Go-To Columnists/Sites for Sports News

[Archer1979]

With all the shake-ups in the industry (most notable of which were the layoffs at ESPN), I was curious what folks would consider the better sites for sports coverage. I don't get a lot of downtime, so I'm limited to really just MLB and the NFL, but there is no need to limit the discussion to just baseball and football.

Obvious plug would be for sonsofsamhorn.com as well as insidethepylon.com (by the way, insidethepylon was great for basking in the glow of SuperBowl LI).

NFL - ProFootballTalk at NBCSports (specifically Mike Florio) is always a good read for me for NFL coverage. The format of the site works for me even though its not a cutting edge style. The comment section is generally a troll-war, but its a funny read when the Pats are flying high. The coverage for the other sports seems to pale in comparison.

MLB - SoSH is in general my go-to site for baseball news. MLB.com obviously has the most content in terms of game highlights. Everyone else seems to get the leftovers.

 

[j44thor]

SOSH and Rotoworld are where I spend 90% of my time for sports news/scores.

I don't think SOSH needs an explanation.

Rotoworld is very quick with updates but very rarely post inaccurate stories. They are usually just sourcing other articles but I find they do an excellent job of cross referencing anything they post which is nice in the "me first, facts second" twitter world we live in.

They also do a very solid job writing fantasy sports articles which I find valuable.

Lastly it is very easy to navigate and light on adds which isn't the case for many other for-profit sites.

 

[Brand Name]

Thanks for the praise, I'm sure my fellow .com and ITP writers will enjoy hearing this as much as I did!

Personally, I love Fangraphs for baseball, and is for me a must read at least daily. In no particular order, it's got great fantasy coverage, really solid sabermetric analysis, often create great narratives with player trends, good podcasts, and make their work really open source with the Guts page, as it pertains to wRC+, for example. It's not going to get you the breaking news, but then that really isn't their intent.The comment section is honestly really good, usually gets additional angles that genuinely enhance the piece, from a mix of baseball fans, stats fans, or both. I also like Baseball Prospectus for similar reasons on stats branch outs. Granted, you probably visit these anyway, but thought it worthwhile to mention in case someone reading this thread doesn't.

For something a bit off the beaten path, SB Nation's Minor League Ball by John Sickles is really a good read, especially with the prospect lists. More on the scouting side of things, to help balance numbers and eyes, plus will really help you get familiar with various farm systems around the league. Really helps me get to know the players of tomorrow better when discussing a team's future internally or in a trade. The comments section is standard SB Nation, good folks, oftentimes inquisitive or giving their own spin from what they see.

Not perfect by any means, given the black box nature of their stats, plus a few of their writers I take issue with, but FootballOutsiders does a nice job of giving some advanced stat context, plus games in review to football for when you've read the glossary over thrice at ITP. Comments are good by comments section standards, nothing great like FG. SmartFootball is pretty cool too for learning the basics of plays, an occasional really useful leak, and some creative stuff. You know it's a good page when the lone downside I can think of is that I wish the page would work in a touch more history and relation between play concepts (like how Ole Miss' Hugh Freeze/Jacksonville's Doug Marrone run a playbook heavy on package plays), coaching trees, etc. when you think about all the Walsh plays we see in so many playbooks now, to name a prominent example.

...I'm genuinely looking for more places as well, be it to contribute, to learn, to satiate my sports appetite, as well, so thank you for this thread. So far I haven't found much luck, in terms of what isn't either well established, or what I can usually beat to the punch via Twitter, like MLBTradeRumors. Especially looking for more sites that genuinely breakdown football film for my own sake of comparison and more advanced stat pages for baseball especially, if there are any.