Mondesi's House: 2008 and Beyond

Well, another year has come and gone, and it's time to re-evaluate where Mondesi's House falls in the grand scheme of things.

Despite my best efforts, it's been quite a challenge to maintain a blog of this magnitude completely on my own. Over a million readers passed through the site in 2007, and I'd like to have more fresh, quality content available to you on a regular basis. So if you can read between the lines, one major change to the site in 2008 will be more voices beyond my own.

Who will these mystery writers be? All I can say for now is that "the team is in the development stages". I'm not going to pull a Bill Parcells and completely blow the thing up, but there are plenty of other major changes in store for the site. I'll just label those as a surprise for now.

Looking back, this year was a wild ride...

We said goodbye to Bill Cowher, Kevin McClatchy, Dave Littlefield, Jim Tracy, Jose Castillo, Salomon Torres, Jeff Long, Mark Recchi, Michel Oullet, Chris Gardocki and Joey Porter.

We said hello to Mike Tomlin, Frank Coonelly, Steve Peterson, Neal Huntington, Adam LaRoche, Matt Morris, Angelo Esposito, Gary Roberts, Georges Laraque, Petr Sykora, Daryl Sydor, Adam Hall, Ty Conklin, Daniel Moskos, Lawrence Timmons, Shady McCoy, Pat Bostick, Dejuan Blair, Missy Peregrym, and Steely McBeam.

And we said "you're still here?" to Jason Bay and Jack Wilson.

We had a bad Pirates season, a pretty good Steeler season, lots of great Penguin hockey, the ups and downs of Pitt football, and exciting Panther hoops.

Number-wise, there was 15 questions with Jim Colony, the 50 Biggest Stories in the Steeler Universe, 79 Reasons Why It's Hard to be a Pirate Fan, a $40,000 Sidney Crosby Card, and of course, 16 weeks of Steeler Wrapups.

Off the field, we found out that Big Ben hangs with The Donald, as well as Carson Daly and Mario Lopez. There was Adam LaRoche's hunting video, the Cowher Auction, Dick Vitale, Motivational Speaker, the Luke Ravenstahl-Tiger Woods scandal, Pittsburgh's unpaid parking tickets fiasco, Joey Porter's fight video, a Sidney Crosby housecall and Joe Paterno on a chopper (and his road rage).

We had a Pirates walkout, a hot Ben Roethlisberger debate, Why My Team is Better Than the Steelers, the Pirates-Yankees disaster weekend, a new arena for the Penguins, Porngate, an upset in the Backyard Brawl, a Mondesi Field Trip to PNC Park, a Mondesi Field Trip to Penguin Practice, Steely McBeam rage, Daniel Moskos rage, the Thursday Night Trifecta, the greatest Dan Marino photo ever, amazingly bad Pirate hitting against scrubs, the dominance of the Pittsburgh Passion, a huge debate on college alliances, Ronnie Florian, a real-life Beavis, and Pittsburgh Pirates: The Movie II.

The most visited post of the year? That would be this now-famous photo I unearthed.

It was a fun year, indeed.

Thanks for a great 2007, and here's to an even better 2008. Considering it's starting with the Winter Classic and a Steeler playoff game in the first week, I'd take that as a good sign.