7. Andrew Bucholtz (Yahoo! Canada), Emma Carmichael (Deadspin), Ty Duffy (The Big Lead) and Sebastian Pruiti (SB Nation and NBAPlaybook.com): The fourth annual Blogs with Balls conference was held last month in New York City (recommended to anyone in sports interested in social media) and the four names above came up most frequently when the subject was up-and-coming talented sports bloggers/thinkers/tweetswriters. If you are active on Twitter, each are recommended. Get on the bandwagon now.

Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/richard_deitsch/10/04/smoltzbaseball.rankings/index.html#ixzz1ZvX9Xh7v

 

Charles Barkley Muppet, Amy K. Nelson, Matt Ufford

RISING STAR IN MEDIA

JE Skeets/Tas Melas

Michelle Beadle

Josh Elliott

Bomani Jones

Jonah Keri

Greg Wyshynski (WINNER)

BEST SPORTS SITE – WRITING QUALITY

Deadspin

Every Day Should Be Saturday

Grantland

Run of Play

SI.com

Yahoo! Sports (WINNER)

BEST SPORTS SITE – NEWS BREAKING

The Big Lead

Deadspin

ESPN

Pro Football Talk

Sports By Brooks

SI.com

Yahoo! Sports (WINNER)

BEST TEAM OR REGIONAL SPORTS SITE

The 700 Level

Bleacher Nation

DC Sports Bog (WINNER)

The Jets Blog

MGoBlog

Sactown Royalty

Tomahawk Nation

BEST SPORTSWRITER

Tommy Craggs, Deadspin

Spencer Hall, EDSBS & SB Nation

Drew Magary, KSK & Deadspin

Joe Posnanski, Sports Illustrated (WINNER)

Bethlethem Shoals, The Classical & B/R

Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo!

Joe Posnanski Muppet (Middle) reads speech prepared by Joe Posnanski (not pictures) with CBSSports.com's Will Brinson and SI's Richard Deisch

BEST SPORTSWRITER – HUMOR

AJ Daulerio, Deadspin

DJ Gallo, The Sports Pickle

Spencer Hall, EDSBS & SB Nation (WINNER)

Trey Kerby, The Basketball Jones

Drew Magary, KSK & Deaspin

Matt Sebek, Joe Sports Fan

BEST YOUNG SPORTSWRITER (25/UNDER)

Andrew Bucholtz, Yahoo! Canada

Andy Hutchins, SB Nation

Rob Mahoney, ESPN TrueHoop, New York Times, NBC, SI and More

Sebastian Pruiti, NBA Playbook

Josiah Schlatter, NBC Off the Bench

Matt Yoder, Awful Announcing (WINNER)

BEST OLD SPORTSWRITER (65/OVER)

Roger Angell

Frank Deford

Peter Gammons (WINNER)

Dan Jenkins

William Nack

Bob Ryan

BEST PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER

Marv Albert

Ian Darke

Gus Johnson

Al Michaels

Dan Shulman

Vin Scully (WINNER)

BEST IN-GAME ANALYST

Jay Bilas

Cris Collinsworth (WINNER)

David Feherty

Walt Clyde Frazier

Bill Raftery

Jeff Van Gundy

STUDIO PERSONALITY

Michelle Beadle

Charles Barkley (WINNER)

Rich Eisen

Bob Costas

Ernie Johnson

Dan Patrick

JE Skeets

BEST PODCAST

The Basketball Jones  (WINNER)

The BS Report

Dan Patrick Show

House of Punte

Rich Eisen Podcast

The Solid Verbal

BEST SPORTS MEDIA TWEETER

Jay Bilas

Richard Deitsch (WINNER)

Spencer Hall

Old Hoss Radbourn

Darren Rovell (WINNER)

JE Skeets

Darren "Muppet" Rovell (l) with Darren "Ace" Rovell (r).

BEST ATHLETE OR EXECUTIVE TWEETER

Mark Cuban (WINNER)

Jim Irsay

Chris Kluwe

Logan Morrison

Steve Nash

Chad Ochocinco

BEST IN SPORTS TECHNOLOGY

Bloomberg Sports Fantasy Front Office

Cover It Live

ESPN3

MLB At Bat

Mocksession/30fps

NCAA MMOD

NFL RedZone (WINNER)

RSVP Here:  http://bwb4postgame.eventbrite.com/

Invite is non-transferable. Must be 21 and over; and RSVP to attend.  Space limited to BWB4 conference attendees.

Today, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED unveiled Sports Illustrated Football Rivals one of SI’s most ambitious app productions. The app explores 10 great football rivalries through SI’s unmatched editorial coverage — with video and audio enhancements—delivering the seminal games, deciding plays and dominant performances within a dynamic, easy-to-use interface featuring 3D interactivity. The free app, presented by Coke Zero, is available for the iPad, iPhone and Android Smartphones and can be downloaded at www.si.com/rivals.

The 10 rivalries featured:

• Texas vs. Oklahoma
• Cowboys vs. Redskins
• Army vs. Navy
• Auburn vs. Alabama
• USC vs. Notre Dame
• Packers vs. Bears
• Florida vs. Georgia
• Ohio State vs. Michigan
• Cal vs. Stanford
• Kansas vs. Missouri

Alana G’s Blog:  Holy crap, I work for the mainstream media now

Winners will be announced on September 24 at BWB4 at Bloomberg HQ. Get your tickets for the full event here.

New York, August 30 – Bloomberg Sports today announced the launch of their newly enhanced and improved Decision Maker 2011, a web-based and mobile interactive fantasy football application that uses Bloomberg’s state-of-the art advanced analytic tools to advise fantasy football players on their best starting lineup each week.  The company also announced that Jacksonville Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew – well known for his fantasy football expertise – will be working with Bloomberg Sports to highlight the analytical strengths of the Decision Maker tools.  In addition, WFAN sports radio personality Anita Marks, who is part of the NY Giants broadcast team and also hosts fantasy football shows on SiriusXM, will also be working as spokesperson for Bloomberg Sports.

“Decision Maker was very popular last year because it offered quick, fact-driven sit-start answers, and gave a deeper analysis for players who wanted it.  And of course our unique volatility assessment – with its risk/reward score — was a big hit,” said Bill Squadron, head of Bloomberg Sports. “We spent the off season working on some additional features that we think fantasy players are going to enjoy, especially the ability to vote on match-ups themselves.”

This season’s product includes all the features that users came to depend on last season, plus two new additions.   The new features include a crowd polling tool that will allow users to vote on the most compelling weekly match-ups and then see the aggregated results of all Decision Maker users.  The product will also provide pre-season and draft value by including season-long projections.

With the renewed partnership between Bloomberg Sports and National Football League Players Incorporated, Decision Maker will again include likenesses of NFL players throughout the product.  Fans wishing to get additional fantasy football advice from Jones-Drew can also tune in to his show on SiriusXM Runnin’ with MJD or follow him on twitter (@Jones_Drew32).

Decision Maker – while driven by extremely detailed, fact-based, historical calculations – is very quick and simple to use.  It provides fantasy players with the key answers they need to make their choices each week.  The players are ranked by a system using complex formulas applied to three years of data, updated based on recent performance and other factors such as the opposing defense that week and the weather forecast at that week’s venue.  Decision Maker also has a unique technology-driven Risk/Reward Index, analyzing consistency of the scrutinized NFL players and pointing to long shot opportunities for players whose performance tends to be most unpredictable.

Decision Maker 2011 is available at www.bloombergsports.com for use by all fantasy football players using any fantasy provider.  The mobile Decision Maker apps are now available in the iTunes store for the iPhone and iPad.  Decision Maker was one of the top selling football apps in 2010.

For more information on Bloomberg Sports, please visit http://www.bloombergsports.com and follow us on Twitter (@BloombergSports) and Facebook.

About BLOOMBERG SPORTS

Launched in 2010, Bloomberg Sports takes the tools developed by Bloomberg, the leading global provider in data and analytics, and applying applies them to the vast data analysis opportunities in sports.  Working with MLB.com and NFL.com, Bloomberg Sports fantasy products give fans the most powerful resources as they draft and manage their fantasy teams.  Additionally, Bloomberg Sports provides a professional product that delivers Major League Baseball clubs with a secure, virtually unlimited set of analytical functions to assist them in personnel evaluation and performance matchups.  For more details, please visit http://www.bloombergsports.com.

A subsequent announcement by the company was equally impressive as TechCrunch reported a “cash infusion: A $22 million growth round from Oak Investment Partners, with participation from existing investors Crosslink Capital and Hillsven Capital.”

Bleacher Report wasn’t planning on raising more money for another six months, but Grey says the company was moving quicker than expected on key traffic and business milestones. Year-over-year page views are up 150%, time on site is up 50% and unique visits are up 75%. He wouldn’t give much detail on revenues, but says in the spring they were already way ahead of plan. Given how robustly the money and valuations are flowing in the Valley, there seemed little reason to wait. “We started to believe we could really build this into a billion dollar company, and we wanted to get aggressive,” [CEO Brian] Grey says.

While Grey appears to be the public shot in the arm the company needed, I’ve advocated around the time of BWB3 back in 2010 that the founders seemed to be poised to turn a page on their own. Many on the web, including some of the new hires, were openly critical of the B/R model. Founder David Nemetz, who was a BWB3 speaker and a guest on our podcast, was adamant about moving the company forward by creating a system for enhancing and showcasing the quality of writing that may have sometimes been overlooked on the massive network. It appears he and the team have succeeded in doing so, and investors and critics alike have taken notice.

About BWB

BWB is the leading sports new media event series in the country. Our events have been attended by thousands nationwide.

BWB events have included participation and attendance from not only a wide spectrum of sport-specific websites of all sizes, but also representatives from newspapers, television and radio, and several of the most recognized national public relations, marketing and advertising firms.

BWB aims to meet three objectives:

1. Facilitate best practice discussions for the online sports media community
2. Educate companies and advertisers on how to best utilize online sports opinion influencers and how to best interact with their audiences
3. Provide insight and strategy for athletes, teams, leagues and their representatives who are looking to tap into emerging mediums

On the Web:

http://blogswithballs.com
@blogswithballs
 Facebook.com/blogswithballs

About TURF

TURF, Tailgaters Urging Responsibility and Fun, is a responsible tailgating awareness program in partnership with The Charmer Sunbelt Group and Brown Forman. The TURF objective is to encourage responsible drinking before (tailgating) and during sporting events. For more about TURF and how you can get involved visit them at www.Facebook.com/TURFzone.

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