The 2012 Bruins Nation Awards - Your Votes and Your Winners

The votes are in. It is time to announce the winners of this year's Bruins Nation Awards, as well as award our first Editors' Choice Award. Let me slip on my jacket, knot my bowtie, and away we go...

In the category of Best Post of 2012, the co-winners are Class of 66 and JoeBruin15, for Protecting Our Turf -- Literally: No Sword Through Our Logo Campaign, and #Defend Our Logo: It's About Pride: An Open Letter to our Football Players and Coaches

In the category of Funniest Post of 2012, the winner is Bruinut, Stripe Stubs.

And this year's inaugural Editors' Choice for Outstanding Regular Contributions goes to IE Angel for his weekly Eye Test series.

Congratulations to our two three four winners!

Class of 66 and JoeBruin15 are our first co-winners in the BN awards. Though we had 5 outstanding nominees this year, BN clearly responded to the message and the results that these two posts inspired. Like previous winners, these posts were more than just great writing. They saw a need to stand up for our school, they rallied the fanbase, generated action, and showed what the Bruins Nation community can accomplish. No swords for you, $c, but there are Bennies for Classof66 and JoeBruin15.

After 3 nominations last year but no Benny, Bruinut called himself the Buffalo Bills of BN. After 3 more total nominations this year, I was worried he'd be the Susan Lucci of BN. No worries. Despite once again being witty enough to get 2 nominations for funniest post and thereby splitting his vote, Stripe Stubs was too good to be denied. Bruinut joins Rowdy44's UCLA's Athletic Department to Merge With USC's and truebluebruin's The Original Trogan as a Benny winner for Funniest Post. See? What's wrong with hyphens?

Finally, we wanted to recognize a regular contributor for consistently great content on BN. IEAngel's weekly Eye Test Series grading many aspects of Bruin football performance was an obvious choice. With a linebacker's mentality, a coach's eye, and a pen TJ SImers could only dream of, IEAngel has taken time from his own studies and shown us the whys and why nots of Bruin football for most of two years now. His analysis is one of the things that sets BN apart from other sites and we are all very grateful for his efforts. As appreciation, we have sent him a 2013 Vintage UCLA Football Calendar from Asgard Press that we fanposted on BN recently, the one that Benny is standing on in the photo above.

Congrats to all of our nominees! I will contact our winners to arrange delivery of your Benny.

Finally, I want to say a sincere thank you to everyone who contributed on BN in 2012, whether it was a comment or a fanshot or a fanpost, and made it our busiest year ever. I hope everyone will continue and expand all their contributions in 2013. I don't want to stir up any controversy here, but BN is clearly an important and sorely needed voice in the Bruin fanbase, and everyone's voice is important. More importantly, this is a very special community of Bruins, and Mexi's recent fanpost from the tailgate at the Holiday Bowl shows what is best about this place. We may not always agree on the roads we want to take, but I think we do agree on where we want those roads to take us. I hope BN will always be a place to bring Bruin fans together, in times of need and in times of celebration, to support the greatest University in the world.

GO BRUINS!!