Mainstream?

Tuesday on PTI, (the best sports show on television since NFL Primetime got cancelled because ESPN no longer carried Sunday Night Football) Wilbon and Kornheiser spotlighted Greg Oden's blog, and then mentioned Arenas's and Schilling's blog as two others athletes with blogs (those were the only three blogs that were mentioned). As visitors of this site may have noticed, those are among the blogs I endorse in the left column. Wilbon's take was that he was impressed with Oden; Kornheiser's take was that athletes can now talk to fans without intermediaries.

Athletes have had homepages for years, where they'd issue press releases or sell merchandise. Terrell Owens issued statements on his homepage on numerous occasions while sniping with McNabb, the Eagles, the 49ers, and the NFL. Right now the lead story on the page (the only story) is that you can buy his book for $23 (although when I went there it looked like they were sold out). The second lead story on Gilbert Arenas's blog is the release of the Halo 3 beta, which in my opinion is big news.

With Sportscenter and other sports shows getting further away from sports the same way MTV has gotten away from music videos, blogs have become my preferred method of getting sports news. ESPN has an agenda to promote their NBA and NFL broadcasts, so they're hesitant to cover stories like when Eddie Griffin crashed his SUV because he was driving drunk while beating off. A site like With Leather can blast an ad for Citizen without having to worry about burning any bridges with potential advertisers. So while I'm on vacation the next 3 weeks, check out some of the other blogs I've got listed, they're all great and influence this blog in some way.