Where's Phil (Grosz)

[Parkland Fan]

I haven't heard anything about Phil in a long time. I hope that he is doing well.
I was just looking through some old copies of Blue White and thought of him. I used to attend his annual recruiting updates with the Lehigh Valley Alumni Association. Phil was a wealth of detailed info on our new recruits - and this was before the internet so his info was really appreciated.
Thinks in advance for any updates.

 

[RickinDayton]

I haven't heard anything about Phil in a long time. I hope that he is doing well.
I was just looking through some old copies of Blue White and thought of him. I used to attend his annual recruiting updates with the Lehigh Valley Alumni Association. Phil was a wealth of detailed info on our new recruits - and this was before the internet so his info was really appreciated.
Thinks in advance for any updates.

You probably need to take your question to the BWI/McAndrew Board.

 

[KCLion]

You probably need to take your question to the BWI/McAndrew Board.

Yep, no one here knows anything about Phil, ah, ok.

 

[Phil's Rug]

No comment

 

[LandoComando]

Yep, no one here knows anything about Phil, ah, ok.

Or maybe no one cares?

 

[Parkland Fan]

No comment

Huh? Now I am really puzzled. And I am not a member so I can't post on the McAndrew Board.

 

[PSU&Trout]

Huh? Now I am really puzzled. And I am not a member so I can't post on the McAndrew Board.

Funniest thread is several years

 

[heckmans]

Huh? Now I am really puzzled. And I am not a member so I can't post on the McAndrew Board.

K. I'll bite
When rivals was spun up, they often hired local media outlets to run and moderate the college-specific forums (and provide a web outlet for the local media outlet). Phil, who published a print magazine called BWI, managed the Penn State recruiting site for Rivals and published stories, etc.
You joined here in 2001 and for most of your tenure here, McAndrew was the free board you posted on that was affiliated with Penn State rivals/BWI.
In 2021 Phil retired and sold BWI to Coman publishing. You can read the story here. https://pennstate.rivals.com/news/a-labor-of-love-3
The online presence of BWI went to On3, along with the staff (Ryan Snyder, etc).

The Penn State Rivals site ceased being called BWI and was branded Happy Valley Insider. Thankfully, though not an employee, Lord McAndrew was coerced be the moderator of a free board over there, so this forum we are typing on, changed from McAndrew to the "Penn State Football" forum.

 

[Obliviax]

K. I'll bite
When rivals was spun up, they often hired local media outlets to run and moderate the college-specific forums (and provide a web outlet for the local media outlet). Phil, who published a print magazine called BWI, managed the Penn State recruiting site for Rivals and published stories, etc.
You joined here in 2001 and for most of your tenure here, McAndrew was the free board you posted on that was affiliated with Penn State rivals/BWI.
In 2021 Phil retired and sold BWI to Coman publishing. You can read the story here. https://pennstate.rivals.com/news/a-labor-of-love-3
The online presence of BWI went to On3, along with the staff (Ryan Snyder, etc).

The Penn State Rivals site ceased being called BWI and was branded Happy Valley Insider. Thankfully, though not an employee, Lord McAndrew was coerced be the moderator of a free board over there, so this forum we are typing on, changed from McAndrew to the "Penn State Football" forum.

Thanks for posting that. I recall Tom stating that the end was coming and asking people to go to On3. IIRC, he got some kind of cease and desist order as it sounded like this board was going to simply "green screen" one morning. It looks like the "friends of Tom" all went to On3 and others stayed here. On3 is fine, BTW, and I have no hard feelings for any of their posters or Tom.

 

[heckmans]

Thanks for posting that. I recall Tom stating that the end was coming and asking people to go to On3. IIRC, he got some kind of cease and desist order as it sounded like this board was going to simply "green screen" one morning. It looks like the "friends of Tom" all went to On3 and others stayed here. On3 is fine, BTW, and I have no hard feelings for any of their posters or Tom.

Yeah...I didn't get into the drama. Lord McAndrew absolutely tried to mislead rivals members into thinking that rivals would no longer have a Penn State presence.
I, among a few others, tried to explain how BWI was an independent publication with a Rivals partnership, and that ending of that partnership simply meant that the names would change on rivals.com.

I have nothing against any of the posters that followed, but personally, I have never missed Lord McAndrew. He was a tyrant and a hypocrite. He would routinely threaten to ban people for straying into politics that he didn't agree with, but would ignore politics if he agreed with them - and personally, he would post about political things, but call it "history". Bye Felicia!

 

[Obliviax]

Yeah...I didn't get into the drama. Lord McAndrew absolutely tried to mislead rivals members into thinking that rivals would no longer have a Penn State presence.
I, among a few others, tried to explain how BWI was an independent publication with a Rivals partnership, and that ending of that partnership simply meant that the names would change on rivals.com.

I have nothing against any of the posters that members, but personally, I have never missed Lord McAndrew. He was a tyrant and a hypocrite. He would routinely threaten to ban people for straying into politics that he didn't agree with, but would ignore politics if he agreed with them - and personally, he would post about political things, but call it "history". Bye Felicia!

he treated me ok. I tried to only post politics in response to a snarky political post. I got into it a couple of times with him and feel I got the best of him. He may disagree. But he seemed to respect my position and I tried to respect his. Most often, he'd just nuke the entire thread. But I get it. We see people pollute good threads all the time with snarky and/or veiled political comments.

 

[PSUSignore]

Thanks for posting that. I recall Tom stating that the end was coming and asking people to go to On3. IIRC, he got some kind of cease and desist order as it sounded like this board was going to simply "green screen" one morning. It looks like the "friends of Tom" all went to On3 and others stayed here. On3 is fine, BTW, and I have no hard feelings for any of their posters or Tom.

The whole creation/transition to On3 was a mess. I don't recall any of the staff or Tom saying this site would cease, but they were openly promoting On3 which isn't a surprise since that's where they were to be paid going forward. It was pretty stupid of Rivals to allow promotion of a competitor here but when the mods were all now going to be On3 employees I doubt Rivals corporate even knew about it.

Regardless, many posters here jumped to conclusions and assumed this board was going away and the staff and Tom did nothing to dissuade them because they of course wanted to promote the new site, and gladly let people make the wrong assumptions. Some of us tried to explain that there was no way Rivals would cease to exist as it was too large, and the PSU was too large a brand for them to get rid of a Rivals PSU board completely. Regardless, people were freaking out and all made plans to jump over to the new site the first day it opened as they wrongly assumed or misunderstood that nothing would change here aside from the staff and naming conventions.

I dislike the On3 board because it discourages discussion the way it's being moderated. I don't mean the political stuff mentioned above because I'm mature enough to ignore that nonsense. I mean their insistence on having a dedicated thread for every topic. My guess is this is Tom's halfway approach to resurrect the old topic view from the BWI board of yore that everyone liked, but it doesn't work at all the way he's doing it there. Nobody is going to wade through 20 pages of a thread to join a discussion they weren't already in, they will create a new one and when that happens Tom just merges it into the big thread and deletes the outlier. Also half of those topic threads are nothing but Tom posting Tweets, there's no discussion at all, defeating the entire point of a message board. If I want to just read Twitter, I'll go browse Twitter. I also don't like how Tom promotes the half-naked pics over there, it's stupid and irrelevant. Go to a porn site if that's what you're looking for online.

Sadly the fractured user base has made both boards worse, as now both have fewer users so there's less discussion overall, but I tend to favor this board as at least there is some chatter beyond just a bunch of Tweets.

 

[Parkland Fan]

K. I'll bite
When rivals was spun up, they often hired local media outlets to run and moderate the college-specific forums (and provide a web outlet for the local media outlet). Phil, who published a print magazine called BWI, managed the Penn State recruiting site for Rivals and published stories, etc.
You joined here in 2001 and for most of your tenure here, McAndrew was the free board you posted on that was affiliated with Penn State rivals/BWI.
In 2021 Phil retired and sold BWI to Coman publishing. You can read the story here. https://pennstate.rivals.com/news/a-labor-of-love-3
The online presence of BWI went to On3, along with the staff (Ryan Snyder, etc).

The Penn State Rivals site ceased being called BWI and was branded Happy Valley Insider. Thankfully, though not an employee, Lord McAndrew was coerced be the moderator of a free board over there, so this forum we are typing on, changed from McAndrew to the "Penn State Football" forum.

Thanks heckmans for the news that Phil is retired.

 

[knickslions]

I have to agree, that site is pretty boring and very oddly managed/moderated. It simply doesn't facilitate as good of interaction. And you are absolutely right about threads that are just Tom linking tweets. I like new info but you usually after scroll through a lot of posts to find relevant stuff. I don't need to sift through each of the hundreds of "offers" we make to maybe find an update on a recruit that we are actually pursuing hard.

I also find the objectification of women in so many threads to be just plain dumb/immature and probably could lead to a lawsuit as the boards should be open to female posters who may be offended.

But you do post there?

Their ojectification of young girls is creepy

 

[knickslions]

I have some, but not very often. You may want to try out their site though. There is a lot higher percentage of people that share your views.

So they are not all doom and gloom? Good to know

 

[heckmans]

I have to agree, that site is pretty boring and very oddly managed/moderated. It simply doesn't facilitate as good of interaction. And you are absolutely right about threads that are just Tom linking tweets. I like new info but you usually after scroll through a lot of posts to find relevant stuff. I don't need to sift through each of the hundreds of "offers" we make to maybe find an update on a recruit that we are actually pursuing hard.

I also find the objectification of women in so many threads to be just plain dumb/immature and probably could lead to a lawsuit as the boards should be open to female posters who may be offended.

Tom McAndrew is a hostile work environment waiting to happen

 

[diontechristmas]

Speaking of, I used to like the old Audibles board run by Mark Brennan, formerly affiliated with Scout and now 247. Traffic over there slowed years ago and I came over here. Despite PSU’s massive fan base, 3 boards is too many and all 3 are diluted.

 

[EPC FAN]

wo

Yeah...I didn't get into the drama. Lord McAndrew absolutely tried to mislead rivals members into thinking that rivals would no longer have a Penn State presence.
I, among a few others, tried to explain how BWI was an independent publication with a Rivals partnership, and that ending of that partnership simply meant that the names would change on rivals.com.

I have nothing against any of the posters that followed, but personally, I have never missed Lord McAndrew. He was a tyrant and a hypocrite. He would routinely threaten to ban people for straying into politics that he didn't agree with, but would ignore politics if he agreed with them - and personally, he would post about political things, but call it "history". Bye Felicia!

ok, Ralph

 

[WaylonJ]

IIRC there was also some dialogue that when On3 went live it was going to be a subscription pay site. I'm still not clear on whether that happened or not. I am not inclined to pay to post on, or read message boards, if there was even a germ of truth to that. I understand people do so for "premium" content but it's not for me personally.

 

[Marylovesthelions]

K. I'll bite
When rivals was spun up, they often hired local media outlets to run and moderate the college-specific forums (and provide a web outlet for the local media outlet). Phil, who published a print magazine called BWI, managed the Penn State recruiting site for Rivals and published stories, etc.
You joined here in 2001 and for most of your tenure here, McAndrew was the free board you posted on that was affiliated with Penn State rivals/BWI.
In 2021 Phil retired and sold BWI to Coman publishing. You can read the story here. https://pennstate.rivals.com/news/a-labor-of-love-3
The online presence of BWI went to On3, along with the staff (Ryan Snyder, etc).

The Penn State Rivals site ceased being called BWI and was branded Happy Valley Insider. Thankfully, though not an employee, Lord McAndrew was coerced be the moderator of a free board over there, so this forum we are typing on, changed from McAndrew to the "Penn State Football" forum.

Thank you. I have often wondered what happened to Phil.

 

[NitneLiun]

He would routinely threaten to ban people for straying into politics that he didn't agree with, but would ignore politics if he agreed with them - and personally, he would post about political things, but call it "history". Bye Felicia!

To be fair, other Penn State forums have done the same. Black Shoe Diaries is run by a bunch of left-wing jackasses who would ban members or delete posts that contradicted any aspect of "Woke Ideology".

FWIW, McAndrew and I agreed on nothing politically, especially his worship of Abraham Lincoln.

 

[PSU Blue]

I met Tom at a game once, probably around 2006, very nice guy in person. I don't remember him getting into it politically, just seemed to be a history buff. That said, I stayed with Rivals as well, just as good articles, analysts and information, and I have been around when plotit was the only option.😎

 

[Parkland Fan]

I met Tom at a game once, probably around 2006, very nice guy in person. I don't remember him getting into it politically, just seemed to be a history buff. That said, I stayed with Rivals as well, just as good articles, analysts and information, and I have been around when plotit was the only option.😎

You have to love this site and its posters. You post a topic and you never know where it ends up.

 

[PSUWrestlingFanSince2011]

At the wig shop?

 

[creamery freak]

I haven't heard anything about Phil in a long time. I hope that he is doing well.
I was just looking through some old copies of Blue White and thought of him. I used to attend his annual recruiting updates with the Lehigh Valley Alumni Association. Phil was a wealth of detailed info on our new recruits - and this was before the internet so his info was really appreciated.
Thinks in advance for any updates.

I heard Phil moved to Arizona for health reasons. Anyone else hear or know if that's correct?

 

[Pale ryder]

I stayed right here. At age 76 I suppose im set in my ways and dont like change. OR, at age 76 maybe im just too damned lazy to change. I rarely post anything but I enjoy reading and learning from all of you.

 

[PSU&Trout]

You have to love this site and its posters. You post a topic and you never know where it ends up.

U never know - but its a good bet it will be in left field

 

[IndianaNittanyLion]

I heard Phil moved to Arizona for health reasons. Anyone else hear or know if that's correct?

I heard that he crawled down that same hole as his friend in Punxsutawney. Their analysis and predictions were about equal.

 

[Parkland Fan]

I heard that he crawled down that same hole as his friend in Punxsutawney. Their analysis and predictions were about equal.

Wow. That's pretty brutal.
Phil was almost always overly optimistic about our recruits and the season predictions, but he was never as wrong as Rutgers Sal.

 

[millerjs32]

To be fair, other Penn State forums have done the same. Black Shoe Diaries is run by a bunch of left-wing jackasses who would ban members or delete posts that contradicted any aspect of "Woke Ideology".

FWIW, McAndrew and I agreed on nothing politically, especially his worship of Abraham Lincoln.

Changing topics- not going to create another THREAD - How will the WVB team be next year?

 

[JWB389]

I mean their insistence on having a dedicated thread for every topic.

Makes it pretty much impossible to welcome new posters. They are just brutal on 247 if you step out of line. I think today’s message boards are a bit exclusionary. When you’re a new poster, you’re viewed as either a know nothing newbie or a troll from another fanbase.

I admittedly read all 3 big boards and occasionally post on On3. Never post on 247. I’ve been posting here since 96 under various handles. You idiots are like family to me. This is my home because discussion other than PSU football is prevalent.

 

[bison13]

I met Tom at a game once, probably around 2006, very nice guy in person. I don't remember him getting into it politically, just seemed to be a history buff. That said, I stayed with Rivals as well, just as good articles, analysts and information, and I have been around when plotit was the only option.😎

I met him at blue white game in 2009. One of my players was a high 3star recruit who had psu in his top 3. He kept nagging me for insider info and I told him no. He was a dick about it, eventually I joked and said I’ll tell who is in the lead for a free subscription and he didn’t like that and continued to be a little bitch. He couldn’t believe that I would not ruin the trust of my player to give him inside information.

 

[NitneLiun]

Changing topics- not going to create another THREAD - How will the WVB team be next year?

The big concern is setting. We have one of the top setter recruits coming in, but you never know how well freshmen are going to do. Right now, we really don't have a backup setter on the roster.

We've added some high quality transfers and retained Mruzik, Hannah and Trammell for their final years. We also have one of the highest rated DS/L recruits coming in. That should give us more depth across the board than we've had in quite some time.

I'm cautiously optimistic, but a lot is riding on the new setter.

 

[Coultr77]

Thanks for posting that. I recall Tom stating that the end was coming and asking people to go to On3. IIRC, he got some kind of cease and desist order as it sounded like this board was going to simply "green screen" one morning. It looks like the "friends of Tom" all went to On3 and others stayed here. On3 is fine, BTW, and I have no hard feelings for any of their posters or Tom.

On3 is fine except Nate Bauer sucks

 

[LandoComando]

On3 is fine except Nate Bauer sucks

Careful--Nate's BFF (though he doesn't know him) is lurking

 

[fairfaxlion2]

Thanks for posting that. I recall Tom stating that the end was coming and asking people to go to On3. IIRC, he got some kind of cease and desist order as it sounded like this board was going to simply "green screen" one morning. It looks like the "friends of Tom" all went to On3 and others stayed here. On3 is fine, BTW, and I have no hard feelings for any of their posters or Tom.

the way the site was moderated back then was super weird

and at the end they definitely misled everyone into thinking that this site was going away, which was completely false

it is better now