Who is Brendan Bowers?
My mother would answer that question by stating simply that he is a tremendous person, both overall and in general, and I've always found my mother to be a pretty accurate judge of character.
I started this website in April of 2009, and prior to that I was a correspondent for The News-Herald about five or six years ago covering High School Basketball and Football on the weekends in addition to my real job as a Project Manager in Real Estate. After covering those High School games for a couple seasons, I started getting into the blogosphere and contributed to a couple of websites for a little while including Midwest Sports Fans as well as a couple blogspot ventures I fiddled around with too. Basketball has always been my favorite sport, the Cavaliers my favorite team, so based on that I eventually launched Stepien Rules as an outlet for me to talk about Cavs basketball as much as I wanted too.
I played basketball growing up for St. Justin Martyr Grade School in Eastlake, Lake Catholic High School in Mentor, and then spent a couple seasons on the bench at Case Western Reserve University. I was able to meet and spend time with arguably the greatest Clevelander of all time in Bill Sudeck for my first year at the school, which more than made up for never really getting on the court much during games. As far as my college "career" was concerned, two highlights include a 42-point loss to Albion College and a 25-point loss to Washington University. During the Albion loss, I registered a DNP-CD but despite that I sparked an interesting debate at the end of the bench when I suggested to a couple of my friends who also didn't play that if our D-III team loses by 40, and we can't even get in, we are in the conversation for the worst college players in all of the NCAA. The consensus was that it was certainly possible we were. An on-court highlight took place in a home loss to #1 ranked Wash U; we were getting buried, and I ended up playing the whole second half. I nailed two threes, scored nine for the game, and only wish the Goosey hand signal was invented by then because I would have totally flashed that - twice.
As far as Stepien Rules is concerned, I was fortunate enough to have my blog credentialed by the Cleveland Cavaliers for all of last season, which was a great experience for me. I've also been involved in the Bloguin collaborative Crossover Chronicles effort, launched in April of 2011, and contribute to Waiting For Next Year as well which is the premier sports blog in all of Cleveland. I write for SLAM Online too, and also contribute to The Dugout Sports Show, co-hosing some podcasts with my friend Glenn Moore, and am getting involved with the guys over at Cleveland Sports Forum on some future radio podcast things as well.
In addition to writing and blogging at various locations across the internet, I do some Social Media Consulting work as well and can be found on Twitter, Google+, Wayin, as well as other places that I actually do go to in person. Thanks for stopping by and checking out Stepien Rules, I really appreciate it a lot.
Why the name Stepien Rules?
Ted Stepien, who owned the Cavaliers from 1980 to 1983, was one of the worst owners professional sports in America has ever known. He was so bad that, in 1982, the NBA legislated rules to protect Stepien from himself. The Stepien Rule - still in effect today - prevents a team from trading its first round pick in consecutive seasons...something Ted did a lot of.
A brief look back at the surrealistic career of Cavaliers Owner Ted Stepien: 
In 1982, the New York Times published an article calling Stepien's Cavaliers the "worst club, and most poorly run franchise in professional basketball." During his tenure as owner, the Cavaliers went 66-180, employed five different coaches, and had losses of $15 million. One of the five Coaches he fired was Chuck Daly. Another Cleveland asset foolishly given the axe was Joe Tait - dispatched in 1981 for his on-air criticism of Stepien's ownership. The NBA stepped in with the aforementioned Stepien Rules a short time later, after the Cavaliers made a series of ridiculous transactions that included trading several first round picks for mediocre talents. One of the traded picks went to the Lakers, who used it to draft James Worthy in 1982. Prior to the 1983 - 84 season, at David Stern's urging - and to the relief of most local sports fans - Stepien sold the Cavaliers to the Gund Family for $20 million. With the help of a kid born in Akron a few years later, the Gunds eventually sold the Cavaliers to Dan Gilbert in 2005 for $375 million.
