The Six Best Sports Insider Blogs

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Sports, given their unrelenting choke-hold on American culture, naturally dominate a good chunk of online news coverage. Sports companies like ESPN are as much an online presence as they are on TV. The quality of sports blogs, though, runs the gamut from excellent (deadspin.com) to awful (any amateur blog about the Red Sox. Sorry, Boston readers). But some sports blogs are written by insiders -- athletes, managers, etc. Fast Company takes a look at the fantastic blogs of six true sports insiders.

Mark Cuban -- Owner, Dallas Mavericks

The Blog: Billionaire web entrepreneur man-child Mark Cuban isn't shy. Since purchasing the Mavericks, Cuban has been fined over $1.3 million for 13 separate public statements criticizing NBA officials. And his blog often seems to be a barely edited transcription of his thoughts.

Why Read It: Though he doesn't blog exclusively about sports--and has been charged by the government for insider trading--Cuban certainly is provocative, stamping his opinion on even the most complex of issues within the first three sentences of each post. The future of Olympic broadcasting? "ESPN will feel that they have an advantage over NBC." He's just as blunt with his non-sports posts. On the Wall Street meltdown? "Billions of investment bank share buybacks." He even blogged here and here about his involvement with Mamma.com, the company whose stock, according to SEC charges filed earlier this week, he sold illegally. Cuban is fun to read because he either really knows what he¹s talking about or he writes smartly enough to hide his ineptitude. My guess is that it¹s somewhere in the middle, but all of it is golden.

Notable: Cuban is 50 years old, but he looks and acts like Mark Zuckerberg's slightly older frat brother. In June 2008, he posted a new favorite saying, which reveals almost everything one needs to know about Mark Cuban: "Today is the youngest you will ever be. Act like it."

Chris Cooley -- Washington Redskins TE

The Blog: Chris Cooley, a four-time Pro Bowler, started the blog to help his brother Tanner pay for med school. Cooley estimates it will generate about $250,000 per year in advertising and merchandise sales, more than enough to pay for his sibling's education. Note: Since he is an incredibly rich young man with an incredibly hot wife, it shouldn't surprise that some of the site is NSFW.

Why Read It: Cooley's prose is as effortless and hard-hitting as his brain-rattling hits. His smart, entertaining dispatches on fantasy football (Vikings RB Adrian Petersen anchors his team), his new wife, former Redskins cheerleader Christy Oglevee (whose saucy photographs reward loyal readers) and his preparation for each week's game (sweating off excess pounds in the nude and getting pre-game jitters, one of his "favorite feelings in life") are a riot. Unlike some shameless self-promoting NFL stars -- Chad "Ocho Cinco" Johnson, I'm looking at you -- everything Cooley writes is genuine and true to himself. He never shoves anything down reader's throats, and that's much of the blog's appeal.

Notable Post: Cooley's revealed in late April that he celebrated Christy's 21st birthday by downing 21 shots of Jim Beam at a bar in West Virginia with her family, taking the sports blog world by storm. The result: A spread in the Washington Post, interviews on numerous sports shows, and the admiration of football-rabid beer-chugging young men the world over.

Curt Schilling -- Pitcher, Boston Red Sox

The Blog: Curt Schilling is a grizzled 20-year veteran of pro baseball, probably most famous for the "Bloody Sock" that carried the Red Sox to victory in the 2004 ALCS. He's may also be baseball's most notorious loudmouth. He's made enemies in front offices, newspapers, and in his own clubhouse over the years. Once he discovered the Internet's potential to more efficiently disseminate his unedited armchair beliefs, he pounced.

Why Read It: Schilling has zero qualms about ranting and raving about everything from the Iraqi War to the Red Sox vs. Yankees War to World of Warcraft (in another life, he would've been an anime-loving MMORPG addict). A staunch conservative, most of Schilling's posts have been about his unabashed preference for the McCain/Palin ticket. However, the real gold in this blog is found when Schilling waxes philosophical on sports. It's hard to take him seriously when he casually calls Yankees fans "bitter and miserable," but Curt's unfiltered writing is what makes this blog so readable.

Notable Post: The blog often serves as Schilling's soapbox for explaining his off-the-cuff and often insensitive remarks about, well, everything. In May 2007, he atoned for publicly saying that Barry Bonds had "admitted to cheating on his wife, cheating on his taxes and cheating on the game." Ouch.