Top sports writers to follow on Twitter

Saw this story in the International Business Times getting a ton of play yesterday on Twitter. The list had the Top 50 sports writers you should follow on Twitter and included a few regularly discussed writers on SportsJournalists.com such as Jones, Whitlock, and Doyel.

Here's the link to the list: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/320315/20120327/sports-writers-follow-twitter.htm

Two questions for my fellow SJers

1- What do you think of the list? Who would you add/delete?

2- Is it egotistical to tweet/retweet a list that has you on it?

 

Someone already bitched on Twitter that the list had only two female writers.

 

Decent list. Went for some of the low-hanging fruit, and I wish they would have left off a couple people who are not at all good to follow unless you enjoy being annoyed to no end (i.e. Whitlock, Rovell). They also included quite a few people who are not sports writers (i.e. Bilas, Beadle, Van Pelt). But it's a pretty good list.

Of course you should RT it if you're on it. A big reason for a writer to be on Twitter is to build a following and (plug your ears, purists) build a brand.

 

My problem with guys like "sportsbybrooks" is he too often seems to be talking to nobody and the tone of all of his tweets seems to be "look at me, look at me, please, please, look at me, I really am relevant, I swear"

 

Follow Clay Travis. He's hilarious and absurd. Makes for great tweeting. He can get annoying, but 8 times out of 10, he's funny.

 

Adam Schefter is great.

Michael C. Wright (ESPN Chicago) does a great job.

Mike Klis was tremendous during the whole Manning signing and Tebow trade.

I hate writers who tweet play-by-play.

 

Do not follow me, then. If I'm at a preps game, I'm likely tweeting for the world to know who is winning the East Podunk/West Podunk girl's softball game.

 

The best is if you follow a bunch of guys from the same market and they are all covering something - that happens to be on TV - and they insist on giving you everything that happened so that, for instance, a goal is scored, you get 75 tweets in a row that a goal was scored, then who scored it, then who set it up, then where it fits in the context of the game.......

 

Simple rule -- if the game's on TV, don't tweet play-by-play. I cover an FCS football team that is seldom on TV, so my followers appreciate (or say they do) all the updates.

Of course if it's a tight game in the fourth quarter and deadline is on the horizon, then they're not getting much of anything. But they seem to understand that.

 

Yeah, if it's preps or small colleges that aren't on TV I can understand play-by-play.

But there are NFL writers who do it and it's just stupid.

 

I don't want play-by-play from Twitter - I want context. Guy is having a big game, how close is he to his season-high or career-high? Is someone closing in on a milestone? Stuff like that.