Having moved to the heart of college basketball country in Wilmington, N.C., Kate Queram, 33, quickly discovered no one wanted to talk with her about University of Michigan football.

She turned to ESPN.com for her fix, and found a blog that attracted a similar pack of Big Ten-obsessed fans in the comments section. Using the name bleu_girl_04, she signed up for an account in January 2012 and quickly caught the attention of another fan of the Michigan Wolverines, AAWolv, whose real name is Brandon Wagoner.

The flirtation began immediately.

Although online dating has skyrocketed in societal acceptance, a mainstream news site’s comments section can be conducive to anonymous vile attacks; it is not a place where romance often blooms.

But Mr. Wagoner, an aerospace engineer who was then living in Ann Arbor, the home of the University of Michigan, and Ms. Queram, a newspaper reporter, would comment on the same blog posts, offering insight and jokes on the latest injury updates and practice reports. Their mutual affection became a running joke; she referred to him as her “blogband,” he called her his “blife.”