Another Tale of Two Blogs

Note: to scale

The baseball season ended too quickly for me and Brandon and I joked about starting a Redskins blog back in July. I even tossed around the idea of an NFL blog dedicated to the Redskins-Eagles rivalry with lifetime Eagles fan and Curly R reader/lurker Wilbert Montgomery, but his wife wouldn't let him (typical Eagles fan -- only hard on the outside). After a few bourbons one night in August Brandon enabled the idea, gave it a name and 170 posts later here we are.

Now that the Redskins' season is over, I wanted to cap my season coverage with some thoughts to go along with Brandon's season transition piece at blogtwin Curly W, which we're prepping over the next month to ramp back up to daily coverage. Curly R will continue to cover the Redskins' offseason, along with more general NFL coverage, and we may even have a few offseason features in store to keep you coming back. The Redskins' season never really ends and neither will ours.

Brandon's piece is a good read and covers the differences in his expectations when we started this blog and his experiences as the season wore on, and makes a good point that the NFL's limited output of 16 games and sharp focus on repetition lends itself to a regularity of features, and also to the mad speculation and trash-talking that comes with six days between games. Fuel for passion and fuel for stability if you are putting your thoughts into words.

Baseball coverage is totally different; it's continually coming at you, with teams playing two and half series per week. There are too many games to cover individually by just two or three people and baseball coverage trends more toward 'what's happening now' summary, who has the hot hand, and major news, though like in football a great individual performance may well trigger a profile piece. Brandon and I are not nearly as into the statistical analysis as say, Basil at SBN site Federal Baseball, so if it takes more than a paper bag and a crayon to calculate, we'll just be linking out when others dig up statistical gems.

Baseball is a political game with lineups changing nightly and you can never dwell on a story or a game because there is another coming the next day or the day after. After covering the Nationals and Redskins daily, not even for a year now, I now see why Barry Svrluga and Jason La Canfora are the way they are. With all the activity of baseball and all time between games in football, it's a wonder these guys aren't Doc Brown from Back to Future.

I think last year or possibly the year before was the year of the baseball blog, with the medium exploding in number of blogs and readership, and as Brandon points out, the NFL blog world is much smaller. For whatever the FairCatch and StrikeTwo services are worth, there are three times the number of baseball blogs as there are football blogs, and as Brandon indicates, a busy day in-season at Curly R is fewer visitors than a slow day off-season at Curly W. I hope with the emerging medium of football blogging and the strength of the Redskins blogosphere that this changes, or at least reaches parity with baseball. If any NFL bloggers are reading this and your blog is not registered with FairCatch, get over there, send Jason a note and get registered.

For the Redskins, the elephant in the room is ExtremeSkins, the official message board of the team, where you can find easily hundreds of users logged into at any one time browsing and posting. Aside from the fact that it is an 'official' property and therefore not independent, it's too much noise for me and there are typically a few Alpha members that post over you to get you off the top, Tireless Rebutters or sadistic Admins Nannying all the fun out of it. If your comment is along the lines of TONY ROMGPO YOUR GAY AND BILL PARVCELLS HAS SAGGYU TITTIWES!!!1!1!! then ExtremeSkins is for you. If you have something thoughtful to say and you don't want it knocked off the top line by that guy, find a Redskins blog and leave a comment or post a diary at Hogs Haven. Maybe Om, an admin over at ExtremeSkins and a member of the Redskins bloggers group can refute my impression.*

A number of the features we'll be running on Curly W will look familiar to Curly R readers and Brandon and I will continue to bring baseball readers the same mix of reporting, opinion, history and fake news that has made Curly R so much fun to write this season. Thank you for reading.



* Obviuosly something of an exaggeration, as I troll regularly at ExtremeSkins to see if there are news items I've missed, and there is lots and lots of informed commentary and lots and lots of polite and thoughtful members. It tends to break down when conversation wanders to opponents or other teams and one thing Curly R prods itself on is our relationship with fans of other teams. Sure we want the Redskins to kick the shit out of your little sad inbred team but that doesn't mean we'll be impolite when answering your 5 Questions.

Binary star system pilfered from here