Infinite Critique

Bloggers are becoming powerful.

You can tell by the number of Democratic presidential candidates that appeared at the Daily Kos convention. Kos bloggers are, generally speaking, people who believe Stalin was a little bit soft on wealth redistribution. But there were Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and the rest rolling over and begging. Riddle me this: if politicians are pandering to political bloggers, why are sports team and athletes ignoring us sports bloggers? Why can’t we get no love; aren’t they afraid of our massive numbers and incredible influence?

No, they are not. Here’s why.

Primarily, there isn’t the equivalent of the Daily Kos out there among sports blogs. If we want to read about celebrity sports gossip we just turn to the court section of the local daily or click on the link to “The Smoking Gun”. Although we over at Real Sports Bloggers are working very hard, we haven’t seen a single sports blog site explode. It’s real hard to say how many bloggers there are out there, but no single blog is kicking ass and taking names. Although we over at Real Sports Bloggers are working very hard to collect a group of great sports blogs in one place, it’s hard to tell how many sports blogs are out there. I suspect it’s a figure greater than the number of viewers of regular season NHL games, but smaller than the number of government tax attorneys working on the Barry Bonds case. With so many bloggers and so many sites, it’s hard for one to emerge.

Unfortunately, this growth in sports bloggers has not been matched by growth in readers. This often results in feelings of rejection, dejection, despair, and then giving up. Sports Blogging is the internet equivalent of being a Baltimore Orioles fan.

These large numbers on the input side and small numbers on the output side argues against a version of the Daily Kos ever emerging in the sports world. The average fanatic is too interested in the latest narrative shat out by ESPiN and Fox sports. These media Giants dictate for us what we should be outraged about. Their opinions are undisputed that we even repeat their mistake and gags as real news. ESPiN determines the topic of the day in cafeterias and break rooms across the country. The average fan continues to watch poor sports coverage because ESPiN makes it so easy. In truth, we fans watch ESPiN because we’re lazy and attracted to shiny things and bad commercials. We forgot because we’re stupid.

We sports bloggers have also been unable to tap into the lunatic fringe of college sports message boards. This is a huge group of potential readers, sort of like an untapped Siberian oil field of crazed sports fans. These boards get tremendous numbers of clicks by doing things like posting coach’s cell phone bills, threatening mass suicide when their teams are down 3 points with 12:32 left in the first quarter, and rallying the villagers with pitchforks because their team only won 10 games last season. If I had those guys as readers, I’d have it made. This wouldn’t be Infinite Critique - it’d be Curtis Critique.

Real Sports Bloggers is doing really well. We show slow, steady growth. I’ve only broken the site twice. My man Flying Pig is building radio show for us. Expect that to go live in a few more months. Mike Miracle is handling all the fantasy aspects we hope to have up by next Fall. We are a happy band of bloggers with new comers finding popularity as well. By this time next year we will be a sports blogging site with a sports radio show and a fantasy sports gaming section, all of which created, built and run by Real Sports Bloggers. i.e. guys with real, non-sports related, non-blogging, day jobs.

Then we’ll quit our day jobs.

As of now, however, sports blogging isn’t to the point where I can write an article condemning the Carolina Hurricanes and quickly be bought off with center ice tickets. We haven’t gotten to a point where Billy Belicheat appears before cameras and says “You know, them cats at the RSBN was right; I am a very, very sick individual. I’m retiring.” In reality, had I any power - if sports bloggers were respected as much as Stephen A Smith suggests - sports in Seattle would’nt be in the state they are now.