Do you bleed green, red or orange for any of the Philadelphia sports teams? If so, you need to be reading Crossing Broad, the best sports blog in the city of brotherly love.
Kyle Scott, writer of the blog, flat-out knows his stuff. Seriously, this man knows Philadelphia sports, including the players, personnel, and most importantly, the fans, inside and out. But that’s not all. The guy is hysterically funny.
It might seem really hard to mix humor with sports, especially in Philadelphia where we take our teams as life or death, but Scott is the master. He isn’t some third-party like ESPN. He is a die-hard Philadelphia fan that writes for the other hardcore fans in the language we speak.
This isn’t the kind of reporting you’re going to find in the Inquirer. He breaks Philly sports news faster than Cliff Lee’s fastball and he does it in true Philadelphia style, otherwise known as a balance between sarcasm and serious emotion.
On Crossing Broad, yes, you will get game recaps but you’re going to get the inside scoop on pretty much anything you could imagine related to our teams. I would have to say my favorite segments of the site include “Shut Up Wheels,” which highlights all of the wonderful announcing faux pas by the incredibly “talented” Phillies’ announcers, and the now passé “Morning Carts,” which tracked former Flyer Jeff Carter through his various rendezvouses.
The site also features tickets and plenty of awesome links and advertisements. Of course the man has to make money, so he sells some ad-space, but I promise you, they are all relevant to fans. You can find links to the kinds of T-shirts and merchandise you won’t see sold in stores.
You can like Crossing Broad on Facebook and you can follow Crossing Broad on Twitter. Go ahead and tweet him and many times he’ll actually tweet back, which as a fan who he has tweeted back to, it’s awesome to know your feedback and opinions are important.
@steveohohoh None of the interactive experiences I wrote about were personal. He hasn’t ever been mean to me- he’d have to go well out of his way to do that, as I don’t comment on his blog or talk to him on Twitter (with one exception, I sent him a comment on Twitter once that was a professional disagreement with a tweet he posted. He did not reply. Whether that was due to he didn’t want to talk to someone who disagreed with him or because he didn’t see it, I do not know, but he has done the same to many others.)Plagiarism means to take quotes or ideas from another source without citing them, not just quoting a source correctly. It has been well-known around the “blogosphere” for quite some time now that Crossing Broad has sometimes taken post ideas from smaller Philly sports blogs, when they were the only outlets on that story or idea or whatever, and not given them credit for it. That is plagiarism. It is not as egregious as other forms of plagiarism, sure, but it still qualifies.
For what it’s worth, I always think twice about criticism before I post it. I want to be sure that if I say something negative, that it is at least correct, and then that my conclusions are valid. It’s not like I’m saying that he’s a bad person or anything like that, I just am having professional criticism of his blog. Note that I gave him credit for some good things he has done, such as his good treatment of his fans and “insight into the inner workings of Philadelphia sports.” This isn’t a takedown of Kyle Scott, just an honest (your word, not mine) criticism of his blog.Also, I agree with you on your other comment- this was a well-written article.
I should add that I thought this was a good article.
Jeez, something tells me that I’m not surprised that he wasn’t nice to a guy that said he plagiarizes. I read the site every day and I think you should look up what that word means. Kyle is perhaps the best at citing where stuff comes from, and he makes it blatantly obvious by using grey block quotes that he’s quoting another site. I think it’s by far the best sports blog in Philly. If you don’t like what he has to say then that’s your opinion (ie: criticizing athletes), at least he’s honest. Maybe you should think twice about criticizing someone for making general statements when your throwing out wild accusations about someone who contributes more than any other local blog.
Um. Well…(Disclaimer: you seem smart, nice, and a talented writer, so please don’t take this as a personal criticism.)
Anyway, Crossing Broad doesn’t often break Philly sports news, and has been known to resort to plagiarism, sometimes plagiarizing content from blogs that are too small to do anything about it. Crashburn Alley and The 700 Level are much better examples of Philly blogs, both from an informative and entertaining standpoint.Whether he is funny or not is purely a matter of subjective opinion- and though I disagree, I can’t make a case to argue why you shouldn’t be laughing- but one of his jokes was once just asking the question “Is Raul Ibanez gay?” That was the whole joke. He managed to be offensive, uncreative, immature (and not in the funny way, there’s a difference), and judgmental in the same “joke.”
This is also the guy who criticizes athletes just for using Twitter. Look at how (two weeks after the fact!) he’s still criticizing Shane Victorino for posting something on Twitter the day after the Phillies were eliminated from the playoffs. He’s not saying “yeah, Shane probably shouldn’t have done that,” but using obscenities and insults and telling other Philly fans that they should do the same. Two weeks after it happened!
As far as “knowing his stuff” goes, I’ll say that he does provide occasional insight into the inner workings of Philadelphia sports. That knowledge stops short of the actual games goes. His analysis of what makes the current Phillies a dynasty? “They’re winners.” That was his entire analysis. Then he said that’s the truth, period, and insulted some of the many that disagreed with him.He is nice to his fans, I will say that. He truly appreciates those who support his site, and that’s a good thing. However, disagree with him, and he becomes a much different person. If you disagree with him on the blog’s comment thread, he’ll often say “you know nothing about sports!” or something along those lines. Disagree with him on Twitter, same thing. You’re another blogger trying to start a professional discussion? He’ll insult you and will be quick to point out just how many pageviews he gets, then insult you again.Like I said, though, you seem like you have a lot of writing talent and ability, and I hope you write about sports more in the future so I might stumble upon another one of your posts again. Best wishes to you.