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Comment by zebrafish | Hacker News Reader

Seems like a refreshing idea. Sports analysis pieces like those on smartfootball.com are some of my favorite articles to read in sports.

ESPN's constant focus on TMZ-like coverage for sports has put a bad taste in my mouth. I don't care about the picture Lebron posted of his breakfast on Instagram. I don't really even care about the breaking news. Finding out about a trade a day later rather than the minute it happens has absolutely zero impact on my life.

I want highlights from the games I couldn't see, I want some analysis from experts or insiders, and that's about it. Keeping it to just a few articles a day I think will be better for sports journalism in the long run. No need to manufacture content to fill the gaps in a 24-hour day.

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I have replaced ESPN with podcasts, individual national writers, SB Nation, local beat writers, the teams and leagues themsevles, and official highlights from YouTube. All of this is really easy with RSS. I rarely go to ESPN anymore except for a couple of national NBA writers.

Twitter is perfect for sports. I can see why they picked up some NFL games. You can choose what kind of content you want by who you follow, and it's all real-time and interactive.

I am convinced I love twitter as much as I do because I use it to do nothing but talk about sports. Twitter is incredible for sports and I talk to people from multiple countries and states about various teams. It is incredible.

Unfortunately it's hard to follow more than 1 topic on Twitter. I follow a lot of people who talk about technology and a lot of people who talk about sports. But since I follow more people who talk about technology I hardly see much of the sports stuff at all. Twitter has a way of surfacing only the primary interest that you have.

It would be nice if you could make 'feeds' or 'groups' or something. I can't believe they don't have that feature.

It does have lists, but it doesn't give you the nice "while you were away" groupings like you get in your main feeds.

True, though I find I don't need that 'while you were away' concept with my Lists because it's filtered to exactly the people I want to hear from. Which means, I don't get as much ( if any ) fluff in Tweets that you would get from your more generic main feed.

In which case, I actually just scroll through chronologically and read through what the news/insights/commentary has been since the last time I was there.

You can make lists. This is how I use and manage the various topics I follow across Twitter. I just go to each of my Lists in throughout the day and see what's happening.

Now, Twitter has somewhat made Lists a second class citizen in it's UI, but it's just a couple extra button press to get to it ( on mobile ).

Couldn't agree more. It's the only thing I use Twitter for.

I agree except when you watch a game on twitter they force the generic #[whatever game it is] feed down your throat instead of being able to see your curated feed you spent years putting together.

First off, really rooting for the Athletic, because I genuinely hope there is a place for good sportswriting in the future (and underlying that hope is that a business model will emerge that allows that to happen).

As a big college football fan though, your comment highlights one of the challenges I think they face with the "go local" strategy.

If the sports news/writing ecosystem were just bland ESPN-type coverage, I think there's a really clear value proposition. The reality is that there are a ton of other players with a local voice that users can get to for free (from the old school local beat writers to SB Nation's sites that represent ever major local team).

The bet they're making seems to be that there's room for a quality content provider, and I hope that ends up being true.

Agree. I actually subscribe to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette because of their sports beatwriters. I think they provide value to me. I would absolutely subscribe to other sports content that was of high quality and focused (mostly) on the team or sport I am interested in.

As an aside, some of the highest quality stuff I see is from bloggers/amateurs who follow sports and write about it as a hobby. There are people who write a dozen or two articles a year with incredible breakdowns containing numbers, vidoes, strategy, etc and it is incredible.

I grew up in the Pittsburgh area so I'm definitely biased, but I think Pittsburgh has a higher general sports literacy (especially for football) than other places I lived. Football is huge from peewee to the NFL and high school games receive significant coverage. The sportswriters seem to have more leeway to talk X and O's without losing their audience.

>As an aside, some of the highest quality stuff I see is from bloggers/amateurs who follow sports and write about it as a hobby. There are people who write a dozen or two articles a year with incredible breakdowns containing numbers, vidoes, strategy, etc and it is incredible.

I agree with this. There's some really good stuff out there. I also think it's worth mentioning Jon Gruden. He does a great job of breaking down game tape while still reaching a wide audience. I'd love to see more like him. My ultimate hope is that Peyton Manning gets his own show breaking down film (of both NFL games and his commercials).

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