There’s unbelievable breaking news or a crazy game just ended — if you’re a sports fan, what do you do?
There are a number of options and many larger platforms have come and gone over the years (remember Facebook Stadium?). Some will go to their intimate group chat on iMessage or maybe Insta, some fans will tweet into the noisy timeline, maybe you’ll go and comment on the Instagram post from a news outlet or comment in the Bleacher Report feed — but some of the most engaged sports fans reside on Reddit.
This article is not a recommendation to drop everything and prioritize Reddit for a social media strategy; it’s a look at one of the most engaged sports communities everywhere, a subreddit that is just outside the top 250 subreddits in terms of subscribers but is often right near the top in average comments per day — /r/CFB, the college football community on Reddit.
In such a tribal sport, why do over 2 million fans subscribe to ‘The Internet’s Tailgate’ (as the subreddit calls itself) and what’s it like to manage and moderate such a vibrant, vehement community? Bobak Ha’Eri is part of the team behind r/CFB and has been there since the early days of the subreddit, helping to oversee the community as its growth has made things more fun, but more complicated. The result today is a thriving subreddit (and a brand that has extended to a Twitter account with hundreds of thousands of followers) that has had to professionalize, in some ways, but remains as irreverent and funny and entertaining as ever.
So what does happen when news breaks? When it does, Ha’Eri and his r/CFB co-moderators have to be ready for the tsunami coming.
“If you don’t moderate a website at all, you have total chaos,” said Ha’Eri, who had experience in message board moderation before /r/CFB, but on a much smaller scale in comparison. “With a college football section, one of the weird things that we get, which isn’t involving offensive material, is everybody’s going to try and post the same story as soon as it happens…”
The criteria for the /r/CFB when it comes to managing the deluge of content that 2.1M+ subscribers can bring, Ha’Eri explained, is: “Does it add to the conversation? Then maybe we’ll allow another one in. But it’s to also manage what I know most users would like. What we learn, because we sometimes will churn out surveys [asking] users what they want to have, and what they like about r/CFB is a variety of stories, including kind of the squirrely ones that people hadn’t thought of or heard of, is either a wacky thing at a minor school or just some kind of aspect…”
With a subreddit that big, it becomes necessary to have a more formalized approach to moderation, a framework that can guide the decision-making of the team of moderators that ultimately direct the traffic on /r/CFB. Ha’Eri has a legal background, so his mind sometimes thinks in such terms when considering moderation choices. The team behind /r/CFB has also organically developed an approach to leading the community and the brand. Because when you’re that big, there is power to wield. And, as someone once said, with great power comes great responsibility.
“[You] kind of trust [Reddit’s upvote/downvote] system, but at the same time, we have to play a more parental role,” said Ha’Eri, who fell in love with college football as an undergrad at USC. “And again, I’m really belaboring this, making it academic, but from a legal analogy, you know, that’s what the judge’s role is. The judge has to say, is this case enough to move forward to a jury? Is this enough where we’ve stated something that is a question that the law provides a remedy, so it isn’t quite that mind-intensive to be a moderator.
“We’ve always had that level of trying to keep some sort of level of equality between all of us with some respect for seniority and understanding. So then we created an executive committee of more senior moderators who always end up making the bigger decisions like should we move forward and make an LLC? Should we move forward and make that? So we’re not forcing [things] because I mean, you know, you might have up to 20 or 30 moderators [and] that can be onerous to try and get everyone on the same page. And also sometimes you need to move quickly.”
Even with a soft layer of oversight, it’s primarily the users and their upvotes and engagement that drive r/CFB. It is quite the cosmopolitan community; spend a few minutes browsing the threads and you’ll quickly have counted dozens of different college programs represented. Fans that make their way to sports bars IRL to watch the Saturday games will often go to the ‘Michigan’ bar or an ‘Ohio State’ bar, where they can be surrounded by fellow fans all sporting the same colors. And online, there are plenty of team-specific message boards and communities for college football fans, so why do so many eschew those more insular places in favor of the mixed town square on /r/CFB? It’s an interesting question posed to Ha’Eri, because college football is so tribal; it’s that passionate patriotism that makes the sport so special. But r/CFB has thrived because of, not in spite of, the melting pot.
Ha’Eri once found himself on USC message boards, but he’s come to recognize why so many fans flock to /r/CFB, often leaving their segregated communities behind. And it’s that intermingling that has made r/CFB so special.
“They have their own peculiarities oftentimes,” said Ha’Eri of the more team-specific platforms and message boards. “it’s a very concentrated community and they sometimes see feedback loops…Sometimes you get irrational views and it becomes an echo chamber, and that echo chamber feedback loop can be an issue. And frankly, sometimes you’re like, these people, I’m a fan, but you all sound crazy….
“r/CFB did something that’s hard to do,” he continued, “which is have a college football website that caters to all fans and can keep the peace…I think people like hearing from other fan bases. They like hearing news…”
As Ha’Eri noted in discussing the vastness of the /r/CFB community, there are over 130 FBS teams in college football, each with their own dedicated fan bases. Some fan bases are bigger than others, rivalries can get fierce, and power users can dominate the conversation if left unchecked. Ha’Eri and his colleagues know what makes r/CFB so special, though, and to hear him tell it is to understand that there’s, well, at least something of a method to the madness — underlying objectives that guide how they want to govern the community.
“Our official mission statement is ‘We’re a welcoming community that celebrates fun, camaraderie and creativity in all of college football,’” he said. “Because that is what we’re really about…r/CFB offers that kind of like, here’s all the news items that are kind of hot right now. Oh, but the fun thing is, here’s a community of people that love to make, usually jokes or interesting commentary and sometimes worthless commentary. But that’s what the the voting arrows are for…”
Beyond the mission statement, the alternative moniker of r/CFB feels so spot on for anyone familiar with the community. Because if Twitter once proclaimed itself as ‘the biggest virtual sports bar in the world,‘ /r/CFB really does feel like ‘The Internet’s Tailgate.’ A place where this plenty of passion and shouting, to be sure, but also the jokes and witty commentary to which Ha’Eri alluded.
To keep the analogy going, and to try and understand why so many fans go to Reddit, of all places, to expound and vent, there’s something special about the communal nature of r/CFB that stands in stark contrast to the noisy nature of shouting into the void on Twitter. Comment trees sprout branches upon branches on /r/CFB, conversation builds with others more so than the hordes of individuals ratio’ing the tweet of a team or reporter. Fans aren’t just seeking an outlet to scream, they’re seeking other fans. I’ve noticed, at eventful times, fans going to Instagram and commenting en masse on the team’s most recent post, even if it’s from several hours ago like a photo of the team in warm-ups. That’s the pull that Reddit offers. Because whether it’s the game thread or the postgame thread, the r/CFB ‘tailgaters’ go to their college football town square to say their piece, knowing others are waiting to do the same — and react and engage with others.
“Some people, I swear, have been sitting back as the game is going on and [thinking] like, I know what I’m going to write in the post game,” said Ha’Eri, who has helped grow the @RedditCFB Twitter account to over 330,000 follows, partly by sharing some of the best /r/CFB posts and comments. “They’ll write something and happily hit F5 [to refresh] over and over again the moment it appears…Sometimes it’s serious, sometimes it’s hilarious, sometimes it’s a lot of frustration. But it provokes conversation because the way the comment section works is they’re all comment trees based off a top level comment.”
As fans come back week after week, game after game, day after day, something starts to happen — community forms. Ha’Eri and his moderator team mostly sit back and let fans start conversations and go back and forth with each other. It’s seeing that play out which is so heartening to Ha’Eri and why all the (unpaid) work that goes into keeping it going is worthwhile. Because while there may be biting jokes, maybe even some name-calling — it’s all fun at the end of the day and it’s a community that transcends any differences in team colors, accents, and borders. There’s something life-reinforcing about that, at the risk of hyperbole, reminds us about the inherent power of community that sports embodies. That’s the magic one can see in r/CFB.
“It’s a part of the [college football] culture. We’re used to ranting at each other or making funny comments,” said Ha’Eri. “We found our strength is a community and the users that come to us and what makes them useful is that people bond over the sport.
“Sport is is beyond politics. It’s beyond [this or that]. It’s joyous, it’s fun, and if you hopefully have a healthy relationship with it, you know, ultimately it’s silly and frivolous.”
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