Sporting Madness

(Full credit to the illustrious Hunter S. Thompson , whose Gonzo Papers I am currently reading, for title inspiration...) I'm down in Las Vegas for the Blogs With Balls 2.0 sports blogging convention, and am thoroughly enjoying it thus far. Things kicked off this morning with a superb introductory video featuring Will Leitch , Matt Ufford and A.J. Daulerio . The video is presented below (from the Blogs With Balls site via HH Reynolds ): Blogs With Balls 2.0 Intro from HHR on Vimeo . After the introduction, it was time for the first panel, which discussed athletes' abilities to directly connect to their fans through blogs, Twitter and other mediums. The panel featured former Bengals defensive tackle John Thornton (now running JockBiz and All Pro Blogger ], Yardbarker CEO Pete Vlastelica , ESPN VP of series production and development Ron Wechsler and Carrot Creative president Mike Germano , and was moderated by Matt Sebek of Joe Sports Fan . (Shaky cellpho...

If anyone wasn’t already convinced that Twitter has altered the way we cover sports, they would do well to consider the events of the past week. First, we had Kevin Love breaking the news [ Andy Hutchins , The Rookies ] of Minnesota Timberwolves head coach Kevin McHale ’s dismissal on his own Twitter feed, followed in close succession by a supposed Twitter feud [ Andrew Stoeten , TheScore.com Blog ] between Chad Ochocinco and Shawne Merriman , Shaquille O’Neal learning of his trade to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Twitter [ King James Gospel ] and several notable reactions across the sports world to the death of Michael Jackson (including some that were over-the-top [ Jonathan Sacks , Sports Rubbish ). Even before this week, many prominent news organizations have been running stories based on information from the Twitter feeds of athletes, agents and coaches, and that doesn’t appear likely to change any time soon. The big question is what these developments mean for sports coverag...

I've been working on an extensive piece for The Good Point on NFL free agency for most of the last month, and finally finished it off the other day; check it out if you're interested in a look at how different NFL teams view free agency and the strengths and weaknesses of certain approaches. Tremendous thanks are due to Will Leitch of Deadspin and New York Magazine , Michael Bean (Blitzburgh) of Behind The Steel Curtain , Sean Yuille of Pride of Detroit and Kevin Ewoldt of Hogs Haven for taking the time to answer my questions. They all have a great understanding of the NFL and how their teams approach free agency. Of course, space restrictions and the thematic approach I took meant that I couldn't fit all the information I received from these guys into my article, so I figured I'd run some of the interviews here as companion pieces. First up, Michael Bean . Michael runs Behind The Steel Curtain , one of the best and most popular Pittsburgh Steelers blogs on th...

Everyone and their sister seems to have joined the Twitterati recently, including Steve Nash , Shaq , Will Leitch and Jeff Blair . Normally, I try to resist jumping on the bandwagon, but I saw quite a bit of potential in what Neate has been doing with his feed , especially the links. I'm a long-established fan of throwing out links , but haven't had a lot of time to write those kind of detailed posts recently, so this seems like a good way to get those out along with a few quick observations here and there that I don't have time for an entire post on. Thus, I'll be adding the Twitter feed to the right-hand bar for the time being. We'll see how it develops; feel free to e-mail (andrew_bucholtz at hotmail dot com) or tweet me suggestions on what to do with the feed!

This story from Alana G (via TrueHoop ) is hilarious, but frightening. As most probably know, the NBA is holding its All-Star weekend in Phoenix over the next few days. Reporter Niki D'Andrea of the Phoenix New-Times wrote a cover story about a "tattoo cap" on NBA players that commissioner David Stern was supposedly thinking of implementing, which turned out to be based off a satirical story by author/blogger Con Chapman which was republished on his community blog page at Fox Sports. D'Andrea explains her rationale in a blog post here : "Though our knee-jerk reaction to the tattoo cap story was that it might be a joke, what it touted seemed possible. Commish Stern had already instituted a business-casual dress code for NBA players going to and from games -- in an attempt to thwart a trend toward hop-hop attire among some players. Also, Suns players we interviewed thought the tat cap story was true and complained about the alleged plan in our article. Cal...

The great Tom Benjamin found this site a little while ago, and I was intrigued. Basically, you type in a blog URL and it gives you a readout of the personality of the blog's author. I figured I'd try it with my site and some of the sites I read regularly. Results are below. For myself, Sporting Madness : "The analysis indicates that the author of http://sportingmadness.blogspot.com is of the type: INTP - The Thinkers." "The logical and analytical type. They are espescially attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications. They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to unders...

"Only a Sith deals in absolutes." - Obi-Wan Kenobi , Star Wars: Episode III My biggest problem with the state of sports analysis today is that we seem to be moving away from the middle of the spectrum. Nothing exemplifies this more in my mind than Around the Horn , the ESPN talk show which basically features prominent journalists arguing with each other about sports. Moderator Tony Reali hands out points for different arguments, but the scoring seems to be based more on how vigorously you make your case rather than anything you actually say. The amount of people involved and the short time given to each segment also encourages participants to move away from subtlety in favour of absolutes. That doesn't mean it's necessarily bad; there's obviously a market for this kind of thing, and there are often interesting points raised. The problem is that the format encourages sensationalism and bold stands over critical analysis; why else would Jay Mariotti be a recurri...

To many sports fans in this Internet era, Deadspin is the great example of what blogs can do. Their staff of talented writers and editors, including Will Leitch , A.J. Daulerio and Drew Magary consistently churn out interesting takes on the sports news of the day while providing far more wit than you'll find in any newspaper sports section. Granted, the style isn't for the easily-offended ( Buzz Bissinger , that means you ), but there are plenty of us out there who enjoy reading Deadspin daily. Sadly, our days of enjoyment may be numbered. When I first read Gawker Media (parent company of Deadspin> overlord Nick Denton 's November 12 post on the upcoming apocalypse facing Internet media outlets, I thought it was an interesting take on how the current economic recession might affect Internet advertising. He figures that Internet companies should prepare for a 40 per cent decline in advertising revenue. From my contacts in the print world, I know that plenty of newspa...