian guy". It wasn't pretty.
An underground pirate site was set up and many key IE member and mods migrated there. This place became a sewer. It got pretty ugly.
Enter GoshenGipper, an ND Subway Alum, who lead the charge to rebuild the site. He was tireless as a poster, mediator, moderator, and cheerleader. He died about 2 years ago in a automobile accident.
Somewhere in this time frame Svo opened a new site with same software. It's around today.
IE went through another change of ownership and another decline around or after after GG's death. The board had a increase in trolls and smack (This is NOT a smack board) and a lack of moderators to update the board and maintain control. Those that tried to do an effective job were overwhelmed and exhausted.
About a year ago there was influx of new blood and the board went through another transition period. A bunch of posters were told to clean up their acts. Those who didn't lost their posting privileges. (Posting on IE is a privilege not a right. If you don't like the culture here, feel free to move on.) The recruiting forums were rejuvenated, football discussion grew, and Phammer expanded the graphics greatly. For those that aren't aware Phammer is full time ND student. He cracks the books, roots for ND and is the administrator (NOT owner of this site) in his copious free time. He does a lot of work (mostly unnoticed by the readers of this site) to keep this place running. None of the moderators own the site either. We're spread out across the country and most of us have never met and probably never will. But we do share a common interest, GCND.
GO IRISH!
