In the world of the Internet, Falcons’ sports are hard to find and mostly confined to the university’s own site. However, there is a website out there that few know about and it covers all the Falcon sports. This site is Ay-Ziggy-Zoomba.com and is run solely for the love of Falcon sports.
The man in charge of running this site is Bowling Green alumnus Grant Cummings and it is a runoff of his old site www.pepperguy.com, which was a site that ran BG athletic message boards. This site was started two years ago when, then rival, Rivals.com, dropped their BGSU board. This made Grant’s board the only one on the web and so he and his father decided to rename it to Ay-Ziggy-Zoomba.com.
Grant’s father was a long time member of the Falcon Club and one of the biggest Bowling Green fans ever. He had just retired and was going to be a correspondent for Grant by writing articles for the website. However, he passed away only a few months after Grant got the site going and now Grant has dedicated the site in his father’s memory.
“I’ve kind of dedicated this site to the memory of my father,” said Grant. “He was such a big Falcon fan.”
Bowling Green basketball coach Dan Dakich even promised Grant that he could take his father’s bleacher when Anderson Arena is torn down.
The popularity of this site grew the day before Coach Dakich left for West Virginia and was hit by numerous people from around the country. West Virginia fans were posting messages trying to get the fans’ opinions of Coach Dakich and a ton of messages came in revolving around that whole event alone.
This year, the popularity has soared due to the tremendous success of the football team.
“This football season has really seen an increase in activity,” said Grant. “Now that we are on top, it’s funny to see people from other schools come and talk smack on the site.”
Recently, the media has even been hitting the site hard and it has been a key part for media outlets to get information on the Falcons. Hits from the New York Times and other major outlets around the country have been to check out the information given.
If you are interested in joining this site, the membership is free and has been growing over the past two years. What was once 50 members at the start of the last football season is now 250. The site has no pop-up adds and pulls in no revenue due to Grant wanting to keep the site clean solely for his love of Falcon sports.
“I don’t make any money off the site, in fact I lose quite a bit of money,” said Grant. “I think we have a great bunch of ‘regulars’ and we have quite a bit of fun.”
Two of the “regulars” on this site are Bowling Green graduates Rick and Marta Crow. They are diehard Falcon hockey fans and have loved having a site where they can go to talk about the games.
“It’s just a great place for Falcon fans to go and chat about the games,” said Marta Crow. “Being with other Falcon fans also makes it a safer atmosphere and you feel more secure about the comments you add.”
The content on this website is truly all about Falcons’ sports. You can pull up message boards, articles, listen to the marching band, get backgrounds for your desktop, chat with other Falcon fans, and even watch the clip from ESPN College Gameday. There is no other site out there that can compare to the items available on this site.
Another huge fan of this site is Michael Wherley, a Bowling Green graduate, who lives in Akron now. Wherley is considered by the chat community at Ay-Ziggy-Zoomba.com, to be the biggest Falcon fan there is. He complains about the lack of attention given to Bowling Green in Northeast Ohio and how everyone just seems to care about Ohio State.
“The site is great and allows for people like me, who live a couple hours away to keep up on the happenings at BG,” Wherley said. “I highly recommend this site to fans of BG athletics…and believe me, you will get hooked!”
In all, if you’re a Falcon fan and want to get some great information or chat with other Falcons, this site is the place for you. A great community has been built on this site and more students are wanted.
