Sports News Website?

[gstelmack]

Anyone have any recommendations on a place to get sports news?

I started with espn.com back in the day, but between the use of Flash, for more than just ads, and the general decrease in actual journalism, I switched to si.com.

The si.com started having technical issues, for example the "back" button rarely took you back but stayed on the page, and had more and more obnoxious ads. CNN replaced them with Bleacher Report.

I moved on to yahoosports.com, which was pretty good, so of course that had to get messed up. They just redesigned it, and now ads are embedded with the news stories, and the layout just sucks. I can't really find anything anymore.

I went ahead and gave Bleacher Report a shot, and they are a joke. You can't find stories among all the entertainment bits, and they don't even have standings or have them hidden very well.

foxsports.com is part of MSN, with all their layout and browsing issues.

So where does one go to actually follow sports? I guess I have to go to the league sites directly now?

[finketr]

wow.. i'm so glad has exactly the same view with the websites.

[lighthousekeeper]

Anyone have any recommendations on a place to get sports news?

I started with espn.com back in the day, but between the use of Flash, for more than just ads, and the general decrease in actual journalism, I switched to si.com.

The si.com started having technical issues, for example the "back" button rarely took you back but stayed on the page, and had more and more obnoxious ads. CNN replaced them with Bleacher Report.

I moved on to yahoosports.com, which was pretty good, so of course that had to get messed up. They just redesigned it, and now ads are embedded with the news stories, and the layout just sucks. I can't really find anything anymore.

I went ahead and gave Bleacher Report a shot, and they are a joke. You can't find stories among all the entertainment bits, and they don't even have standings or have them hidden very well.

foxsports.com is part of MSN, with all their layout and browsing issues.

So where does one go to actually follow sports? I guess I have to go to the league sites directly now?

i've been wondering the same thing. i'm hoping someone gets fired for the recent atrocious yahoo sport redesign. the baseball boxscores were designed by someone who obviously never wants to read a baseball boxscore.

[Vince, Pt. II]

Count me in. Yahoo was my last bastion and the new redesign is godawful.

[Logan]

I just use links coming from Twitter.

[Logan]

Oh and on the Yahoo re-design...it's awful and across the whole brand. My fantasy league will be switching to ESPN next year.

[Subby]

Twitter.com.

[bryce]

I was going to say twitter also even though I'm not even on it. As such, I tend to use the fantasy sites. I gravitate towards rotoworld even though they are part of NBC now, but I've been visiting their site for as long as I can remember at this point.

[Subby]

The rotoworld fantasy news app is pretty solid. I probably check it more than the espn app.

[bhlloy]

Yeah the new Yahoo Sports is terrible. I keep clicking back there out of habit, and then it becomes a game of close the browser window before my eyes start to bleed. I also won't be participating in any fantasy league there moving forward. Just a giant clusterfuck

[molson]

I never quite got the hate for ESPN but I guess it just depends what you're looking for. But on ESPN, everything's 1 click away with the top menus, the various features are consistent, and the season previews give you a quick and broad analysis of everything.

[britrock88]

SBNation?

[TRO]

FOFC for all news related stuff.

[gstelmack]

I never quite got the hate for ESPN but I guess it just depends what you're looking for. But on ESPN, everything's 1 click away with the top menus, the various features are consistent, and the season previews give you a quick and broad analysis of everything.

ESPN was one of the first with the giant fullscreen ads blocking your way. And if you turn off Flash to get rid of them, half the site disappears as well. I won't get into the editorial side of it, but when you spend most of your time creating your own stories, well, I'm going to look elsewhere.

[spleen1015]

Adblock Plus & Firefox.

[molson]

Doesn't the lack of accuracy of twitter turn people off? I guess you can tell the difference between real news and made-up stuff based on the context and who's posting it, but the college sports threads here are a complete train-wreck, and that's all based on fake twitter reports.

[Logan]

Doesn't the lack of accuracy of twitter turn people off? I guess you can tell the difference between real news and made-up stuff based on the context and who's posting it, but the college sports threads here are a complete train-wreck, and that's all based on fake twitter reports.

Right. Just like you can go to blogs/message boards for your stupid "news", you can follow people on Twitter that will provide the same to you.

Or you could follow the same reporters who are eventually posting the complete articles on ESPN/SI/Yahoo etc. Peter King broke the NFL concussion settlement on Twitter. It likely beat anything more than a banner headline on his website by 20 minutes, is my guess.

[molson]

Right. Just like you can go to blogs/message boards for your stupid "news", you can follow people on Twitter that will provide the same to you.

Or you could follow the same reporters who are eventually posting the complete articles on ESPN/SI/Yahoo etc. Peter King broke the NFL concussion settlement on Twitter. It likely beat anything more than a banner headline on his website by 20 minutes, is my guess.

Twitter kind of ruined message boards as an information source, but kind of ironically, ya, I suppose if you're careful who you follow, it can be better and more accurate than message board ever were.

I was just looking bad at one of the coach threads where it was posted, as fact, that Arkansas had informed all of its recruits that Chris Peterson was going to be their new coach. Everyone retweeted and retweeted this and it got to insider blogs, and then from there we got "there's a lot of smoke saying"-type posts. I traced the rumor back to one twitter post, from @HogManInLa, an icon of sports journalism who has 363 followers.

But it wasn't just him, tons of other people on twitter, some associated with newspapers and known sports websites, retweeted the tweet or referenced the rumors. I don't know if that's considered acceptable in a journalistic sense, but it does give credibility to fake news is peoples' eyes. It's just that kind of stuff that keeps me from checking my twitter feed. Just the collective momentum of insanity, even with stuff like the Tom Brady injury. If you were reading a bunch of Boston-area sports tweets, they had all convinced themselves that Brady was done for.

[HomerSimpson98]

Great topic. ESPN is pure shit. Bleacher Report is just a hair below. I used to like cbssportsline, but I couldnt stick with it for long for whatever reason. I am back to Breaking news, real-time scores and daily analysis from Sports Illustrated - SI.com (http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com). I am also getting sucked into Rotoworld, that Subby mentioned above.

[nilodor]

Agree. I find most of the sites borderline unusable. There's great content there, it's just impossible to find it. I find myself using tsn.ca (basically the canadian equivalent of espn) and sportsnet.ca (for baseball boxscores) more often. By no means are they world beaters though. And probably some of the content will be blocked out because you're not in Canada, but that's how espn is for me and prior to its last redesign it was still pretty usable.

[panerd]

I never quite got the hate for ESPN but I guess it just depends what you're looking for. But on ESPN, everything's 1 click away with the top menus, the various features are consistent, and the season previews give you a quick and broad analysis of everything.

Yeah I agree ESPN isn't great but it isn't as bad as heavy internet users make it out to be. Different strokes for different folks I guess but like you said if I want NL Central Standings one click, Cincinnati Bengals schedule 2 clicks, top stories front page, fantasy baseball chats 2 clicks. Have no idea how I would do any of that quickly (or at all) on twitter.

[Izulde]

SBNation?

As terrible as Bleacher Report, both of which I've banned from research papers.

[AlexB]

I use newsnow for the sports I'm most bothered about: it's a news aggregrator site, but no ads and you quickly work out which sources are better than others

[sterlingice]

Count me in. Yahoo was my last bastion and the new redesign is godawful.

+X on the Yahoo redesign :(

I hate that the last major "light" site is gone.

It's impressive how many people here were still on that "dying" website and they're now getting rid of us in droves.

SI

[britrock88]

As terrible as Bleacher Report, both of which I've banned from research papers.

May well be terrible, though BR is a special kind of hell. I'm grasping for answers here.

[bhlloy]

si.com seems to be the one I'm switching to so far, although they have more obnoxious adverts than yahoo used to at least it's readable and they have the key stories in a place I can see them

I've used Y! Sports for 10 years at least. Wonder what % of users they lost almost overnight.

[TroyF]

Count me in with the ESPN crowd.

I know where I need to go to get the information I need on the site. I want a box score, 1 click. I haven't paid much attention to CU or OSU football in the offseason, I wanted to look at them today. A few clicks and I have all the stories I want, some commentary from ESPN and some news from the local papers.

I can't stand the network, but I just don't have the issue with the website some people do.

[jbergey22]

I guess I am in the same boat. I have used Yahoo as far back as I can remember but this new format is awful. I would maybe try MLB.com for baseball. I really like sportsnetwork.com for things like college football and not as mainstream of sports. I am really not sure how it is for NFL or NBA as I only used Yahoo until now.

[Groundhog]

Yahoo was the cleanest of all of them, but this new update is terrible. I actually think the current nba.com is the best of all the pro sports sites for the simple fact that it's similar to Yahoo's previous theme - bright and light.

[sterlingice]

It's all about marketing (ads everywhere I imagine... that I still don't see with Adblock and Noscript) and mobile.

The push to make everything mobile-compatible is driving me nuts: everything on a small middle column. What I used to be able to look at in one glance on my 17" laptop screen, I now have to scroll down three and four pages to see everything. And that doesn't sound like a lot... unless you do it 10 times per day for a year. Suddenly, my quick trip to see scores takes longer and, no, I don't look at your page more- I just stop doing it.

SBNation has done this in the past year and so has CAG and those are two sites I just don't visit as much as I used to. I used to be able to see 10+ stories on RoyalsReview in a glance and pick out the ones I want. Now I'm lucky to see 5 and more often than not, 3. CAG is the same way - I used to love visiting Cheap Ass Gamer but now I can see maybe 10 or 15 threads as opposed to double that previously. For a site where 90% of the deals are ones I couldn't care less about, being able to skim more and faster are valuable to me.

I didn't pay for extra screen real estate so sites can be tailored to dopes who are trying to read the web on a 5" screen. We keep getting bigger and bigger laptop and desktop screens but keep seeing less and less content and (presumably) more and more ads.

SI

[Butter]

As terrible as Bleacher Report, both of which I've banned from research papers.

People are using Bleacher Report for research papers?

[DanGarion]

Deadspin.

[BBT]

I use twitter for most news not just sports. There's a lot of crap to wade through, but Ive found more great articles and writers via twitter than I would via any other avenue. It definitely takes some work as I'm constantly tweaking who I follow, but I can usually keep a pretty good balance that tends to give me the whole story while also reading articles/blogs/opinions from people that are respectable (the non-Bayless, non-Mariotti, sensationalist blowhards).

[Easy Mac]

SportsDig

[Fidatelo]

TSN.ca for hockey, FOFC for everything else.

[Izulde]

People are using Bleacher Report for research papers?

Well, for the Contemporary Issues in College Sports course I teach, I allow one or two popular sources as long as there's at least three peer-reviewed academic sources, simply because things can change so quickly that academia may not have had time to sift through things just yet.

That said, I've banned Bleacher Report, SBNation, and an odd celebrity gossip news site that for some reason had a couple college sports articles that people were citing in their rough drafts.

Provided me the chance for a lesson on how even when you're using popular sources, there's good popular sources and bad ones.

[Solecismic]

NoScript and a combination of CBS Sportsline and ESPN, mostly Sportsline.

I've long since given up looking for intelligent commentary on the major sites.

[dawgfan]

Looks like the message finally got through to Yahoo, which is nice - they have become (along with CBS Sports) my primary online sports news sites.

[fantom1979]

I like the NBC sports sites such as profootballtalk.com . I must admit that I like their android app much better than their desktop version though.

[dawgfan]

So, help me out here - when I browse Yahoo on my work computer, it's the older, preferred layout style. When I browse on my laptop, it's the new design. I can't find any settings for customizing the look of the site - does anyone know where/if that exists?

[sterlingice]

I haven't seen the old layout return. If you figure it out, I'd love to know

SI

[bhlloy]

Same here, I was meaning to come back in this thread and ask what you meant. It's still the shitty new layout with embedded ads all over the shop and the articles they think is be interested in rather than latest news.

[dawgfan]

Same here, I was meaning to come back in this thread and ask what you meant. It's still the shitty new layout with embedded ads all over the shop and the articles they think is be interested in rather than latest news.
I'm totally perplexed. I'm getting current content when I visit the Yahoo sports sites, but the layout is the older, preferred version when viewed on my work desktop. No idea why - same browser, signed in on both computers to my Yahoo account.

[Logan]

I'm totally perplexed. I'm getting current content when I visit the Yahoo sports sites, but the layout is the older, preferred version when viewed on my work desktop. No idea why - same browser, signed in on both computers to my Yahoo account.

Just thank whatever god you believe in and stop rubbing it in to the rest of us.

[dawgfan]

Just thank whatever god you believe in and stop rubbing it in to the rest of us.
Oh believe me, I'm trying not to jinx it. There's clearly got to be a way to get the old layout.

[ColtCrazy]

I hit SI.com more than anything else. Yes, it has some issues, but they all seem to and at least SI (usually) has some quality writing with it.

I wrote for Bleacher Report for awhile. They wanted me to take over the Colts coverage, but their demands would have turned it into fluff journalism. Go there no and lo and behold, that's what it is. Just garbage.

I'll check out ESPN occasionally if for no other reason they seem to get everything covered and since they own soccernet, I go there for that too.

NFL.com doesn't seem very good other than the stats.

Looked at the Sporting News the other day. Didn't seem too bad but haven't messed with it very much to tell for sure.

[Mota]

Just having installed Windows 8 about 2 weeks ago, I really enjoy the Bing Sports App on the start page. It's just really a compilation site, but it's visually appealing and you can get to your favorite sports or games pretty quickly.

I also download the Sporting News on my iPad every day, I really DO NOT like the design of that app and it crashes constantly on my 1st gen iPad, but it is what it is. I much preferred the $3 a month daily one on Zinio, it was an actual magazine.

[MIJB#19]

I haven't seen the old layout return. If you figure it out, I'd love to know

SICount me in on the 'want to get the old yahoo layout' bandwagon.

[molson]

I'm still an unashamed ESPN.com guy, but I like the Bleacher Report updates on my smartphone. That's where I usually hear things first, I think they do a good job of shooting relevant stuff based on your defined preferences.

[gstelmack]

And now Sports Illustrated has gone off the deep end with a redesign. Mobile phones are just ruining PC news browsing...

[Suburban Rhythm]

And now Sports Illustrated has gone off the deep end with a redesign. Mobile phones are just ruining PC news browsing...

I was on SI a couple nights ago. Made it about 3 minutes before I couldn't take anymore.

[Logan]

It runs so slowly on my laptop (no problems elsewhere). Using the keyboard to page down or down arrow is incredibly unresponsive.

[ISiddiqui]

I had to go and see for myself... my Lord, SI... why?

[flere-imsaho]

Going back to the original post, I recommend The Guardian (british newspaper) for soccer coverage, especially European.

[sterlingice]

And now Sports Illustrated has gone off the deep end with a redesign. Mobile phones are just ruining PC news browsing...

Ugh. It looks like Windows 8 mated with SBNation.

SI

[rowech]

Glad I'm not the only one that hates SI new website. It's horrible. I can't believe people in control think that site is even remotely good. It sucks on a tablet even.

[HomerSimpson98]

Yep. Bye, bye SI. Back to cbssports. Shame because I liked reading Peter King during the football season.

[HomerSimpson98]

well it looks like sportsline changed theirs up now too. After some frustrating loading times, it seems to have stabilized for me. Not sure about the layout yet

[Solecismic]

I had dropped Sportsline after their last redesign, but they seem to have backed off and done a nice job making it functional again. In the meantime, I've been using NBC Sports more.

ESPN is far down the list now. I only check it when I'm looking for a different take on today's major headlines.