We're SPORTS blogs, people! Let's keep it that way...

Lots of commentary the last week of what's been going on with blogs bringing to light various scandals and affairs that have nothing to do with sports, yet feel obligated to comment on it.

Deadspin's taken lots of heat for this post and this one. Steve Phillips, recently fired from ESPN for having an affair, is also being talked about throughout the sports blogosphere because people seem to think that a corporate employee who slept with a P.A. is newsworthy.

We're not often ones to judge. This site has been crass as any; but we're talking about real people, with real families leading real lives that are getting really fucked up. Is it blogs' -- or any media's -- place to report on who's sleeping with whom? This isn't fucking TMZ or some other smut-peddling rag. We're sports blogs. We talk about Xs and Os, hanging curves and game-winners and why the Redskins are so fucking dreadful.

Leave the professional mishaps to Human Resources. Now go about talking about things that actually matter...like sports.

LeBron slid over late and some kid you've never heard of threw down a dunk that was by no means dunking on LeBron

We hear "LeBron got dunked on" and we want to see balls in LeBron's fucking face. Kinda like this. That video, which was the big blog buzz Wednesday, is hardly James getting posterized. He sorta tried to play defense and the guy simultaneously had a dunk. Not really dunked on. Semantics, we guess.

Meanwhile, this "story" of the video being released, merited four posts from Deadspin today. That seems a bit much, no? We pulled the video from With Leather, which is the only major sports blog without bullshit these days.

Mark Cuban doesn't really like blogs anymore, OK?

Once thought a pioneer -- he's a billionaire NBA owner and he blogs! He's just like us! -- Mark Cuban is sorta not cool with blogs anymore and no one else should be, either, because Mark Cuban said so, dammit.

Has anyone noticed that its impossible to trust a single word uttered about coaching changes, the draft, trades and even celebration parties these days?

Unfortunately, ESPN and local newspapers, radio and TV media have become the patsies of bloggers. If some random blogger reports that “he has heard that a trade of Joe for John is being discussed”, then the traditional media, as they have told me many times “is requested by their editor to run it down and see if its real.” It's almost like a sad joke. How do you make an ESPN reporter jump? Make up something and put it on your blog. Somewhere a bunch of sports bloggers are playing a drinking game. Chug if the other guys made up trade rumor makes the ESPN crawl.

How to stop it? ESPN.com puts up a page of blacklisted blogs and websites who’s posts they wont comment on or report on in any way. It will create a short term surge of traffic for those sites, but then they will go away as the proprietors of the sites realize that being discredited is not a good thing.

Whew! We thought we were only ones playing that drinking game.

(Blog Maverick via Ben Maller via The Philadelphia Inquirer).

The state of the blogosphere

Things are much different around here in the summer. We're often taking mini-vacations, going on camping trips and aren't at a computer eight hours a day. We're disconnected to say the least.

Our posts are often less timely and our reading list is shrunk down to just about nothing. Many other people are like this, too, as traffic numbers across the blog world are down this time of the year.

But it seems, from our perspective, that things in the blogosphere have gone stale.

The big sites are still big, but haven't had anything to really boast about in a while. The smaller sites have sort of stayed put, with no true growth. The mid-tier sites have also sorta maintained a status quo.

Do things need to change? Has making jokes about news that the mainstream media breaks become old? Have certain features/segments grown tired? Are fictional dialogues and fake news just not really relevant anymore?

We feel that blogs are at the point where something needs to happen. A new way of reporting news or a new way of analyzing it.

Are we on our own here or is it time to start shaking things up?

Thoughts?

The blog world is duking it out

When two major blogs have a grade-school fight, over a quote in an LA Times article, and then everyone chimes in, it makes for good comedy.

See here, here, here, here, here, here.

Now laugh. And react.

Worst Blogs

Lozo's Suckiest Blog Tourney was an eye-opener. There are some well-respected blogs that did well (bad?), FanHouse got slammed and our pal Dan Shanoff won the freakin' thing!

These aren't your average, one-post-per-week blogs that actually do suck. These were some big-name blogs with good street cred getting hammered by the voters into suckiness history.

So maybe we're out of the loop on what actually sucks.

Let's have some anonymous fun today. Let us know what your least favorite blogs are. And, like Lozo's deal, let's keep them to the bigger blogs that are updated daily and are actually relevant. Let's not make enemies, so please comment anonymously. Or don't. Pick your own fights.

Spill your hate, folks.