Juiced Sports Blog*: Writing Enhanced by Flaxseed Oil » Top 100 List

Top 20 Athlete-Bloggers

mhblatt — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 11:55:00 +0000

Athletes have now gone to the blogoshpere to increase the PR value and connect with their fans. Some, like Curt Schilling, have their own domain names and get hundreds of comments on all of their posts. Most have theirs hosted on a popular sports site like ESPN, or more likely, Yardbarker. I thought I’d list my top 19. Maybe you find someone new you like. (By the way, if any athletes want to blog here, it would be my pleasure to have you. Send me an email. …I’m still waiting.)

Anyway, Gilbert Arenas took first place on my list. Go on for the next 18:

1.) Gilbert Arenas Agent Zero’s is widely considered one of best athlete blogs. Agent Zero won the Weblog’s award for best celebrity blogger of 2007. His blog offers extremely indepth (and long) posts on the NBA, the Wizards, and what’s happening in his life. Some recent excerpts:

“Varejao, he asked for $60 million and ends up with three years for $17 million. You could have got that contract last summer! You done missed 20 games of the season getting paid the same money you could have got last summer.”

(*-Arenas doesn’t actually write his blog himself, but he tells his writers what to write.)

2.) Curt Schilling He updates more often–about three times a week–but his posts are often not as interesting. He posts less about sports than Arenas and more about whatever he is thinking. However his posts about the steroid scandal have been extremely interesting. As a harsh critic of steroid use, he offer candor that you don’t hear from other players:
His Thoughts on the Mitchell Report

3.) Curtis Granderson Granderson only posts during the baseball season, but his posts are very informative and entertaining. They are mostly just about the Tigers. They give more info on what fans might want to know about what’s happening, for example detail on the hot prospects or insight on a series.

4.) Bryon Friedman You don’t know who Bryon Friedman is because he’s a ski racer. His blog is an interesting look at a sport that Americans don’t know enough about. Also, it has cool videos of ski races and crashes.

5.) Pat Neshek Neshek plays for the Twins. He has a lot of interesting posts (year-long, not only during the season), like his series on what it’s like to be drafted. His site software is pretty weird, so I can’t link directly to any of those posts. That’s the one problem. He has black writing on a red background, which is interesting, I guess, but not optimal for a web page.

6.) David Wright Like Granderson, he only posts during the MLB season, but his posts are entertaining and include good pix.

7.) Etan Thomas Warning: This blog is not about sports. Thomas blogs for the Huffington Posts about politics. Yes, his views are wrong, but how many athletes blog about politics?

8.) Ian Crocker The US swimmer’s posts are almost as long as Arenas’, but he posts less often (though I’m sure he posts himself). They aren’t always about swimming.

9.) Moritz Voltz Certainly a well-writen blog, but I’m not into soccer.

10.) Donovan McNabb Short and to the point, his posts are mostly about football.

11.) Ben Roethlisberger Unfortunately, he doesn’t post about motorcycling.

12.) Greg Oden His posts are even shorter than McNabb’s posts, but he has an interesting feature where he answers fan questions.

13.) Rod Benson After playing ball at Cal, Benson is trying to play his way onto the Nets. Along the way, his honest, though unfrequently updated, blog posts entertain. He also took the time to make an obnoxious title with photoshopped pictures of himself, like a real blogger.

14.) Evan Tanner UFC Fighter. It’s not a lot for words, but it has some cool pictures. (Which make it take a while to load.)

15.) Jeff Samardzija Sample post: “Glad I graduated Notre Dame last year…”

16.) Mike Conley, Jr In Conley’s defense, Oden has a lot more time to blog now that he isn’t playing.

17.) Carmelo Anthony Just learn 2 read txt msg language b4 tackling his.

18.) Dontrelle Willis Willis started his after getting traded.

19.) Diana Taurasi From the WNBA…

20.) Rajon Rondo The 2nd year point guard for the Celtics, who has been assigned the position of taking the Celtics down in the playoff with his inexperience, talks about what it’s like to be expected to take the Celtics down in the playoffs with his inexperience.

Top 20 Sports Blog Stories of The Year

mhblatt — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 02:08:00 +0000

Mitchell Blatt

Top Blog Posts, Top Blog Stories, News Broken by Blogs

With the face of writen media quickly changing from newspapers to the internet, blogs have increased exponentially in importance in the past few years. There are now bloggers making tens of thousands of dollars per month. There are now blogs breaking stories before the mainstream media does. Powerline Blog breaking the story on Dan Rathers falsifying documents about Bush during the 2004 election was an early example. In the sports world, the best blogs at breaking stories would include Deadspin and The Big Lead.

Last month, I broke down the top 100 most influential sports blogs. Today, I’m breaking down the top 20 posts by sports blogs and news about sports blogging.

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1. Watchdog, Newsday: Rick Reilly to Leave SI Originally reported by Neil Best of Newsday’s Watchdog, The Big Lead had the most in depth coverage. TBL emailed Reilly to get the details on where he was going (ESPN), when he would start (June, 2008), and also found that ESPN was offering $2 million a year vs $1.5 million at SI.

2. The Big Lead: Colin Cowherd Shuts Down The Big Lead When the “mainstream media” (note: talk radio isn’t actually the mainstream media) gets mad at blogs, it’s always funny. Cowherd called for his listeners to hit bomb The Big Lead, putting too much strain on it for the servers to handle. The successfully got The Big Lead shut down for two days but not without ESPN and the entire blog community mentioning the story and increasing The Big Lead’s popularity.

3. The Big Lead: Perverted NFL Analyst Outted One NFL analyst took an X-rated picture and showed it to some uncomfortable women on his camera phone. The Big Lead found out that it was… Sean Salisbury.

4. AOL Sports Blog: Worst Sideline Reporter Challenge With help from Awful Announcing, AOL Sports put together a bracket to determine who was the worst sideline reporter, studio host, analyst, and play-by-play man in all sports.

5. Ballhype: Ballhype Study on Sports Blogging Landmark study proves that sports bloggers no longer live in their parents’ basement. According to the study, 30% of sports blogger own their own home to blog from the basement of. 5% blog as their job. But there is still a long way to go: a full 25% of them haven’t had their lives changed because of blogging.

6. The Big Lead: Jamie Mottram to Leave AOL Fanhouse for Yahoo! The Big Lead interviewed Mottram about his depature.

7. Blog Maverick: Mark Cuban Attacks the Dallas Morning News for Reporting Errors DMN listed Chauncey Billups as resigning with the Pistons. At the time, he had not resigned. The free agent season hadn’t even opened up for that matter.

Dallas Morning News Responds to Cuban

8. Ballhype: Journalists Turned Bloggers Ballhype interviews four bloggers who used to be mainstream journalists and has them compare and contrast blogging and newspaper writing. Interesting read for inspiration and to see where the future of journalism is headed.

9. Bugs and Cranks: Players Yelling at Reports Bugs and Cranks has the transcript of this legendary exchange between the Phillies Brett Myers and reporter Sam Carchidi. Sample lines:
BM: “Yeah, cause you’re a retard, you don’t know shit about fuckin’ baseball. You’re filling in for somebody.”

SC: “How do you spell ‘retard’?”

10. Deadspin: Deadspin at the Hot Dog Eating Championships Deadspin’s first hand account of the National Hot Dog Eating Championships. Note: Don’t read this if you are a vegetarian or are offended by meat.

11. DC Sports Bog: The NBA’s Other Artest Journalistic profile on Ron’s brother Daniel by Washington Post journalist-turned-sports-blogger Dan Steinberg. The Post is one of few newspapers doing a good job with new media.

12. Hardball Times: Pitch Identification Tutorial The Hardball Times with an insightful report on how to identify various pitches.

13. Deuce of Davenport: Actual Sports Cerials You Didn’t Know Existed Warner’s Crunch Time? Hokie Toasties? Moss’ Magic Crunch? Deuce of Davenport brings this report right to your breakfast table.

14. Bugs and Cranks: The All-Felon Squad Baseball edition. Sorry, Pacman Jones…

15. Awful Announcing: Reporter Cries Following Yankees Defeat Great example of professionalism brought to our attention by Awful Announcing.

16. AOL Fanhouse: Anonymous Blogging and Ethics AOL Fanhouse on blog ethics, profiling “Eklund” the anonymous hockey blogger who rose to fame during the lockout.

17. Awful Announcing:< CBS vs Fox: War of the Press Releases Awful Announcing finds it funny that Fox released a press release calling Cowboys-Giants “Super Bowl XLI¾.” So do I.

18. 100% Injury Rate: Your Chance to Destroy the Fox NFL Robot 100 Percent Injury Rate gets in a short, funny piece on how the Fox NFL robot is now an action figure. A quick hitter from a quick-hitting blog.

19. Dan Shanoff: SI Should Hire Leitch to Replace Reilly Well thought-out piece on why SI needs Leitch to compete with ESPN.

20. The 700 Level: A Brief History of That Hill in Astros Park The 700 Level tells you what the heck that stupid hill in center field of the Astros ballpark is there for.

UPDATE: KSK Pissed That They Didn’t Make It
Big Daddy Drew: “Why would you send us this list if we’re not on it, you heartless bastard?”

Matt Ufford also had something to say, apparently jealous of The Big Lead: “Not included: the the 1000 worst blog posts of the year. The Big Lead dominated that one as well.
Suck an egg, Mitchell.”

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Top 100 Most Influential Sports Bloggers

mhblatt — Sun, 30 Sep 2007 02:57:00 +0000

Mitchell Blatt

Leitch Takes First, See Where The Rest Rank

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Juiced Sports has decided to profile and rank the big names in sports blogging. Who gets the most hits? Who gets the most attention? Whose opinion matters most? We rank the top 100. 1.) Will Leitch, Deadspin He’s the editor of Deadspin, the most popular independent sports blog on the web. It received 7 million pageviews in January, 2007, second most of any sports blog, behind only AOL’s Fanhouse. It has been profiled in Sports Illustrated and the New York Times. Leitch has used his Deadspin success to write for Slate, the New York Times, and CBS Sportsline. He has also published two books and is in the process of publishing two more. He’s so influencial that when EA Sports is trying to promote Gilbert Arenas, they invite Will to interview him. His only downside is that he seems to have something of an unholy alliance with Toni Reali who has praised him a number of times on Around the Horn.2.) Jamie Mottram, Yahoo! Mottram used to edit Fanhouse, the most popular sports blog on the web (Deadspin doesn’t have as many writers and resources.), but he recently left for Yahoo! Along with Yahoo!, Mottram also edits Mister Irrelevant.com and hosts The Blog Show.3.) The Big Lead The Big Lead.com is run by three anonymous friends, one a former sports writer. It is so threatening to the mainstream media that ESPN radio host Colin Cowherd got his site shut down for two days by urging his listeners to bombard the site with traffic. (For the record, Cowherd is more threatening to mainstream media than TBL.) In my interview with The Big Lead, he said, “We never heard from him personally and prior to him ‘blowing us up’ we never had really discussed him.” TBL gained a noticable amount of permanent traffic after Cowherd’s stunt, but their first big break was getting the story and subsequent interview (in which he bashed Scoop Jackson) on Jason Whitlock leaving ESPN’s Page 2 for AOL. He has interviewed a number of other journalists including Norman Chad and Michael Wilbon.4.) Matt Ufford, With Leather Along with With Leather, Matt has also been a part of kissmesuzy.blogspot.com. His most noble achievement was pissing off Peter King by publishing pictures of his daughters drunk on Kissing Suzy Kolber. The pics were eventually removed amid controversy, but Peter King kept a grudge, and when Sports Illustrated was planning on writing about KSK, King axed it.5.) Awful Announcing #3 overall in Ballhype’s rankings, but #1 if you want info and entertainment about sports broadcasting news. While the bulk of awfulannouncing.com’s content is about broadcasting and sports media (which celebrity blogger signed their first contract, what is happening at ESPN, etc), there is also general spors content like videos and create-the-caption contests.6.) Dan Steinberg, DC Sports Bog After writing for the Washington Post for a while, he surrendered to the enemy (new media) and got assigned to do the Post’s sports blog in 2005. The Post is one of few newspapers that is doing a good job harnessing the potential of the internet. Despite a newspaper’s obvious advantages in terms of contacts and info, Steinberg’s blog is the only one sponsored by a newspaper that makes a big impact in the blogosphere.7.) Henry Abbott, ESPN True Hoop Abbott started True Hoop in 2005 after writing for Hoop, Inside Stuff, and Men’s Journal, among other publications. He worked as a radio reporter before becoming a full time print journalist in 1998. In 2007, ESPN added True Hoop to their site.8.) Brooks, SPORTSbyBROOKS Brooks, a 16-year media proffessional, started blogging in 2001. He makes appearances on ESPN Radio and many other media outlets. He also makes appearances at SbB Gigs with hot chicks. He wants you to think that SbB is the most viewed sports blog, but he’d have a hard time getting that past Leitch or any other sports fan.9.) Spencer Hall, Every Day Should Be Saturday Don’t confuse him with Orson Swindle, Vietnam vet and retired public servant, whose name happens to be Hall’s pen name. Because he graduated from Florida, so he got hooked on college football. Now he works in the “international community” where “where most people will do everything short of winging landmines covered in flaming napalm at each other to kill people they don’t like.” I wonder if he would throw a flaming landmine at Phil Fulmer?10.) Mark Cuban, Blog Maverick Guess it helps being a billionaire… Just the fact that the owner of a pro sports team blogs is big. He keeps getting fined for bashing refs on his blog. A lot of what he writes isn’t even about sports, but when there is an issue surrounding the team, he usually addresses it. Cuban gets more hits than most of the blogs ranked ahead of him, but you have to factor in his financial and celebrity advantage.The Rest11.) Signal to Noise 12.) 100% Injury Rate 13.) Bugs & Cranks 14.) Larry Brown Sports 15.) M Go Blog 16.) Lion in Oil 17.) Vegas Watch 18.) The 700 Level 19.) The Wizard of Odds 20.) Fire Joe Morgan 21.) MLB Trade Rumors 22.) Home Run Derby 23.) ESPN Hashmarks Blog 24.) The Sports Hernia 25.) Rumors and Rants 26.) The Serious Tip 27.) We Suck at Sports 28.) Nation of Islam Sports Blog 29.) Bleeding the Clock 30.) Stop Projecting on Me 31.) Ghosts of Wayne Fontes 32.) Log’s Blog 33.) Deuce of Davenport 34.) Doberman on the Diamond 35.) With Malice 36.) Armchair GM 37.) Aaron Gleeman 38.) Halftime Adjustments 39.) The M Zone 40.) Baseline Report 41.) Pop Jocks 42.) Red Sox Monster 43.) Dejuiced 44.) Ladies…45.) Inside Basketball 46.) Enjoy the Enjoyment 47.) One More Dying Quail 48.) The Futon Report 49.) Sports Law Blog 50.) Steroid Nation 51.) The Angry T 52.) Cake Rocks the Party 53.) Brahsome 54.) Fynal Cut 55.) I Want to be a Sports Agent 56.) Cobra Brigade 57.) Crashburn Alley 58.) Rizzo Sports 59.) HeavySoul 60.) Free Market Sports 61.) Uber Sports 62.) The Beautiful Game 63.) UmpBump.com 64.) Sports Brethren 65.) I’m Writing Sports 66.) Here Come the Pretzels 67.) Troy Nunes Is an Absolute Magician 68.) Sports Biz Blog 69.) The Realests 70.) Chicks Heart Fights 71.) The 12th Manchild 72.) Legend of Cecilio Guante 73.) Babe In the Cheap Seats 74.) Attytood 75.) Smittblog 76.) The Sports Oasis 77.) Girls Gone Sports 78.) College GameBalls 79.) Loser With Socks 80.) Ballers, Gamers and Scoundrels 81.) Bus League Baseball 82.) Bad Idea Blue Jeans 83.) It’s High… It’s Far…84.) Andrea’s Atrium 85.) The Mets Are Better Than Sex 86.) Melrose Rocks 87.) Boi From Troy 88.) Being Sven 89.) Storming the Floor 90.) Pacifist Viking 91.) Lord, Beer Give Me Strength 92.) All on the Field 93.) The Reds Rocket 94.) The Loss Column 95.) DC Steeler Nation 96.) The Starting Five 97.) Babes Love Baseball 98.) Dave’s Football Blog 99.) ACC Basketblog 100.) Giant Football Blog101.) Andy Samberg102.) Nike Air Force Ones
103.) Watch Live Footy 104.) Tennis Streaming
105.) NFL Picks
106.) Fa Cup Live
107.) Latest Football News
108.) Sports Videos

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