In every news industry besides sports, blogs and websites are increasingly considered among the elite sources for information. In tech, some of the most influential outlets and journalists are bloggers or web-only, like Gizmodo, Engadget, and TechCrunch, to name a few of Technorati’s most popular blogs. The Huffington Post is one of the most read websites/blogs online, offering one of the top Internet-based “newspapers” out there.

The point is, websites and blogs are competing with “big timers” like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal—and mostly winning, as the newspaper and print industry in general has been in complete freefall. This is happening everywhere—except, by and large, in the sports media industry.

Think about it—we read most of the sports blogs we read because they offer fresh opinions, commentary of what’s already going on, and a central source for the actual news itself. How many sports blogs out there break news, or offer exclusive interviews with athletes and coaches or team execs? ProFootballTalk comes to mind, and Yahoo and AOL Sports have done a good job, too. (It’s a little different with AOL and Yahoo, because they entered the game with a lot more resources at their disposal.) (I’m disregarding ESPN and FOX Sports here, because they’re essentially just the sports versions of CNN and…FOX.)

But besides them, who is there? How has this happened—and why? With so many well-known sports bloggers, wouldn’t you think that at least one of them would be—dare I say it—more “mainstream” at this point?

And, therein lies the problem.

It’s a personal opinion of mine that within the sports blogosphere, part of the allure of blogging in the first place is having “an opinion without access”. It’s like a show of spite for the system—that the bloggers don’t even need to show up to the press conference, or the game, or talk to the players, and still offer great insight and analysis.

To a degree, that’s true. We’ve already discussed how the mainstream media does much of the legwork for them—breaking the news, getting the interviews, etc., that the blogosphere can aggregate and turn into analysis. Team PR staffs distribute quote transcripts and useful statistics that anyone can use in an article or post on a blog. So, granted—it is possible to cover sports without actually being at the event.

It’s this lack of “attendance” which keeps many of the mainstream media (and teams alike) from taking sports bloggers seriously (re: Buzz, Mitch Albom, Bob Costas, every major print publication in existence, etc.). To everyone involved, the impression they get is that these sports bloggers sit in their underwear in their mom’s basement atop some ivory tower, simply injecting opinions into issues that they really have no expertise in, while most print journalists covering the NFL have spent years upon years working their way up the ladder and honing their craft.

Moreover, as the sports blogosphere rises in power and notoriety, more and more sports journalists will continue to get fired, resulting in less “grunt work” for the blogs to pick up. In a way, the rise of sports blogs may also contribute to their next challenge: where will they get the news from when no one is left covering it in person?

The answer, simply, is to show up yourselves.

I totally understand the “cool factor” of being that outsider that doesn’t need real access to get your voice out there. But it isn’t the access itself that is un-cool; it’s I don’t need your stinking access, so shove it. If NFL teams were offering free orange traffic cones, it would be an utter hatred of free orange traffic cones. What if an NFL team reached out to you to offer you a game credential? Would you turn it down, because it’s cool to not have to show up? Really? Didn’t we all start blogging about sports because we’re getting to live out that dream we had of being a sports writer? Why can’t we act like the real thing?

It’s happened in tech, and politics, and the economy, and in Hollywood. The first few attempts are always the hardest; in sports, there’s still that initial fear on both sides of the equation. The teams aren’t really sure how to treat sports bloggers or what they’ll do when they show up, so they have been leery of granting them access. On the flip side, most bloggers simply don’t want access, and the ones that have tried have been mostly unsuccessful (to my knowledge?).

Eventually, however, the combined decline of the print media and ascension of the blogosphere will force the issue. At some point, when Deadspin applies for a Super Bowl credential, it won’t be possible to turn them down. When Pro Football Talk earns enough money to have their own network of bloggers, they’ll have their own writers attending games, live blogging in the press box, and attending team press events. Even the local blogs—every team has them—have, in some instances, garnered enough notoriety to eventually gain consideration for access into this inside world.

This is the real future of sports media. And it could be closer than you think. Who will be the first to take the plunge?

]]> http://www.pressrow.net/2008/09/21/sports-blogs-the-next-step-part-1/feed/ http://www.pressrow.net/2008/09/17/press-row-featured-at-voice-of-the-box/ http://www.pressrow.net/2008/09/17/press-row-featured-at-voice-of-the-box/#comments Wed, 17 Sep 2008 15:38:44 +0000 Andy http://www.pressrow.net/?p=95 I recently chatted with Matt Crevin from Voice of the Box, who managed to catch me on video and talked about some of my previous football work experiences.  Check it out…

Check it out here, and while I encourage you to listen to a very well-done podcast from the PP gang, if you must jump to my section, it’s at 15:30.  Thanks to everyone at Pigskin Podcast for having me on.

It works the same way as its football brother–you can subscribe to it on any RSS reader you might use, automatically compiling the blogs of every beat reporter in MLB.  To subscribe, use the little RSS logo on the top left-hand corner of its section.

Or, you can simply refer to the list of blogs it’s subscribed to and pick your own.

You’ll now notice that the Beat Writer Blogs tab above just brings you to a landing site for all the current beat blog lists.  You can kind of see the path we’re taking here; hope everyone finds these useful.

Got any input?  Found an error or an omission?  Let me know.

A podcast posted today (9/2/08) featured Pasquarelli making division predictions with Jeremy Green.  Check out where it appeared on ESPN’s NFL page:

For starters: we’re certainly glad to see that Len has recovered well enough from his heart surgery to return to the ESPN lineup.

But with his return, we’re now left to ponder the question of where he belongs on the dot-com.

Since the Super Bowl, ESPN has hired a slew of new NFL writers, including Pat Yaskinas, who, as the NFC South writer, now lays claim to any Atlanta Falcons stories that LenPa once ruled the roost on.  (Think about it; if Lenny keeps reporting the Falcons scoops now, how does that possibly help establish Yaskinas as a credible reporter across the NFC South?)

If Len rejoins ESPN as a national columnist, he joins a fairly crowded room.  Aside from the Blog Network–who ESPN tends to give national-level columns to on a fairly regular basis–you’ll also see lead stories from John Clayton, Jeffri Chadiha, Gene Wojechowski and Seth Wickersham, among others.

Then again, it could also work into ESPN’s master plan of offering the most depth of reporting of any sports site currently available.

They have the time and resources to take deeper dives that the “lowest common denominator” newspapers don’t touch. They can post things that have little to do with the game, without worrying about the editor’s wrath. Their excellent writing gets publicity in more “mainstream” pubs, yet the old guard still regards their kind as a type of mercenary, a specialist who answers to no one yet reigns over many.

And, above all, they treasure their brash, free-swinging style of commentary that so many up-and-coming sports websites, like CHFF, have perfected.

CHFF is, for the new generation of football fan, an absolute must-read. It holds a seat at the big boys table, with the likes of Mike Florio (PFT), Aaron Schatz (FO), Michael David Smith (AOL/many others), and the other giants of the sports internet.

I had a chance to check in with Kerry Byrne, the creator of CHFF (and also the food and drinks writer for the Boston Herald) for a Q&A about the site, its history, and some incredible viewpoints on the world of sports journalism. It’s a lengthy (but insightful) read, so enjoy.

1) The obligatory walk-through on how CHFF came to fruition… (for the record, odds this answer begins with “So, this one night at the bar…”: 75%)

Odds that you’ll soon regret asking for a window into the frigid, emotionless soul of the Cold, Hard Football Facts – 99.8 percent.

The earliest genesis of the website – we’re talking single-celled statistical cyano-bacteria forming into stromatolites of data in the simmering stew of the pre-Pangean oceans of pigskin – was back in January 1983 when I sat in my brother’s bunk and tracked all the data from the Raiders and Redskins seasons heading into Super Bowl XVIII.

Then, while the really cool kids at my school played Dungeons & Dragons, I played Strat-O-Matic football against myself on my bedroom floor, while keeping a season’s worth of stats for each team.

And – I shit you not, here – I even kept the standings for my sixth-grade paper-triangle football league. We had six kids playing, and I split them into two conferences. I won one conference with an 8-2 record. Another kid won the other conference with a 9-1 record. We split our two regular-season meetings. But then that kid beat me in the big Merrymount Elementary School sixth-grade paper-triangle football championship game of 1982.

The only other thing I remember about sixth grade is being in love with a girl named Vanessa Rush, whose mother wouldn’t let her date me. So the famous CHFF struggles with football data and with women were on display as early as 1982.

But in between bouts of pubescent love-sickness, I remember thinking that the numbers in our paper-triangle football league formed perfect patterns from which you could gauge likely results. So I guess even back in sixth grade, I was interested in the patterns and storylines that you can pull from nothing more than a simple collection of numbers.

And that’s kind of how the CHFF works: find patterns in a series of football statistics, and then build an entertaining story around it.

I later became a so-called “journalist” and have had some pretty good gigs writing for some nifty publications, mostly as a food and drinks writer. But I wanted to recapture the inner core of the guy who kept Strat-O-Matic and paper-triangle football stats back in sixth grade – while adding in the whole food and beer thing that became a part of my journalistic life.

So in 2004, early in the morning of the first day of the football season, I launched Cold, Hard Football Facts.com. It’s mostly about fun, hard-core football analysis. But we also tout it as the only outlet in the media devoted to the “gridiron lifestyle” of beer, food and football. As for Vanessa, last I heard she was an attorney in Texas.

2) You boast quite a mix of talented writers and just sheer characters. How on earth did such a motley bunch of people come together at CHFF?

Centrifugal force.

Seriously, I haven’t really solicited many of these guys. In most cases, they were guys who had written to me about one thing or another. I found out who they were and liked their work, so brought them on board in various capacities. CHFF has been very lucky in this respect. I think we’ve attracted some talented writers and hard-core football guys and have added a lot to the product. You can read about them here: http://www.coldhardfootballfacts.com/Category/3_About_Us.html

3) Did CHFF have that one “breakthrough” moment, where the visitors just started flooding in? You’ve had some pretty high-volume appearances (WSJ, America Online).

I really can’t explain the incredible PR we’ve gotten, other than the fact I’ve forced the site upon the traditional sports media all over the country and demanded they take notice or else we’ll crush their opinions like helpless soldiers squashed beneath the tracks of our M1A1 Abrams tank of truth. For the most part, they’ve really responded positively to the threats of physical violence – which also tells me that they have a sense of humor and kind of “get” the CHFF thing.

Just in the last couple weeks alone, CHFF has been in the Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated.com, the Chicago Tribune, ESPN.com, The Atlantic Monthly and FoxSports.com – all A-level media outlets. At a more local level, Chick Ludwig at the Dayton Daily News just named CHFF the top football site on the web, and a few weeks earlier Bill Livingston at the Cleveland Plain-Dealer declared himself a “CHFF-oholic” in one of his columns.

I told Bill to take up drinking instead. Look what it’s done for me.

We’ve also done a lot of local sports radio stations and TV shows over the past couple years and there are a lot of stations around the country that have been really good to us, such as Homer True at ESPN Milwaukee, Gerry V. at WRNO in New Orleans, and the gang at the WEEI powerhouse in Boston, who were probably the first in the mainstream media to pick up on the CHFF thing.

So the traditional media has really been good to us, even as we pretty much built our rep ripping the way the traditional sports media operates. So there’s a little irony there.

But there’s really been no one moment when it all came together. In fact, we’ve really just kind of grown steadily over the few years we’ve been around. So all the great pub, coupled with the most important thing, word of mouth and smart football fans, have just kind of added up to create steady growth. Our readership doubles each year, and may even triple this season, based upon off-season trends.

If we actually knew about things like search-engine optimization, how to send confirmation emails to people who sign up for our forum, and how the whole inter-web thing in general works, we might be the biggest independent football site on the web right now. But I’m sure there are a few out there that are older and bigger. We’ll stand atop the mountain soon enough, though.

4) So, you’re saying that this guy is in charge of suggesting the top food and drink spots in one of the most entertainment-rich cities in the country. How did that come about? And, how do you enjoy the balance of the two different writing lifestyles?

I graduated from Boston College in 1992 without a single marketable skill. Liberal arts major and all, you know. In school, I never really had any ambition to be a writer – never worked for the school paper, for example, and never did the whole newspaper intern thing.

But I was out of school and I needed work. So I figured I’d give writing a shot. They say write about what you know, and I knew about beer and football. So I began writing about beer for local trade publications and landed a two-day-a-week job as the “sports editor” at the local weekly paper in my hometown.

I ended up covering sports for larger newspapers. But by the late 1990s, the sports thing had been pushed aside by my other work.

I eventually parlayed the beer thing into a freelance column at the Boston Herald and some freelancing gigs with publications like Boston Magazine and Esquire. I even briefly wrote the booze column for Penthouse magazine, though I bought Penthouse only for pictures.

I got to visit and write about a lot of great breweries and restaurants around the world, mostly in Europe, so that was pretty neat, and got to see a lot of places I wouldn’t otherwise have seen. I even met my wife because her dad owned a brewery. So beer has been very good to me.

Eventually, a staff job as a food writer opened up at the Herald, and the editor liked my beer stuff enough to hand me the gig. I continue to hold that job today, but it’s only a part-time gig that affords me all the time in the world to run CHFF. I still freelance about beer and food elsewhere from time to time.

But mostly, it’s CHFF 24×7 for me, with the food thing a pleasant little diversion.

In terms of the mechanics of writing, the food & beer vs. CHFF thing could not be more different. The food thing is all about feelings and sensations and trying to get the reader to appreciate your tasting experiences. It could not be more subjective. You want the reader to say, “Wow, that sounds good!”

The CHFF thing is all about shoving the numbers and the objective facts down the throats of your readers with all the sensitivity of blunt head trauma. You want the reader to say, “No mas! I will never doubt you again, oh omnipotent Achilles of the gridiron. Please spare my life!”

5) What do you “classify” CHFF as? Blog? Website? Online magazine? Smorgasboard? Does it even matter?

I’d classify the Cold, Hard Football Facts as the single most important development in the history of the sports media. Or a website. Whatever. It’s definitely not a blog.

Seriously, though, I do believe CHFF is the first outlet to combine the in-your-face bombast of modern sports reporting with an entertaining style and with the cutting-edge analysis, intense research and journalistic integrity that have disappeared in many places from the sports world.

I don’t think there’s anybody in the media combining all these elements into one. We can be just as forceful as some loud-mouthed radio talk show host – but we back it all up with mountains of research. Nobody is doing that.

A lot of blogs and “new media” are just some asshole telling you what he thinks without any of that pesky “journalistic integrity” holding him back. A lot of traditional sports columnists, meanwhile, are just some asshole telling you what he thinks, regardless of the actual facts of the situation, but buoyed by the arrogance of an institution that’s been around for 100 years. Basically, a lot of these “old media” guys think the name of the paper gives them a right to flout basic journalistic practices. In other words, you often find that the bigger the outlet, the less integrity they actually have. It’s institutional arrogance.

At the end of the day, I want readers to feel that CHFF is the single most credible outlet in sports today because – for all the bombast and politically incorrect language – we don’t state anything without the facts to support it.

But whatever you’d call it, I think we got some independent confirmation of our capabilities earlier this year, when the Pro Football Writers of America honored CHFF for the top game story of 2007, beating out folks from all the major media outlets. So I think that is shows we have legitimacy in the sports-media marketplace and can beat the mainstream media at their own game.

6) Say you’re a budding young sports writer, fresh out of college, with a chance to write for a website like CHFF, or to take the typical entry-level writer role for a small local paper. What advice do you give this kid–and why?

Get your MBA at Wharton or Sloan and fight tooth and nail for a gig as an analyst at a major investment firm. Stab your classmates in the back if you have to. Then, once you’ve made your first couple million by age 30, you can start a website, buy publicity and traffic and hit up all your rich financial-world friends for investment dollars and then do whatever the fuck you want with your website and with the rest of your life. And then, as you use that money to buy prominence in the sports world, you can laugh at all the 30-year-olds making $50K a year at some shitty newspaper.

At the end of the day, you’ll be far ahead of someone who’s taken the traditional sports journalist path.

7) Finish this sentence, and explain why: In five years, newspapers will…

Bow down in humble deference to the almighty power of the Cold, Hard Football Facts.

8. Is there any sort of plan for the future of CHFF?

Our plan is to lord over the known football universe like a Gridiron Colossus of Rhodes.

When we develop a few more resources, we’ll do a lot more with college football, and ultimately move into a whole suite of CHFF sites. We already own the domains, for example, for Cold Hard Sports Facts, Basketball Facts, Soccer Facts, etc. So that’s the future of CHFF … we hope.

9) Do you have any “must-reads” in the sports media world?

The only thing in sports I’ve ever read with any kind of consistency is Sports Illustrated. It remains the Rolls-Royce of sports magazines and quality sports writing. All the best things I’ve ever read about sports were in Sports Illustrated, which I started getting at age 10.

For example, the greatest sports story ever written, for my money, appeared in “best sports photographs of the century” issue back in 2000. They picked a totally unknown photo number one. It was a picture inside the locker room before TCU faced Jim Brown and Syracuse in the 1956 or 57 Cotton Bowl. The article was brilliantly written, and just pulled you into this photograph with the stories of what must have been going through the minds of these West Texas farm boys as they prepared to face the great Jim Brown. It also talked about what became of them later in life. I never read a story that touched so deeply on so many levels what is we love about sports, and why it is people compete in sports.

Brilliant, really. One thing that still sticks out with me today is that only one person in the photograph was looking at the camera – the equipment manager. Everyone else competing, all the players and coaches, were lost in their own thoughts, oblivious to the camera in the room. It was a brilliant piece of sports journalism, and SI is the only place you find that type of stuff today.

I also like football history books. “The Best Game Ever” by Mark Bowden is a great new book. Maraniss’s “When Pride Still Mattered” biography of Lombardi is a classic. Last year I read a great book about the Ice Bowl by a game named Ed Gruver that deserves more attention than it ever received. A year or two ago, Allen Barra of the Wall Street Journal (who’s contributed to CHFF in the past) let me borrow a copy of “This was Football” by Pudge Heffelfinger, the 19^th century Yale star and the first pro football player. It’s great as he bitches about the decline in the quality of the game and the toughness of the players back in the 1950s. Some things never change.

Otherwise, I read nothing unless somebody sends me a link. It’s all the same to me. All the major websites are writing the same stories on the same topics each and every day. It’s like they move in lock-step. Seriously, go to any of them on any given day, and they’re all telling you the same story.

The alternative media and blogs, at least, are more creative and more entertaining. There’s some really good stuff out there, though I don’t have time to read many of them. But a lot of the independent sites don’t really give you any information, Much of it’s nothing more than snide remarks about players’ off-field lives, or peddling rumors that just have no interest to me. I actually can’t believe there’s a market for this type of stuff. But there clearly is.

So I just read stuff like the NFL Record & Fact Book and the ESPN Pro Football Encyclopedia. I study the spread sheets on ProFootballReference.com, and I read the box scores from different games. Then I process all the data in my head, figure out the theme that I draw from it, and try to find an entertaining way to build a story around this data.

That’s why it’s so easy to refute conventional wisdom. When you look only at the numbers, it often becomes quite apparent that the numbers are telling a much different story than conventional wisdom.

At the end of the day, it makes us the most accurate outlet in sports today. All the traditional reporters, for example, get their information from human sources. Well, ask any lawyer and he’ll tell you: humans are the single most unreliable source imaginable. Humans see only what they want to see, and say only what they want to say. Humans have biases and agendas.

The data we use as a source, the Cold, Hard Football Facts, have no biases and no agendas. So it’s only natural that we’re more accurate than every other outlet.

10) Just for kicks: the biggest surprise of the upcoming NFL season will be…

Here are three:

Kurt Warner leads the Cardinals to the third playoff victory in the franchise’s 89-year history

Quarterback-less Vikings go 8-8 again, despite dominant ground game and solid defense.

CHFF becomes the most humble and most sensitive sports site on the web.

As the victors, they will receive a $25 gift card to Best Buy, and be automatically entered for a chance to win another $100 in Best Buy bucks at the end of the football season.

The other four entries will be considered for the September Access Awards, against our newest submissions.

Thanks to everyone who voted!  Don’t forget to start submitting your sports blogs for your chance to win $25 in Best Buy gift cards.

While his editor seems to think Mariotti’s strange exit will produce some mysterious spike in readership, bringing back all those jilted Chicagoans that just boycotted the paper because of Mariotti, that is simply not realistic. If those readers subscribe to newspapers in the Chicago area, then that means they’re probably already subscribers of the Tribune, and most people don’t have the money or time to subscribe to and read both. Besides that, hasn’t he heard that newspaper subscriptions are sinking faster than—thank you, Jay—the Titanic? There aren’t many magical “untapped publics” left for newspapers to tap into.

But, anyway…let’s take a moment to look exactly at what Mariotti is doing. Of course, we’ll be assuming that Mariotti’s resignation is part of some bigger plan—and we’ve seen how much trouble Mariotti has when he tries to look ahead.

Looking at his reasons for leaving his post with the Sun-Times, it sounds like he desperately wants to hook on with one of the major web-based sports sites, like ESPN.com or Yahoo!, which he heaped praise on during his resignation address on the radio Wednesday morning.

So, where might Jay end up?

ESPN – The logical choice, given his appearances on Around The Horn and ESPN’s penchant of hiring anyone with any kind of name recognition. But, where does he fit? There may not be enough room for Mariotti in the “National Voice” room, already occupied by Rick Reilly, Pat Forde, Gene Wojciechowski, and Bill Simmons, among others who occasionally dabble in the mass-audience style writing.

ESPN already boasts a large lineup of the off-beat writer types too, looking at their 16-person cast over at Page 2. Besides, Mariotti would want to be front-page material, like Reilly.

Where does that leave Mariotti at ESPN? Just a shot in the dark: could ESPN bring him on board, then start an MLB Blog Network, like they have with the NFL—and put Mariotti in the AL Central circuit? That way, Mariotti could get his every-so-often national scope-type column on the front page. Plus, he’d be good for a crazy Ozzie column every now and then.

Yahoo! – Perhaps sensing the crowded party over at Bristol, Mariotti spoke highly of Yahoo’s site numbers during the Olympics, which if they were over 30 million, may trump any viewership that Mariotti has ever had in his entire life.

This one is interesting: I’m still not sure if Yahoo is still an up-and-comer in the sports web world, or if they’re just going to always be trading a few million unique views with ESPN every month. That said, bringing aboard Mariotti would be the equivalent of the Suns trading for Shaq. It doesn’t fit your style at all, but at some point, you’re going to have to roll the dice if you want to be the best. (if you think that one didn’t work out…okay, Favre to the Jets is another good example.)

For this to work, several things need to happen. First, Yahoo would probably have to open its wallet to fork over what Mariotti will demand/think he’s worth. Next, Mariotti would want his little spot at the front of the page, a la the ESPN “National Voices”—which would be a change for Yahoo, which, to this point, has been all about a streamlined approach to the content and scores. Then, what will he write about? Will he get the Simmons/Reilly/Forde ticket of “whatever’s on people’s minds?”

If Yahoo truly considers this route, they will probably think long and hard about whether Mariotti is talented enough to carry such a torch—or, if he is worth that much money for such a drastic step away from the norm.

FOX Sports – The clear third wheel in the sports web race, this is the kind of hire that Fox would make. He could probably finagle Whitlock-level treatment and Fox will care less about how the two coexisted (see: Rick Reilly and Bill Simmons at ESPN.) They could use him on-air for their MLB playoff programming, whether it’s in the booth or on site. He could appear on any number of Fox’s TV screamfests and fit in nicely. Plus, it isn’t like the ESPN to FOX thing hasn’t happened before (Keith Olbermann).

I’m not sure if Mariotti’s death sentence for everything print includes the likes of Sports Illustrated—then again, I’m equally unsure he would fit in there anyway. I get the feeling that, wherever Mariotti ends up, he’ll expect top-tier treatment; would AOL or CBS Sportsline roll enough of a red carpet for him?

Linked up:

Telander on Mariotti: “Celebrations in the White Sox locker room … High-Fives in the press box” and Mariotti: “I Feel Like I’m Working For the Titanic” (The Big Lead)
Jay Mariotti leaves the Sun-Times, and He’ll Have Company (Chicago Sun-Times editor blog)
Jay Mariotti’s Year in Review (Eric Zorn, Chicago Tribune)

]]> http://www.pressrow.net/2008/08/28/where-will-jay-mariotti-end-up/feed/ http://www.pressrow.net/2008/08/26/access-awards-for-august-2008/ http://www.pressrow.net/2008/08/26/access-awards-for-august-2008/#comments Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:19:47 +0000 Andy http://www.pressrow.net/?p=76

We here at Press Row are excited to announce our first group of Access Awards contestants for August 2008.  Voting is now open on the poll on the right sidebar of the homepage.  To give voting an entire week, we will end on 12 AM, Tuesday, September 2nd.

We received many high quality submissions for this month’s Awards, which from our view, already makes this process a victory. One of the major reasons for starting the Awards was to highlight talent within the sports blogosphere, making note of quality writing and a general job well done wherever it might be.

The fact that so many solid, up-and-coming sports websites found their way to Press Row so quickly not only raises hope for the future of the Access Awards, but also shows how many great sports minds exist out there. In about three weeks, we received a bunch of great submissions. Who knows how many more are out there?

All that being said, we had to limit this month’s awards program to five sports blogs to go up for voting. If you weren’t selected, don’t worry—we’ll reconsider your blog next month. And, if you don’t win the August poll, we’ll re-submit you for September automatically. Don’t forget to submit your great sports blog for consideration.

So, without further ado, here are this month’s five entries to the Access Awards.

- Pigskin Podcast

Birthday: January 2008
Website type: Podcast, general football
In their own words: Four college buddies spread out across the Eastern part of the U.S. Most of the group with radio experience. Had an idea to put a football site together, doing a podcast a week. Instead, it’s turned into a rapidly growing site with daily blogs, links packages and two podcasts a week. Guests have included college football guru Phil Steele and bloggers from across the country, which we think is important because that’s what we are: Guys with opinions who want to be heard.
Press Pass: They boast a pretty strong cast of writers, among them, an award-winning newspaper staffer, a radio station sports director, a Class A play-by-play announcer and a former college campus radio man and a former sports information GA. They doubled their unique visitors from June to July, to about 3,200 unique visits.

- Hoops Addict

Birthday: January 2006
Website type: Blog/online magazine, general basketball
In their own words: HoopsAddict.com is an online magazine that addresses the professional basketball scene and all of the amateur ranks that make up the basketball landscape. Since its creation in 2006, the publication has evolved from an independent blog to the credentialed media outlet it is today. In the online basketball community, Hoops Addict is one of a select few fan-inspired sites that looks to marry the die-hard fan’s passion with the objective journalistic conventions necessary for legitimate access to the game at its various levels.
Press Pass: Ryan McNeill is the editor for Hoops Addict and has appeared on NBA XL and WSRQ 1220. Ryan has covered the NBA with media credentials since the 2007 season. Assistant editor Austin Kent recently conducted a very humanizing interview with Hawks F Josh Smith, right after he earned himself $58 million.

- The Bob Mantz Blitz

Birthday: around July 2008
Website type: general sports news, opinions, satire
In their own words: Extensive list of works listed here on Bleacher Report. Had over 12,000 hits in August already.
Press Pass: The man’s done well lately—Mantz was recognized in many outlets as scooping the Favre-to-NYJ elephant and has been mentioned on some of New York’s top sports radio shows.

- Sports Agent Blog

Birthday: December 2005
Website type: sports agent encyclopedia
In their own words: A detailed write-up about the many contributors from the site.
Press Pass: Very impressive. Anyone who scours Google looking for insight into the sports representation business must end up at Sports Agent Blog. A full list of agencies, a good number of agent interviews, and an internship database—among them, positions to fill for the sports agency of the site’s creator.

- SportsBiz

Birthday: January 2005
Website type: sports business news and commentary
In their own words: My blog is one of the only, if not the only, blog that focuses exclusively on the business of sports and is not written by a professional and working journalist.  That gives me a little bit freer range of topics although not necessarily as much original material.
Press Pass: An interesting site in the vein of SportsBusiness Journal, the author, Mark Ament, brings a Florio-esque background as an attorney who had worked in sports and corporate law, and it shows—his posts have a definite “economist” viewpoint to them. He signs his e-mails with the appropriate tagline of, “When it comes to sports, you know it’s all about the money.”

It was a fantastic experience, which I had the wherewithal to document as I lived it. One of the reasons that I love the NFL preseason is, for better or for worse, it’s the only time of the year when we see most of the former NFLE players in action. With the league folding after last season, the number of these players will slowly decline, until eventually, the last of them retires or no longer plays for an NFL team.

It’s fun to scroll through the box scores and see which former NFLE stars got to prove their worth and fight to achieve their dream. One of my favorite players from that last season in Berlin, Walter Curry, is doing his best to make the 49ers, while former two-time league MVP of the Frankfurt Galaxy, J.T. O’Sullivan was just named the regular season starter over Alex Smith and former Amsterdam Admirals QB Shaun Hill.

So, who’s still around? Here’s a brief look at which other NFLE alumni are still on NFL rosters this training camp. There’s a 100% chance I’ve left a current or former NFL player off this list, so if there’s a name that you know belongs here, let me know. (click through for list)

- Big thanks (and many links) to The Football Database, which keeps track of every player’s NFL and NFLE career statistics.

QB J.T. O’Sullivan (Frankfurt ’04 and ’07): 49ers
QB Casey Bramlet (Hamburg ’05 and ’07): Chargers
QB Gibran Hamdan (Amsterdam ’04, ’05, and ’06): Bills
QB Drew Henson (Rhein ‘06): Vikings
QB Brock Berlin (Hamburg ’06): Rams
QB Shane Boyd (Cologne ’06): Texans
QB Shaun Hill (Amsterdam ’03): 49ers
QB Jake Delhomme (Amsterdam ’98, Frankfurt ’99): Panthers
QB Todd Bouman (Barcelona ’99): Jaguars
QB Kurt Warner (Amsterdam ’98): Cardinals
QB Damon Huard (Frankfurt ’98): Chiefs
QB Jon Kitna (Barcelona ’97): Lions
QB Brad Johnson (London ’95): Cowboys
RB Aaron Stecker (Scotland ’00): Saints
RB Maurice Hicks (Scotland ’03 and ’04): Vikings
RB DeCori Birmingham (Frankfurt ’07): Panthers
WR Marcus Maxwell (Hamburg ’07): Bengals
WR Ryan Hoag (Berlin ’07): Jaguars
TE Jamie Petrowski (Frankfurt ’07): Titans
WR Noriaki Kinoshita (Amsterdam ’05, ’06, ’07): Falcons
WR Robert Ortiz (Frankfurt ’07): 49ers
TE Charles Davis (Berlin ’07): Jaguars
WR Steve Sanders (Berlin ’07): Browns
TE Alex Shor (Berlin ’07): Cardinals
WR Ruvell Martin (Amsterdam ’05): Packers
WR Sean Morey (Barcelona ’00 and ’01, ’03): Cardinals
WR Dane Looker (Berlin ’02): Rams
WR Ahmad Merritt (Berlin ’01): Cardinals
WR Dante Hall (Scotland ’01): Rams
DE Walter Curry (Rhein ’06, Berlin ’07): 49ers
DE Dave Tollefson (Berlin ’07): Giants
DT Tony Brown (Amsterdam ’06): Titans
DE Otis Grigsby (Cologne ’06): Vikings
LB Matt Sinclair (Frankfurt ’06 and ’07): Redskins
DT Aubrayo Franklin (Frankfurt ’04): 49ers
DT Israel Idonije (Berlin ’04): Bears
DB Clinton Hart (Amsterdam/Rhein ’02): Chargers
DT Kelly Gregg (Rhein ’01): Ravens
DE Paul Spicer (Frankfurt ’01): Jaguars
LB Brendon Ayanbadejo (Amsterdam ’01): Bears
DE Marques Douglas (Rhein ’00): Buccaneers
DT Chatric Darby (Barcelona ’00): Lions
DT La’roi Glover (Barcelona ’97): Rams
S Atari Bigby (Amsterdam ’06): Packers
S Deke Cooper (Rhein ’01 and ’02): Falcons
LB Paris Lenon (Amsterdam ’02): Lions
K Adam Vinateri (Amsterdam ’96): Colts
K David Akers (Berlin ’99): Eagles
P Brian Moorman (Berlin ’00 and ’01): Bills
K Lawrence Tynes (Scotland ’02): Giants
K Matt Bryant (Frankfurt ’02): Buccaneers
K Rhys Lloyd (Frankfurt ’07): Panthers
P Dirk Johnson (Rhein ‘02): Cardinals
G/C Brian Waters (Berlin ’00): Chiefs
G Marco Rivera (Scotland ’97): Cowboys

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