Sideline Tweets

Mock it all you like, but Twitter is here to stay. Personally, I’ve loved it since the day I signed up, and 1,953 tweets later, I don’t see this relationship ending anytime soon.  The biggest argument against it is, “No one cares what you are doing,” but my 75 followers and counting would beg to differ. But for the most part, they’re right, no one cares what I’m doing, but millions of fans do care about athletes like Shaquille O’Neal (a.k.a. @THE_REAL_SHAQ), Charlie Villanueva (@CV31), and Jozy Altidore (@JozyAltidore17).

140 characters is slightly more than the average sentence contains, so it doesn’t take a lot of effort to get one’s point across. There is a tweeter out there for everyone. Whether you care about breaking news, secret sales, or new music being released today, no one is excluded for lack of interest.

Where I get the majority of my pleasure from does not come from commenting on a professor’s recent lecture, but rather hearing from NBA All-Star Kevin Durant (@KevinDurant35) about what it was like to play against a rejuvenated Tracy McGrady. Athletes hate talking to media people who notoriously misquote them, but Twitter gives athletes the opportunity to say what they want, how they want. Good or bad.

The Durant example was good. Anything Shaq, Dwight Howard, or Steve Nash tweets is good. However, there is a dark side to all of this. During the last off-season, the Minnesota Timberwolves fired then head coach Kevin McHale behind closed doors and planned to hold a press conference about it days later. Rookie forward Kevin Love didn’t know that.

“Today is a sad day … Kevin McHale will NOT be back as head coach this season.”

Love was fined a small amount for “Conduct detrimental to the team,” and has since stopped tweeting.

Though that was an unfortunate incident, more good comes from the little blue bird then does bad. Of the 22 athletes that I personally follow on Twitter, 11 of them wear a Vanguard uniform. Since I didn’t discuss this article with any of them I won’t mention their names, but thanks to them keeping up with scores, injuries, and game times is significantly easier. Not to mention that having some of this inside knowledge makes watching their games that much more entertaining.

Fans love getting as close to their sports idols as possible, and Twitter allows this to happen, at a safe distance. Just the other night I got to see what Ochocinco was eating for dinner. I didn’t really care, but athletes somehow always get built up to be some sort of super human race that doesn’t eat normal food. Let me tell you, Ochocinco eats McDonalds and loves it, and there is nothing more normal than that.

Twitter allows athletes to connect with their fans without really having to do anything about it. Kevin Durant will occasionally give away gift boxes, which is awesome, and guys like Chris Bosh will take and answer fan questions. What it comes down to the fans getting the “intimate” relationship they crave, while protecting the athletes from the crazies.

I’m a believer, and as long as there is even a possibility that Dwight Howard will talk to me, 140 characters or less, I’m going to keep coming back. Heck, Terrell Owens mentioned me (@SportsManDC) last year, why would I stop now?

The last 10 years were great, but the next 10 will be extraordinary!

Over Christmas break we were all barraged with TV and news lists of the top 10 whatever from the last year. For example: top 10 celebrity break-ups, top 10 new gadgets, top 10 movies, top 10 games, and so on.

Don’t get me wrong, we like taking trips down memory lane as much as the next person, especially if it includes a video of Mike Tyson biting body parts off from Evander Holyfield; but that’s boring, old news. What I really love is predictions. Not just who’s going to win the NBA Championship, because there is always some guy who is convinced that the Los Angeles Clippers have the perfect mix of talent, youth, and experience to make a serious run this year. They don’t, they haven’t, and they never will.

The predictions we’re talking about are bold. They are the types of predictions that get you remembered, like Babe Ruth calling his shot against the Cubs in the 1932 World Series, or Joe Namath predicting a win in the Super Bowl over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts. These are the kinds of things I like.

With sports and athletes advancing leaps and bounds everyday, it’s nearly impossible to make these types of predictions anymore, nothing surprises us anymore, but we’re going to try. These are the 10 predictions we are making for the next 10 years in sports that we wholeheartedly believe will happen.

1. Tim Tebow will make Ryan Leaf look like an MVP. Tebow will be a complete and utter bust in the NFL. I don’t care if he’s a “natural born winner” like all the experts say. Adam Morrison has a championship ring but that doesn’t make him a winner or good at what he does. Some athletes styles just don’t translate from college to pros. A prime example of this is Vince Young, but at best, the jury is still out on him.

2. The most compelling rivalry in sports will not be LeBron vs. Kobe, Yankees vs. Red Sox, or Tiger Woods vs. everyone. The best rivalry in sports will be Sydney Crosby vs. Alex Ovechkin. The NHL owners owe them their souls for keeping this sport even relatively popular. If half of the Stanley Cup finals of the next 10 years include either one of them, I’m watching.

3. The summer of 2010 will not be the mind blowing free agency season people think it will be. Let’s be honest, LeBron isn’t going anywhere people, and everyone else that is available is chopped liver compared to him. I’m not saying a team wouldn’t want Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, or Joe Johnson, but they are role players compared to King James. Consolation prizes at best.

4. Baseball will implicate a salary cap. As the only sport currently without a salary cap, their time as big spenders is over. The salary and talent difference between Yankees and the Royals will finally have no direct effect on each other.

5. Vanguard will win two more National Championships. One of them will come from the winning machine that is women’s basketball. The other might surprise you. The work that tennis coach Mattias Johansson is doing with that program is astonishing, and there is far too little being said about it.

You can quote me on all of these things, that is, if you still know me in 10 years!