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.
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.
>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).
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.
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 ).