Two years ago, this website went live. In that time, we’ve written about 370 posts, all of which have been written under our pen names, “I.B. Luc” and “Bob Bobbins”. This is the first post where we’ll use our actual names.
As a bit of a backstory, when we were first deciding on what we were wanting to do with this site, something I had brought up early on was that I wanted to use fake names. The main reason had to do with my career and the belief that writing a blog about the Lobos could somehow have an effect on that. I have no idea if that belief had any merit or not, to be honest, but my brother went along with it and even agreed to go by a silly name that had to do with our childhood.*
However, over the past couple of years, I’ve become more convinced that it’s time to just use our real names. After all, the intention was never to hide behind anonymity, but when you’re using a fake name online, it’s hard to not give that impression. I like to think that we do our research and that we can back up what we say, either positive or critical, so we’d rather put our names next to what we write, to stand by our opinions.
So, first things first, some have asked why we named our site “Lobo Lane.” Well, it’s not because of the alliteration (although that’s nice), but “Lane” is actually our last name. I know, not a great story, but there you go.
My younger brother, Zach, is the guy who has been going by “I.B. Luc” over the past two years. If anyone is Lobo Lane, it’s him, as you’re likely to find him at just about any and every Lobo home event. Zach played baseball at York College, where he also did some stats, broadcasting, and SID work for the team, before coming back home to Albuquerque, where he is currently working as a teaching assistant for special needs children. He’s the one who does most of our tweets, but you can also see him complain about the Atlanta Braves on his personal account, @ZLane88.
As for me, my name is Jono and I’ve been the one writing under the name “Bob Bobbins.” I received my Ph.D. in Statistics, so if you’ve ever read one of my posts and thought to yourself, “this guy loves numbers way too much,” you were totally right. Until recently, I was also in Albuquerque, but I moved to California at the beginning of the summer to work as a data scientist for a video game company. I don’t tweet as much, but I do answer our emails. Which tend to be pretty rare, so I get lonely. lobolaneblog@gmail.com.
I doubt this will be a big deal to many of you, but thanks for reading it anyway. And thanks for reading us in general and for all of your interactions with us on twitter. It’s been a fun two years and we’re looking forward to another good one!
* Okay, so where the names came from. When we were kids, Zach and I used to play basketball in the backyard on our Little Tikes hoop. Zach always wanted to play as his favorite players, who at that time were the Lobo greats Luc Longley and Rob Robbins. Because he couldn’t be both of them at the same time (as the older brother, I wouldn’t let him), and because he was 3, he would regularly tell me, “I be Luc, you be Bob Bobbins.” So, when we were trying to think of pen names, they seemed appropriate.