Sports Resources on the Internet

I thought it might be helpful to have a thread in which we list where we like to go for our sports stories and information. We've had a lot of people in the NHL thread mention they've only started paying attention to hockey in the past year or two for instance, while I myself have gotten more into basketball but really don't know who's a reputable source and who's full of shit.

FOCUS: List your favorite sports resources on the internet. It can be blogs, podcasts, twitter feeds, whatever. Try to provide a short description for us too.

Don't list anything incredibly obvious like ESPN or SI unless you link to a specific writer or show.

Hockey:
http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy - A pretty thorough blog that lists in-depth previews and re-caps in addition to feature stories and random columns. Bonus points in my book for having a weekly NCAA hockey post.

http://www.spectorshockey.net/ - Dedicated to free agent and trade rumors.

http://www.nhlnumbers.com/ - Great site listing players contracts and salary cap figures.

http://mirtle.blogspot.com/ now becoming http://www.fromtherink.com/ - Does a good job of collecting local stories of interest while also providing his own engaging and original content.

General Sports:
http://ballhype.com/blogs/ - Tries to "rank" blogs from most sports by how many posts they do a week, how many visitors they get, and how many other sites link to them. Not the best resource because a lot of sites are home team (though some of these still do league-wide stories) and it doesn't give you a feel for how knowledgeable they really are.

 

Pro Football
I'm a bit of a stat head so

Football Outsiders http://www.footballoutsiders.com
Best statistical stuff out there, but kind of dense when you're first getting into it.

Advanced NFL Stats http://www.advancednflstats.com/
Really cool in-game win-probabilities, that get used for analysis on coaching decisions (usually 4th downs) during the week.

Pro Football Reference http://www.pro-football-reference.com
Easy to use site for tons of football stats. They do some cool stats work on the blog too.

Very useful for news
Adam Schefter's Twitter http://twitter.com/Adam_Schefter
Schefter knows his shit.

 

Baseball

I'll assume that sites like MLBTR, BP, and Fangraphs are popular enough that no one needs to be told about them, fans of those are likely aware of BtBS and Tango et al. over at The Book.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, just a few personal favorites:
Prospects
- Goldstein at BP and on Twitter
- KLaw at ESPN and Twitter
- Sickels
- The former authors of Saberscouting: Kiley McDaniel at BP and Frankie Piliere at Fanhouse
- Ben Badler, Jorge Arangure, Mike Newman, Alex Eisenberg of baseball intellect, Project Prospect.
Injuries & Mechanics
- Will Carroll at BP is the gold standard, but I also like the work done over at Driveline Mechanics and Texas Leaguers. DLI is solid during fantasy season, and although he hasn't updated in awhile, Chris O'Leary's former works are still worth a read.
Pitch F/X
Mike Fast has pulled most of his pitch F/X stuff b/c of his current position, but you can still find pitch F/X tools at Dan Brooks' siteand Josh Kalk's site, Brooks' even has AFL games if you're dying to find out how Strasburg is doing. Harry Pavlidis of Cubsfx and BtBS is doing a lot w. pitch F/X right now

Feel free to PM me if you're looking for more of the above, team specific, info about foreign or independent leagues, etc.

 

I can't agree with this enough. I follow Schefter on Twitter, and it's worth tracking what he posts (and he does so often). He's got excellent sources.

Focus: Any team blog on SBNation I would highly recommend. Written by fans, for fans, the sites provide better analysis for why your team succeeds or fails than anything you'll read on ESPN.com. Being a Broncos fan, I have all of the AFC West teams' blogs on my RSS feed (not to be a homer, but Mile High Report is the best NFL blog I've seen on there thus far; the job those guys do is superb...it's worth checking out just for the depth of analysis).

Mocking the Draft, another SBNation site, is an excellent resource on all things concerning NFL prospects. Another feature of my RSS feed.

Also, it seems that Chad Ochocinco may be breaking news a la Adam Schefter here soon. Keep your eyes peeled: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=4590771

 

http://downgoesbrown.com - The funniest hockey writer I've ever run into; He's a leafs blogger but don't let that turn you off. Way up there on funny-things-on-the-internet.

http://www.lionsinwinter.ca/ is a very in-depth Habs resource with a bit of snark

http://habsinsideout.com/ is run by a few guys from the Montreal Gazette and they're very on the ball due to their extensive connections, usually picking up exclusive audio clips at practice and such

 

I don't know how obvious these are, but I'll post them up anyway.

With Leather - As in, "You're with me, leather." More on the sports entertainment side, but is also good at breaking those little stories that might get passed over on ESPN et al.

Deadspin - This one should be obvious. Breaks a lot of stories such as Matt Lawton testing positive for steroids and Matt Leinart partying in NYC. Also pretty funny.

Kissing Suzy Kolber - Named after the infamous Joe Namath comment.

 

The best Cubs blog out there today is Desipio. He (Andy Dolan) also broaches other Chicago sports subjects, but usually posts every other day during baseball season. http://www.desipio.com/
The second best Cubs blog is Hire Jim Essian. http://hirejimessian.com/
Both are funny, smart, and aren't like most Cub fans. You know, the "Its Gonna Happen" douchebags.

The best Cubs reporter is not Carrie Muskat, its Bruce Miles of the suburban Daily Herald. http://blogs.dailyherald.com/blog/18

If you're a Cubs fan and you have some other suggestions, pm me. Unless its about Bleed Cubbie Blue, or those assbags at the Trib or Sun Times. I don't want to get dumber.

Another dude that I read regularly is Joe Posnanski. http://joeposnanski.com/JoeBlog/
I also like reading Craig Calcaterra of Shysterball (is part of Hardball Times). http://www.hardballtimes.com/main/shysterball/

 

For Eagles news I go to the SB Nation site (www.BleedingGreenNation.com)-Great site for Eagles news and analysis.

Also, Tommy Lawler writes for Scouts Notebook, but he's a big Eagles fan and he has fantastic write-ups before and after every Eagles game. He does probably the best job of giving you a straight up, no bullshit analysis of each game. Here's his Eagles blog: (http://eaglesblitz.blogspot.com/)

For Phillies news I'll read the SB Nation site The Good Phight (www.thegoodphight.com)-Not great, but it's the best one I've found so far. If anybody has suggestions on a better Phillies blog I'd love to hear it.

The Big Lead is a site cut in a similar mold to Deadspin, I read it about once a day. (www.TheBigLead.com)

I read SportsByBrooks (www.sportsbybrooks.com) every couple days. He's not overly objective, but he writes about interesting topics. Definitely worth reading every once in a while.

 

Baseball

My favorite site, Fangraphs, has already been mentioned, but a list of baseball sites wouldn't be complete without the following:
The Hardball Times (http://www.hardballtimes.com) - Daily baseball news and analysis, with an emphasis on statistics and fantasy baseball, similar to Fangraphs.
Cot's Baseball Contracts (http://mlbcontracts.blogspot.com/) - Comprehensive listing of contract status for all current major league players, managers and front office folks.
Baseball Reference (http://www.baseball-reference.com/) - Excellent resource for all major league team and individual statistics and records.
The Baseball Cube (http://www.thebaseballcube.com/) - Minor league statistics.
Braves Journal (http://www.bravesjournal.com/) - If you're a Braves fan (like me) it's the best place to go for news, game recaps and (mostly) intelligent discussions of the topics of the day.

Also - I was 'awesome-o' on the RMMB. I pretty much just lurked, posting very infrequently. My new username is, well, my name.

 

I don't think it's been mentioned but Barstool Sports can be a pretty entertaining blog. Their motto is "By the common man, for the common man," and they have sites for Boston and New York. It's not entirely a sports site, as posts can vary from the smokeshow of the day to weird/funny videos circulating the web, but I usually check it a couple times a day to see if there's anything good. The guy who runs the whole thing writes on the Boston site and can be extremely full of himself, but ignore that and it's a decent blog.

 

deadspin.com is the best, most humorous sports blog out there.

Been following them for years. Used to also love themightymjd's blog but he closed up shop and writes for a big name now. He used to do these reports of the NFL games from a sports bar where he commented as much on the waitresses' assess and outfits along with his gambling addict friend Fish's stupid sayings as much as the games. Very funny guy.

 

http://www.101greatgoals.com is the place to go for European football highlights, usually posting full MOTD coverage for English games.

(At time of posting, the site is down for some reason. Hopefully this is temporary.)

 

Four blogs I can't live without:

Hockey or Die - Broad NHL analysis with a lot of good views.

Behind the Net - Advanced NHL statistics analysis

Branded - Sports Design.

Boston Dirt Dogs - Red Sox Boston.com blog. Funny as well.

 

Big fan of MidMajority for coverage of mid-major college basketball. Lots of great essays on the hidden allure of the mid-major as well as general fanhood.

 

Pretty much every player in the NFL that's been arrested.

 

I wasn't up on this one when I first posted, but Casual Hoya is great for Georgetown basketball analysis, debate and general irreverence.

 

Does anyone besides me play "streak for the cash" on ESPN. It a monthly game that is worth $100,000 and is free to play. I have been addicted to it since i started playing. You just got to get a free ESPN account. Alot of talking on the match ups to help you get a perspective without having to do as much research.

Here is the link.

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.streak.espn.go.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">www.streak.espn.go.com/</a>

 

I like this site:
http://www.sportsclubstats.com/

It tried to predict the chances of teams in the various leagues making the playoffs. It'll show you their odds throughout the season, and how a win or loss in upcoming games will affect their chances as well as their competitors'.

Also, since headshots and concussions are such hot topics in the NHL and NFL, I found out about http://theconcussionblog.com/. Good resource about explaining the nature of it, league protocols, reports on the progress of players, etc.