Recently, the fine writers at You Been Blinded and Five Tool Tool have posted about how to increase traffic to your blog. I think that their ideas are very useful for bloggers, and I thank them for sharing. I wanted to push the topic a little further. For me, getting a lot of traffic for your blog is similar to wanting to have a lot of people visit your store if you're a small business owner. It's a worthy goal, especially when you're starting out your blog. But after you've been around for a little while, hits by themselves can be less rewarding. If your customers at, say, a bookstore are just sitting there reading books and not buying anything, who cares if you have 100 or 500 customers a day? Here's some other things to consider in your blogging. (Of course, if you just blog to have fun, ignore uptight, stuffy folk like myself and stop reading pronto).

* Goal of increasing comments. Without funny or insightful comments, my posts are not the same. I don't want one-time visitors; I want traffic that returns again and again. This is why Deadspin links may not actually be that great; Deadspin links to some 20? blogs a day, and if people are coming to you from deadspin, chances are they already are reading a ton of sports blogs. How are they going to fit you into that schedule? Ínstead, find people who will be loyal to your blog and comment again and again. Talk to your commenters, reward them (Best comment of the week contests, ala WL?), etc. I also wonder, on the really odd side of things; what if, once you write about Kobe, you go drop a post into the lakers forums and let fans know you're talking about their guy? Yes, it's playing with fire, but hey, if you want comments, you have to get a reaction out of people.

* Goal of increasing revenue. Many bloggers have some kind of "If you want to advertise, send me an e-mail" section. But I wonder; what if you would actually go after advertisers yourself? For example, if you post on geographic topics (i.e. Chicago sports), why not give a local sports bar or two a call? They might give you a try, if it costs 1/10th or 1/100th the price it would for a local paper. And what about other forms of revenue? If you take an interesting video of a sporting event and post it on .., you get paid through revenue sharing. That's what the guys who did the Kobe video are doing (once they realized people wouldn't cough up $1.99), and they have 100,000 views.

* Goal of better blog content. There are people out there who are too busy to write their own blog. But they have interesting news facts and tidbits, or they are good at writing themselves and know how to improve your blog. If you can find some way to reward those people or let it be known that you want content from readers, you can tap into their skills. Also, a lot of times us writers are so busy trying to get EVERY LAST DETAIL AND JOKE out of a story because I MUST PROVE THAT I AM SO FUNNY OR SMART, that we don't give the reader anything to do. Like what I'm doing on this post, for example (hypocrite alert!). Leave some questions open on your blog for people to answer, don't tell all the jokes yourself, or just take the "Yes" side of an issue and invite commenters to write the "No" side for you. Deadspin does this nicely, and that's part of why it's so popular, in my opinion.

Do you think I'm right in saying we overemphasize traffic; or does traffic lead to these goals anyway? Note: see original post and comments at BallHype.

Oh, and Fan Friday brought to you by Dan; this may be the silliest Red Sox fan video yet.

Every so often, I like to post videos that don't have anything to do with professional athletes. I call those videos "pure sports" as they are of competition from the D III college level on down. Here are two videos of amateur athletes in action.

The first is of Andy, a reporter for his high school, getting pulverized while trying to return a female volleyball player's spikes. Yes, I think this is funny:


The second is of a girl's basketball team in Greece. I'm not sure what the ages are, but what I did notice is that the quality of play is improving in women's basketball leagues. Some of those moves or shots I would have some trouble executing; I haven't been always able to say that in the past.

Inspired by NBA Draft reports, here is a breakdown of your 90's sitcom ballers from Seinfeld and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Add your own sitcom star breakdown in the comments!

C: Cosmo Kramer
Strengths: Unorthodox post moves, height, ability to think outside the box; the best highlight video of the five with the exception of Will Smith. His behind-the-backboard lay-up is nearly unstoppable.
Weaknesses: The nightlife and ladies; who can forget watching him mouth his phone number to the cheerleaders before making those foul shots to beat Ohio State? Says what's on his mind at any time; may anger conservative fan base. Intensity is a question mark, as is intelligence.
School: Talented big men have to go to Georgetown, only because the sight of Kramer posing with, say, Patrick Ewing makes me laugh.
Reminds you of: Kwame Brown, Keith Van Horn, Zydrunas Ilguskas

PF: Will Smith
Strengths: Explosive moves off the dribble, possesses an unusual ability to get to the hole through multiple defenders, bulletproof fro to protect him from concussions, extensive post game featuring an excellent drop step and jump hook, shot-blocking ability off the charts. Made his reputation off excellent pre-draft workout against Isiah Thomas:

Weaknesses: Questionable home life and hints of trouble in his past, rumors of William Wesley funding to get him to California and bigger media audience, question as to whether anyone at all played defense in his conference:

School: Will Smith is definitely Pac-10: what about Cal or Washington?
Reminds you of: Rashard Lewis, Drew Gooden

SF: Jerry Seinfeld
Strengths: Does more with nothing than anyone before or since, deadly mid-range jump shot, plays tough defense, attended school all four years, managed to lead a cast of losers and misfits to the conference title, Jewish heritage makes him a potential drawing card for NBA team with space on the bench
Weaknesses: Under pressure his game falls apart, a complimentary player rather than a star. Is he really that good, or is the competition that bad?
School: White, preppy, over-achiever with questionable skills for the pro game? Do I even have to type out Duke?
Reminds you of: Shane Battier, Danny Ferry

SG: Carlton Banks
Strengths: Fundamentally sound in all aspects of the game, inspiring Charley Rosen to write about his jump shot for 2 straight weeks until Charley had a heart attack while watching Carlton's 12-14 shooting night; intelligent kid from wealthy two-parent home; already dresses to match NBA dress code
Weaknesses: Maturity, toughness, height, one too many sweaters for post-game interviews, can fall back on finance degree if struggles in the NBA, completely incapable of forming a complete sentence when interviewed by Erin Andrews. Gonzaga isn't an all-male school, right? Not so sure after that interview.
School: Gonzaga; do you really think THE Carlton Banks would go to a large public institution?
Reminds you of: Cuttino Mobley, Rip Hamilton

PG: George Costanza
Strengths: Teardrop floater in lane with either hand, high basketball and sports IQ (wants to be a coach or front-office worker some day), fiery on-court personality (led team to come-from-behind wins in several games)
Weaknesses: Defense, dysfunctional home life, shorter than Rachel Nichols in that ESPN interview, led conference in technical fouls ('roid rage? HGH?), and what's with the balding? I really don't believe he's only 22.
School: Winona State; your classic small-school star that may not be able to make the jump to a bigger pond.
Reminds you of: Khalid El-Amin, Tony Parker

I am too tired and busy to put words together today, sorry. I have four posts that I really like, all half-written, and don't want to ruin any of them by putting up junk. How about we just meet here tomorrow, and I'll have something better up? In the meantime, here are some videos of young basketball and volleyball players prepping for the pros. I'm always interested in the "minor league" portion of professional athlete's rise to the pros, and these videos show some insight.

The first is female college volleyball players preparing for the beach volleyball game, courtesy of CSTV.com:


The second is a promo video for Barking Abbey Basketball Academy, an English basketball school. It's lengthy, but interesting if you want another look at how basketball players in other countries are trained.

I won't be near a computer Friday, so I will post my question to you now. Are endorsement dollars controlling sports?

It seems like Nike and Gatorade run the NBA, college, and high school basketball by now...and look at how TV warps the Olympics, for example, just so that the American market can see sports in prime time. Worse, players now get paid more from endorsements rather than from the teams. Their true loyalty is now to a brand, not a ball club. What really should be more important to Lebron James, the Cavs money or Nike's money? Michael Jordan has already proven athletes can market well after retirement on the strength of a good brand name.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Time for another Random Sports Crush! You know the routine; it's not someone who poses for major magazines or is a cheerleader or sideline reporter or anything like that. It's more likely a female athlete, especially in a less well-known sport, or print reporter that is the target of my half-joking, half-serious affection. Today it's Erin Buescher of the WNBA San Antonio Silver Stars.


Thanks to the Sacramento Bee for the photo.

Erin Buescher got my attention one afternoon when I was watching TV and switched to the WNBA game. I had never heard of her before, but the announcer mentioned that she was having a career-high of 19 points in the game. That got my interest; I was an off-the-bench type for years in high school, and to hear that a bench player is having a career game always makes me feel good. Soon after, she got the ball on the break and was whacked in the eye as she went for a lay-up. Ouch! But what intrigued me was that even though she got hit, ending her best game in the WNBA, she was smiling and laughing. A lady who can laugh in the middle of adversity like that had to be cool (or crazy).

So I did some follow-up "research", and discovered she's a laid-back Californian who loves to surf, is always smiling (and a lovely smile it is, too)...and at the same time, a woman of high moral character who wants to serve others too. Neat combination! She transferred to a small Christian school her last year just because her religious convictions were more important than a potential WNBA career. Who really does that, putting sports second?! Impressive!

Then she worked her way up from years of not being very good in the WNBA (see my other Erin post) to become a decent player. She's currently the third-leading scorer for the surprisingly successful San Antonio Silver Stars (second place in the West as of today). In Erin's personal life, last I heard she was close to signing a long-term deal with a lucky man from the Greek basketball league.

So Erin, congrats on gaining the coveted (ok, more like feared) RSC title! Oh, and I did find some fan video as well from her time in Greece. Note the fire in the stands in the second movie around the 2-minute mark; those Euros know how to celebrate, heh.

I wanted to give you an open question to discuss that has been irritating me lately. The topic is how athletes are covered on blogs. Frankly, I think the blog world isn't doing any better than the much-maligned ESPN at covering athletes and understanding their positives and negatives.

There are some blogs that make their living from mocking athletes for being stupid. This is irritating because too often, their inferiority or nerd complex is showing. The idea is "Well, I'll never has as much money or girls as Athlete X, but hey, I can form complete sentences better, and I know not to put up my most embarrassing pictures on Myspace!" Congratulations; you have that in common with the majority of the population. Really, grow out of your leftover high school angst already.

It annoys me the most in two ways. One is when this type of attitude is used towards young athletes; some guy suddenly becomes famous when before no one cared who he was, still has some embarrassing pictures up somewhere doing what most 20-somethings do, and voila! Let's make fun of the 21-year-old for being young and dumb or ogle the babes on his page. The second is when this type of attitude has a certain flavor of racism. So a black athlete uses some slang that makes no sense to us country folk, or a foreign player makes an analogy that sounds really silly to us, or an athlete may not spell well. What does it look like when we mock them for those things? Not classy, I can tell you that. Mainstream media usually isn't allowed to get away with this athlete-hating behavior overtly, but the blogs are worse, in my opinion. I'm not saying there's no room for mockery; but targets have to be chosen carefully.

The other side of blogging is bloggers who'll defend any athlete, any time, for anything. Now look, we know that any media likes to set up heroes and villains to make stories more interesting. That's unfortunately part of the game. But worse than having some antagonists is having zero antagonists. Every athlete is a great guy! or hot! or something! It's just the media or his posse who makes him look bad! You'd like Charles Manson if only you'd spent some time with him and got to see the side the media isn't talking about! Ok, maybe not the last part. But you get my point. One can enjoy music or cinema or whatever while still realizing that not all musicians are gods or all actresses are angels or what not. Sometimes the media is calling someone a jerk because they ARE a jerk.

My question to you is, am I exaggerating the state of affairs? Is it my Friday grouchiness coming out? Or is it really that bad out there