really, really not news: bud light radio ads

When you resort to doing a sports post on a radio commerical about guys who are unathletic, it's time to take a nap and start the day over again, SPORTSbyBROOKS.

Doing a post on a radio ad that salutes the unathletic sports talk radio guy? A post on a radio ad? A hackneyed bit of a radio ad at that. Is Budweiser a sponsor of your site, Brooks?

Wasn't there a story about a 59-year old football player or something you could have written about? Oh, nevermind.

Say it with me ... F - I - L - L - E - R.

And not even good filler ... like those half naked women all over your site usually are.

stop the circle jerk

At what point in the short history of sports blogging did it become acceptable and trendy to start interviewing one another? Not that I am complaining, well actually I am, but these interviews do bring back fond memories of when the MSM did the same thing. Who can forget the time Frank DeFord interviewed Peter Gammons? Man, that was good stuff. And remember that crazy interview that Jason Whitlock did with Mike Lupica? Bet they'd like to have that one back!

I mean who doesn't want to know the inner workings of a guy who posts on announcers and broadcasters. The announcers and broadcasters aren't the news, the guy who blogs about them is!

And we were all just chomping at the bit to get an inside look at the guy who writes a football blog for ESPN. Shit, T.O. and Randy Moss aren't stories ... The guy who writes about them is!

Even better, we were all dying to know the secrets held inside the mind of a female (a female!?) baseball blogger? Man, I am so glad we got to the bottom of all that. I am just surprised the Associated Press didn't pick that story up, it's such a scoop.

Bloggers ... get over yourselves. The next time you see Rick Telander interviewing T.J. Simers, then you can feel free to start interviewing each other. Until then, let's remember that you are not news (or interesting).

if you know it's stupid, why do you do it?

We touched on this yesterday, but The Big Lead takes things a step further with one of their weekly "features" that just hit my RSS reader.

Yesterday, we pointed out that no one cares which teams a writer for a sports blog is picking to win in the upcoming weekend's football games. The sites we complained about are sports blogs, not gambling blogs. There are hundreds of Web sites that are far more (and less) qualified to help out the degenerate gambler, so there really is no need for them to pollute their blogs with their lame picks. And really, Mr. sports blog writer, if someone is actually taking your advice, are you doing them a service or a disservice? If you are so good at picking games, why are you writing for a blog and not rolling with the sharks in Vegas? And if you are not so good, what's the point in publishing your picks? Narcissism?

Which leads me back to The Big Lead. As they usually do each week, The Big Lead posts their personal selections for various college football games for the weekend upcoming. The funny thing is that the post is always titled, "College Football Picks You Need Not Pay Attention To."

So, my question is, if we actually need not pay attention to them, why the Hell are you posting them?

we wouldn't do any blogger

One tip we've received quite a few times from readers is a piece written on sporting blog Epic Carnival that pitted two female sports bloggers against each other in a "Who Would You Do" contest. The emails we've received voiced a degree of outrage that a blog would objectify a woman, let alone a peer.

Two things we don't quite understand:

~Sports blogs (the primary tipsters we heard from were sports bloggers) complaining about objectification? When 90% of sports blogs feature pictures of scantily clad women next to posts about sledding or other things completely irrelevant to it?

~Why you would say "they're not public figures" to a site that believes that if bloggers want to be taken seriously as journalists that they should have a light of scrutiny and mockery cast upon them the same way a sporto might do to a Joe Morgan or an everyone at ESPN.

Our biggest problem with the piece was that it wasn't that interesting, felt way too long and too soft, and was no different than any other misogynistic sporto or celebrity blog post. If done well, the idea could have been a poignant cap on the self-aggrandizing sports blogtown that interviews each other and incessantly compliments each other on a job blandly done.

But as for sexualizing two women who are being sexualized for money by Fanhouse? Your outrage seems misguided.

can't stop the aggregating

Maybe back in the dark ages of the Internet, like way back in 2003, there might have been a need for a site like Can't Stop the Bleeding. People didn't have access to or weren't aware of RSS readers or news aggregators back then. So CSTB served a purpose. It was a one stop shop for your sports news. Very little commentary, with a lot of cut and pasting of the latest and hottest news in sports. But today everyone knows about Google Reader and My Yahoo! and the dozens of other news aggregators and RSS readers, so my question is, "Why are people still reading this site?"

We did a little number crunching and came up with some interesting stats using CTSB's last six posts as the basis for our question:

Sullivan’s Dream Team: Bonds, Piniella, and Mark Cuban
454 words, 119 words not cut and pasted for 26% original content.

All Blacks’ Howlett Loses To France, Parked Cars
274 words, 72 words words not cut and pasted for 26% original content.

Waldman : I’m No Walter Cronkite
330 words, 67 words words not cut and pasted for 20% original content.

Have The Years Been Kind To “Joe From Saddle River”?
30 words, 30 words words not cut and pasted for 100% original content!

A Little Less Cheering For The Nassau Mausoleum’s Blog Box
434 words, 217 words words not cut and pasted for 50% original content!

Columnist 100 Miles Away Submits Bowa As Torre’s Replacement
407 words, 77 words words not cut and pasted for 19% original content.

For a grand total of 1,929 words, 583 words that were not cut and pasted for 30% original content.

And this is a guy with a reputation for thinking (and acting like) he is better than everyone else in the blogging world? For doing what, exactly? All this site really is is a news aggregator, only with less actual news than a real news aggregator. How CSTB even has a following in this day and age is a mystery to me.

we really don't care about your fantasy football league

We thought this was a trend that died with doing the Macarena. We thought we had an understanding. We thought you knew. Don't you get it? No one cares about your fantasy football league.

We were wrong.

Guilty.
Guilty.
Guilty.
Guilty.
Guilty.

If we wanted to know about your fantasy football league ... wait, why the fuck would we want to know about your fantasy football league? If we were interested in reading about fantasy football, guess what we'd do? We'd visit a fucking fantasy football site, not your site. There's only about 3,002,876 fantasy football sites available to us, so we don't need your advice, but, hey, thanks for trying.

Oh yeah, we also don't care how you did gambling or who you're picking this week either.

So the next time you get the itch to post something about your league, think again, be wise, and post a YouTube video of someone getting hit in the nutsack instead. That we actually do want to see.

will leitch receives sexual favors

An issue has been raised before about the incestuous sporto community that hangs out at "Pants Parties" and trades self-congratulatory emails and links day and night. Unfortunately, since the blogger doing the questioning wasn't well-liked and came off like a whiner, the claims were disputed and ultimately forgotten.

Many of New York's bloggers and well-wishers both know and enjoy Will Leitch. Leitch is, arguably, the most well-connected member of the Gawker family in his stratosphere. While Gawker's editors leave by the day, Leitch has made his house and gained recognition, bigger writing gigs, and book deals due to his fine work (which we here at YBB do respect) in blogtown.

It's no surprise that Leitch is regarded as one of the bloggers closest to "a regular journalist". But that means that, like a journalist, he's susceptible to nepotism.

Enter Lion in Oil. The blog everyone links to because they assume is good. The blog that sportos regularly mock amongst themselves because they don't respect it or understand why gets the attention it does. Bloggers regularly email Leitch every day on the off chance he'll give them a crumb of attention and a couple of thousand new eyes to their blog. Lion in Oil has no such problems.

Take a look at the numbers. In the month of October alone, a month merely 9 days old, our Lion in Oil friend has received six links on Deadspin. 103 links despite the blog existing only since January. Links that, arguably, have been the only reason bloggers tend to know the Lion in Oil site (perhaps other than being an industry leader in effective usage of a palindrome).

So Will, what does Lion in Oil have on you? Or what have you had in Lion in Oil?

something we never get tired of seeing

There is a growing trend amongst larger blogs and one that we would like to see stopped posthaste. The cheap pop, comment-inducing, page-refreshing, "Caption This..." post.

Whether it's sports blogs like The Big Lead, Awful Announcing (who actually numbers them like they need special archiving because they are so fucking great), and Sports Illustrated: Extra Mustard, to Dlisted (yes, again, a two-fer Tuesday for them) amongst the gossipers, and even WoW Insider amongst the nerd blogs, I mean tech blogs, it's lame, boring, and serves no other purpose than to generate cheap hits for the site and waste our time. Is your blog fucking "Highlights for Adults?"

If this trend continues then you might as well just go ahead and add "Word-Finds" and "Tell us what's different in these two pictures contests" to your blogs and make it complete.

Suck it up and stop pandering, people. You're better than that. Ot at least you should be. And the list above is not all-inclusive either. If you do "Caption This..." on your blog, STOP IT.

aol's fanhouse and "youtubesday"

Unadulterated hackery, thy name is the AOL beast known as Fanhouse. Fanhouse is currently a blog without a captain as the result of the loss of producer/man about town Jamie Mottram (who will be spearheading Yahoo's new "community" efforts). But thanks to new fearless leader, functionally retarded Southerner John Ness, Fanhouse is now, on Tuesdays, stooping to posting YouTube videos cribbed from around the Internet and calling it "YouTubesday". You see, it's clever because today is commonly called Tuesday.

Unfortunately for Fanhouse, every day is YouTubesday. Such is the plight of a Web site that strips its writers of all creativity and punishes us all with mediocre content, including rehashed YouTube videos, diluted writings, and the insight of a wet paper bag.

No wonder everyone commenting on their site appears to be illiterate. Moving pictures will bring us to a new age of Enlightenment.

and so we entered blogtown

The world of bloggers has become just as bad as the things they mock. You've noticed it.

Gossip blogs all repeat the same item, same joke. "Jessica Simpson is attractive," they say. "Now here's an absurd metaphor about how good-looking I am and how she wants to sleep with me." It's funny because it's so original. And if they're not doing that, it's twenty posts about how Britney Spears might not fit society's standards of sanity. Groundbreaking.

Sports blogs aren't any better. Here's a post about a stat that I read on ESPN.com. Ho ho a silly YouTube video. Point being, Grady Sizemore is the greatest player in the history of baseball. Here's a picture of an attractive girl that has nothing to do with the post. Link me please! Let's interview each other even though no one cares. You're really doing a lot to dispel the negative perceptions that the mainstream media has of the field.

Political blogs? Who gives a shit. I can't even read one of them without falling asleep. I'd rather have Bill O'Reilly offer to loofah me than have to read your insane-but-somehow-banal ramblings.

Media blogs don't do much right now. The world that they aim to mock endlessly is the same world they so desperately wanted to be a part of. But they failed as an Intern. Or an assistant editor. Or a copy editor. Maybe the EIC of their high school paper didn't pat them on the head enough. Who knows.

So that's why we're here, watching your blogs, and getting ready to call you out. Bloggers seek attention so desperately. But when you cast a light on them, they descend even further into the same cliche and same old punchline.

Most of you blow in some way. You just haven't seen it in writing yet.