The NHL is still that “other sport” that only a handful of your friends watch—but the ones that do can’t get enough of it. They probably played in their youth and still talk about “diamonds” and “finding the top of the circle” or other lingo that, to the rest of the world, might as well be in Arabic.

You can see the NHL hopes Ovechkin vs. Crosby can become their Magic vs. Bird, a decade-long feud that results in heated playoff battles and boatloads of high ratings. But if no one pays attention to the feud besides the die-hard fans—the fans that would watch games with or without Crosby—then what’s the difference?

For a league always investigating new avenues to reach fans, maybe the Internet and new media could be an untapped resource?

Blogosphere: The NHL and its teams enjoy a solid presence in the blogosphere, with plenty of active, well-read team-specific blogs and several strong league-wide sites. The Puck Stops Here and On Frozen Blog are both good reads, but Yahoo!’s Puck Daddy is, to me, the top dog here. For the (few) casual hockey fans, you can read Puck Daddy a few times a week and keep a good beat on what’s happening in the NHL.

League/team websites: I have to admit—before embarking on this project, I knew very little about NHL.com or its team sites. Overall, I’d say the league’s web presence is….above average.

For starters, I really like NHL.com.

1. It’s simple yet engaging. It’s not quite as flashy as NFL.com is, but it’s very well organized and you can find what’s new and hot quickly.
2. The site offers fresh content and plenty of video—a good mix of highlights and feature stories, essential for a league trying desperately to connect its stars with fans.
3. The NHL GameCenter LIVE sounds like a neat idea that other leagues have in various forms. I didn’t get to try it (I didn’t pay up!) but it doesn’t look too expensive if you’re a die-hard fan that doesn’t have a DirecTV package.

Like most leagues, many team sites follow a cookie-cutter format from top to bottom, so besides team colors and advertising, they almost all look alike. There are plenty of reasons this happens—cost being one of them—but it robs the site of any personality whatsoever.

Sure, it gets the news across and you can see the team rosters. But aside from the occasional team feature story or to hear about the latest promotions, why would I visit a team site instead of ESPN.com or NHL.com? Unless I was an absolute bleeding-blue Rangers fan, there’s nothing on their team site that I couldn’t find elsewhere.

I’ve already opined that news outlets going online-only will succeed if they can offer a better experience than their competitors. These team sites offer little to no experience at all, which to me is money very poorly spent.

Facebook / Twitter: Considering their resources, the NHL makes a decent social media showing. The teams that do host Twitter feeds should try conversing with fans, rather than simply posting links to news and stories; it’s an opportunity to build excitement, much like some NBA teams are doing. I didn’t find many teams engaging with their fans on Twitter at all.

Kind of like how Alex Ovechkin did—at least, until he stopped updating his feed in January. Whoever assists Alex with his various channels of communication would be wise to re-start his feed—it looked like he was just starting to do a fantastic job at conversing with fans and bloggers on a regular basis. Considering Alex is one of the stars the NHL is essentially punching their meal ticket with, that could be a huge win.

The only other pro hockey player I found on Twitter was Patrik Elias, who hasn’t updated since late January, either. I did find Michael DiLorenzo, the NHL’s Director of Corporate Communications, who looks like he tweets and converses with fans often. You can also follow his feed on his non-affiliated web site. Nice touch, and a bit unfortunate that the site of an NHL exec has more personality than any of the team sites in his entire league.

The NHL exists on Facebook, but few of its teams have active, team-run fan pages.

Overall

Despite a decent start in media efforts, the NHL continues to face the same problem it always has: the inability to expand its wings beyond its small group of passionate fans.

I’ve met very few people that only “kind of like” hockey—either they love it, or don’t really follow it at all. There’s a chance these Internet and new media in-roads might expose new fans to the game, currently enjoying (like the NBA) an explosion of talent not experienced in a long time.

Could this new media world help the NHL grow in popularity? It’s certainly possible, but the league and its teams need to sit down and really strategize a way to build a more expansive fan base; simply being a “cool sport” and “the best sport to see in person” just won’t get them over the hump. I’m sure the league has considered (and possibly implemented) a grassroots education program, like the NFL’s wildly successful youth football initiatives, but the results wouldn’t be seen for a decade at least. There must be an answer in the here and now.

And until the NHL figures out a way to push its Ovechkin’s and Crosby’s into new living rooms, the same mega-fans that TiVo every game will be the ones that blog and tweet to each other about it, and the rest of the sports realm will continue to go about their business, unfazed.

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The lockout. Steroid scandals. The salary cap debate. Baseball, of the four major sports, has endured the most black clouds of anyone. Yet despite a talent and popularity surge in the NBA, MLB remains the second most popular and profitable sport behind the NFL.

A very interesting era in baseball is about to begin: the post-steroid era (we hope). The combination of major stars being outed as steroid users and the recent slump in the economy has resulted in many teams getting significantly younger—which could work in MLB’s benefit in producing marketable stars quicker, or work against them, creating a void in talent and marketability (much like the post-MJ NBA).

With so many hotly debated topics in baseball, the Internet provides a great medium for pundits and fans alike to hem and haw about what’s best for the game. So, let’s get started…

Blogosphere: Baseball doesn’t enjoy the sheer massive amount of blogs and websites that the NFL has, or the notoriety of TrueHoop. In my opinion, baseball’s blog power emanates from the statheads, the fans so dedicated to sabermetrics and the work of luminaries like Bill James.

Probably one of the more notable names in the baseball blogosphere is Will Carroll, he of Baseball Prospectus fame. Much like Football Outsiders, BP encourages fans to see the game outside of the realm of the common fan, beyond the box score.

Speaking of beyond the box score, BTBS is another well-read site that pushes its readers away from the mundane and into the statistically unusual—but very well done, like their dot-chart analysis of Derek Lowe’s pitch location on opening night.

There are plenty of good team-based blogs out there, but probably moreso than any of the other major sports, the numbers (and obviously, popularity) are heavily slanted toward the major market teams, like the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox and Dodgers.

League/team websites: In MLB’s case, it isn’t the actual homepage itself that’s so awesome—it’s all the extras.

MLB.com itself doesn’t offer much that you couldn’t find elsewhere. Where the MLB is making headlines, however, is with the incredibly popular MLB.tv, which re-launched this season at a lower price than season’s passed with a new interface, giving fans the ability to watch streaming games in HD for any team, no matter where they are. It’s already received some pretty significant, thumbs-up coverage and positive reviews so far. (full disclosure: MLB.tv uses Adobe software. Adobe is a client of Edelman. Edelman employs me. Adobe, however, is not one of my clients.)

THIS is where the future of sports media is going. BusinessofVideo says it best: “As far as I am concerned, MLB is doing everything right with their online video offering in 2009 by giving us better quality, at a lower cost. Now if only they could figure out a way to get rid of all the blackout restrictions.”

As far as the rest of MLB.com, its main site is fairly average in its multimedia offerings. The MLBlogs section, however, is extremely impressive. The MLBlogosphere, which uses the tagline “Official Affiliate/Unofficial Opinions”, is a network of MLB-sponsored team bloggers that spans across almost the entire MLB.

Considering these blogs will never be used as news-reporting vehicles—only as “experience” reporters—this is an outstanding way to reach out to fans and give that behind-the-scenes look that the passionate followers all crave. Well done, MLB.

MLBlogs also houses an impressive database of teams, players, news media, and personalities that blog about the MLB, all in a drop-down menu. They even have bi-weekly reports of which sites get the most pageviews. Very cool, and MLB definitely takes the cake in the best uses of league-run blogging.

Like the other major pro sports, every team site is pretty much exactly the same.

Facebook / Twitter: Zilch, much like the NFL. On Twitter, I found Justin Morneau, whose feed is either updated by a ghost writer or Justin always talks about himself in the third person. That’s it. I’m fairly surprised that a sport with as much dead time as MLB doesn’t have at least SOME social media presence.

Think about this: you know how huge Twitter is in New York City? You’d have to think at least half of those people are Yankees fans. Half of all celebrities are Yankees fans. The Yankees are the most recognizable sports brand in America. An official Yankees Twitter feed is as close as you could get to a guaranteed success.

On the other hand, I admit that a team like the Kansas City Royals would need to be pretty creative to build a successful following on Twitter. Then again, for something as relatively inexpensive as a Twitter page, wouldn’t you think it’s at least worth a shot?

Overall

That’s kind of the story of MLB, isn’t it? Some things will be done so well, like a Hall of Fame inductions and the World Baseball Classic (that’s debatable), but then mis-management of the steroid scandal or ending an All Star Game in a tie reminds everyone how strangely out of touch and “focusless” the leaders of the game can be.

The extra’s and niceties of MLB.com are great, but why is MLB.com so ho-hum? How can MLB.com house such an impressive blog network, but all 30 team sites are exactly the same? And on top of that, have absolutely no presence in social media?

Whoever runs the new media department for MLB has, clearly, some excellent ideas. MLB.tv is already a smash-hit and getting better, and the aforementioned blog network is a great start. What they lack, I think, is an overall strategy. Is this blog network part of a bigger push into Internet media for baseball? Will MLB.tv pair with one of the DVR providers—or even Apple, to offer streaming content to iPhone’s?

MLB has the beginnings of a very strong Internet presence already. Much like their peers that run the actual sport, there is no vision—no apparent clue of how this should fit into the bigger picture. It’s just many nice, shiny things that, on their own, will be cool extra’s, but nothing that will knock anyone’s socks off. If MLB has given thought into their Internet future, I’d hope they would capitalize on the emergence of MLB.tv and start unveiling their plans.

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Overview

The NBA has enjoyed quite a marketing facelift over the last few seasons, hasn’t it? The NBA of the late ‘90s and early 2000’s—aside from Jordan, of course—left us a lockout, the Jailblazers, Latrell Sprewell, and some of the slowest, most boring basketball in recent memory. It didn’t help that some of the few major faces of the immediate post-Jordan era, like Vince Carter and Allen Iverson, were grumpy, me-first “isolation” superstars that turned many fans off from the get-go.

Once the Kobe-Shaq Lakers hit the scene, things sllooowwwwly picked up. A sudden influx of marketable young stars like Dwayne Wade, Dirk, and most recently, LeBron/CP3/Dwight Howard, along with exciting teams that could defend (Pistons/Spurs), score (Phoenix) and win (Boston/LA) injected life into the Association.

Internet Presence

Blogosphere: Even before getting snatched up by ESPN, TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott led one of the most-read sports blogs online. Now bolstered by the ESPN brand, TrueHoop is one of the most respected and well-read NBA daily reads.

NBA Fanhouse is probably the most well-read of the Fanhouse family. Plenty of other major sports blogs, like Free Darko, can claim NBA blogging roots. Only the NFL enjoys a stronger citizen journalist presence than the NBA.

League/team websites: NBA.com provides a good pulse of what’s happening around the NBA on a nightly basis. The NBA TV / video library is well done, but I think a sport as highlight-rich as the NBA could do a better job (on a regular basis) in providing the nightly bests to its fans.

These days, cookie-cutter team sites are the norm in most leagues, and the NBA is no different. Visit 5-10 official team sites and you’ll note the format and mandatory tie-ins. Many of the teams do a decent job differentiating their team sites, but Portland and Charlotte are among some of the best. They both provide unique content in a creative way.

Facebook / Twitter: The NBA leads the way in the social media department, finding new ways to engage with fans all over the globe. About 75% of the NBA teams feature an active, team-run Twitter site, tweeting in-game updates, interesting tidbits about players, and upcoming deals on tickets and merchandise.

According to our growing Twitter directory, there are currently way, way more NBA players (and coaches/executives/team reps) tweeting than in any other sport—combined. You can converse with the likes of Dwight Howard, Baron Davis, and even Mark Cuban, or just follow them to see what they’re up to.

A few teams go above and beyond on Twitter, actively engaging in conversations with the fans that follow them, like the San Antonio Spurs (1,700+ followers as of 3/2009) and the Houston Rockets (600+ followers).

And then there’s the Phoenix Suns.

Check out the impressive Twitter presence from the team of the Valley:

• - Team Twitter feed (1,800+ following)
• - Head Coach Alvin Gentry tweeting (500+ following)
• - “The Big Twitterer,” Shaq (250,000+ following and featured in the New York Times), Steve Nash (7000 following), and Jason Richardson (2,500+ following), all having active conversations with fans
• - Suns Director of Digital Media—dubbed PhoenixSunsGirl—with over 4,000 followers and tons of active conversations with fans and players! (UPDATE: she now tweets exclusively by DigitalRoyalty, which has over 128,000 followers.)
• - Suns VP of Interactive Media, SunsWebMaster, tweeting out unique content from the Suns’ website to 800+ followers
• - Over 36,000 fans on the Suns’ official Facebook fan page

In PR, the sum of your efforts is often measured in “impressions”—tallying up the number of eyes or ears your message reached for a given period. The Suns’ social media presence currently reaches over 300,000 channels, with various conversations about the team and players, keeping everything Suns-related at the top of everyone’s mind. And don’t forget—that number will grow each and every day.

Extremely impressive. No major pro sports team has embraced the social media scene quite like the Phoenix Suns.

Overall

No one is quite sure how to harness the power of new media yet to its full potential. Sports is, traditionally, even slower to adapt than other industries—a new idea or way of thinking won’t seriously resonate until it simply cannot be ignored any longer.

The NBA, so far, stands head and shoulders above the pack in trying to find the solution. The Association, its teams and players have embraced this new method of reaching out to the fans and raising the bar for the experience of the game—without changing the game itself in the least.

Making fans more passionate about your brand, without changing your current product or spending tons of money? That’s a slam-dunk.

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More and more athletes are getting on Twitter these days. While some people aren’t exactly sure how Twitter benefits anyone, it’s a great medium for athletes and teams to engage with fans in new ways. How else could regular every-day fans talk to Lance Armstrong about where he buys his coffee?

I know some of you are thinking, “Why would I care about where Lance Armstrong gets coffee?” True, not everyone really gives a darn about what everyone’s doing or thinking at a particular time (like this hilarious video illustrates). But, don’t get wrapped up in the individual tweets and thoughts of everyone; instead, think of it like a virtual “club”. You can pick up a conversation or idea that’s interesting to you, or share a thought that you think others might enjoy.

In that same vein, it’s a chance to share those ideas and converse with people that you might not ever meet or talk to regularly. Maybe you’re actually looking for a good new coffee place in LA; hey, if Lance Armstrong likes it, maybe it’s worth a shot. I hear he’s in pretty good shape.

Anyway, as a sports fan on Twitter, I thought it might be interesting to take a survey of who all is actually on Twitter and how they use it. Some athletes and personalities run successful and interesting Twitter feeds that are fun to follow.  On that note, we took a stab at creating a sports Twitter database that we’ll update once athletes, coaches, or other sports personalities find their way onto the social network.  You can also access it above, from the Twitter Sports Database tab.

Eventually—much like the Internet itself—I have a feeling that the teams and sports leagues will want to get in on the act as well. Some have more than others, with varying results. To gauge how the major pro sports are doing in the new media department, over the next few days, we’ll be posting New Media Overviews of the four major sports, their teams and their athletes. We’ll discuss their progress in various categories and discuss the innovative new ways they’re engaging with fans—and how they can improve.

So, stay tuned, and make sure to visit Press Row throughout the week for our New Media Review’s.

(are you on Twitter? Feel free to follow me, @rockatalic.)

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A very minor observation, but if you’ve been watching highlights on ESPN and FOX Sports (and their Internet counterparts) you might have noticed a dramatic decline in use of highlight footage.

For as long as I can remember, any mention of an NFL player would warrant a run of highlights. Now, we’re treated to zooming in and out of still photos of said players.

Could the NFL be enforcing their 2007 policy decision, limiting media outlets to “45 seconds per day of video shot at a team’s facilities, including news conferences, interviews and practice-field reports”?

ESPN seems to have no problem showing footage of Oklahoma’s Sam Bradford after he announced he was staying at school:

…yet in this piece about Matt Cassel and the franchise tag, we are limited to still photos.

The only live-action footage ESPN is showing, interestingly, is via a direct link to NFL.com:

Same situation at FOX Sports, where the some NFL action—in this case, a Larry Fitzgerald vs. Asante Samuel preview—yup, only stills.

How about this airing of a Cardinals press conference, where FOX is showing still photos of the Cards-Falcons game—a game FOX broadcasted on their own network.

I couldn’t even find a video at CBS Sports’ website that had any kind of game footage in it, video or still shots. (PS—CBS Sports shows a 30-second commercial before every video. Very annoying. We’d get the picture after one, thank you very much.)

The only video I found with any in-game media at NBC Sports’ website (after watching a couple of mandatory 15-second commercials) is this “Mad Dog Minute” with Chris Russo, which showed still-photos of the Titans’ playoff loss to the Ravens.

Over at NFL.com, it’s Pro Bowl and Super Bowl highlights galore, to your heart’s content.

Do you think the NFL sent a friendly reminder to the major media outlets to cut the highlights, or what?

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In there here-and-now, more and more popular tech magazines are ditching their print operation in favor of an online-only style, starting with longtime tech mag InfoWorld last year.

In November, PC Magazine, another stalwart on the technology sector, announced their January issue would be their final in print, also opting for an all-online medium.

The reasons, at the surface, are obvious; printing hundreds of thousands of pages each month costs tons of money. Printing content online costs a fraction of that. Additionally, manning an online-only publication probably takes a quarter of the staff.

The rising costs of producing a print pub, as NY Times pointed out, arrives as advertising profits continue to plummet:

• “But magazine and newspaper publishers have been contending with a decline in advertising at the same time that their costs, including ink, printing, and distribution, are rising.
  
  Advertising pages for the December issues of monthly magazines are down more than 17 percent from the December issues of 2007, according to the Media Industry Newsletter, and that is leading to layoffs and the closing of titles.”

The next wave, in my humble opinion, will start when the first brave newspaper decides to go exclusively online. And make no mistake about it—it will happen. The ability to adapt to the changing landscape—and to adjust your business model accordingly—is an absolute must if any of the dying print industry hope to make it out of this economy with their paper still in existence.

The clear challenge is figuring out how to remain profitable in an online-only world.

As we previously mentioned, online-only pubs can carry a much smaller staff than the current model; I’d guess-timate a quarter. Paper boys, printing companies, and others are no longer needed. You get your one or two necessary contributors in each section.  Everyone else gets let go, and you have fewer people covering more ground.

Next—assimilate the failures. (Man, that just sounds cold.) What I mean is this: at the end of this economic struggle, we won’t have three papers per major metropolis. How do you think we arrived at papers like the Chicago Sun-Times to begin with? At some point, there was probably a Chicago Sun and a Chicago Times. One won out, and it acquired the other. That will happen again soon.

Whatever concoction of papers comes out of that (we’ll call it the Chicago Tribune-Sun) will need to figure out how to make online media profitable. And if you read PC Mag’s announcement, here’s a little insight: take advantage of all the compelling mediums the internet has to offer.

- It arrives in your e-mail automatically. Just click the link to either download the latest edition, or to view it entirely online.
- It is portable. Once you’ve downloaded the issue (which takes a matter of seconds), just power up your PC and view it anywhere, on an airplane, in your hotel room, wherever.
- It’s lively and interactive. Our digital edition will eventually offer rich media options within a magazine format. So, for example, next to the product review you’re reading in First Looks, you can easily view a slideshow of that product. Or while you’re reading a Solutions article on Microsoft Outlook tips, our PC Labs experts can walk you through the steps of some of those tips in a video.
- It’s searchable. Here’s something PC Magazine print cannot do. Enter a search term and PC Magazine Digital will fill all the related pages.
- A live TOC: The table of contents is not only a place to find out what’s in this month’s issue. You can use it to navigate directly to the stories you want to read.

There is the key: offer an experience that is superb to the typical newspaper read, and make it accessible anywhere, to anyone with a computer.  The biggest starter to profitability is get people reading.  Newspapers will soon face the challenge of convincing the average reader that they are worth the time of picking up and reading–and finding content that wouldn’t be found in the USA Today or CNN.com.  The bottom line is that the stagnancy of the newspaper culture has to go; news agencies are expected to be flexible, versatile, and on the cutting edge.

Newspapers—your blueprint is here. Who will be the first to take the plunge?

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Super Bowl regulars like FedEx and GM have bowed out, but Pepsi, Coke and Anheuser-Busch remain in the fray. You can expect other Super Bowl splashers, like Doritos, will probably be in the mix, too.

CNN mentions that most of the advertisers purchased their ads as long ago as September, when things were only kinda-bad when compared to now.

Could you imagine if companies like Ford, Chevrolet, or WaMu are even remotely mentioned in any Super Bowl ads? Any corporation that’s even thinking about bailout money is, hopefully, as far away from a Super Bowl ad as possible.

This, from CNN:

“General Motors, the official Super Bowl sponsor, used an animated, 60-second spot during last year’s game to unveil its GMC Yukon Hybrid. But the automaker will not be airing a commercial this year. GM spokeswoman Kelly Cusinato said the company made that decision back in September.

“It just wasn’t a good enough return on the investment for that, because we didn’t have a major vehicle launch that aligned with the timing of the Super Bowl,” said Cusinato. “Then we went to Congress, and the economy got worse and we started scaling back a lot of other sponsorships.”

When auto executives went hat in hand to Congress last December, GM was strongly advised not to run a Super Bowl ad this year.”

Good thing GM is considering the important issues, like launch strategy, when deciding how to best spend our money.

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Working at each of those Super Bowl’s—for the entire week, attending all of the events—was an awesome experience. (I actually blogged about it for 49ers.com during SB XLI: 1/28, 1/29, 1/30, 1/31, 2/1, 2/2, 2/3, 2/4 [the game day recall] ). I worked at the biggest media event in the world, twice, and saw it from the inside.

Then, my current employer sent me to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and my view of the “biggest media event” changed. Completely.

A few quick facts about Super Bowl XLII (courtesy of Super Bowl Host Committee):

• 3,400+ Media credentials issued

• 100 Radio stations on “Radio Row” in the Super Bowl Media Center
• 7.5 Million parties are held on Super Bowl Sunday with 43.9 million party-goers
• 1.5 Million TV sets will be sold during the week leading up to Super Bowl
• Super Bowl is the top at-home party event of the year, ahead of New Year’s Eve
• Super Bowl Sunday is the second-largest day of food consumption, second only to Thanksgiving

And a little about CES (from the Consumer Electronics Association):

• More than 2,700 global companies
• An estimated 20,000 new products unveiled
• Spanned 1.7 million net square feet of exhibit space
• In attendance: Tom Hanks, Alex Trebek, Jimmy Fallon, Stevie Wonder, Counting Crows’ Adam Duritz, Usher, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Reggie Jackson, Dr. Oz and Ludacris, among others
• Exhibitors projected to generate $171 billion in U.S. shipment revenues in 2009

So, CES, Super Bowl…what other humongous media events do I need to hit?

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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?

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