Business - Written Monday, September 10, 2007 by Denis Hancock - 1 Comment

The Sports Guy 2.0

As I’m prone to do on a Monday afternoon… ok, every afternoon… I popped over to the Sports Guy’s page, this time to see if he had anything to say about New England’s rather commanding victory on Sunday. He did, it’s as gushing as any long time reader would expect, and he’s also unveiled an entirely revamped home page under the link title of the Sports Guy’s World 2.0.

Seeing this (and particularly the 2.0) gave me a great idea – if I could work up a little post that ties to this launch, I could justify spending the afternoon on his site in the name of research, so I’ve done just that. Otherwise, I would have had to write about the other big story on the web today, which of course is Britney’s VMA performance, and no one should ever want to hear about or see that again.

But pushing that terrible visual to the side, The Sports Guy is truly a great story that ties to the growth of the web and wikinomics. As he’s prone to mention whenever he’s not over hyping a Boston sports team or player (yes, I’m the sucker that drafted Rajon Rondo as a fantasy basketball “sleeper” last year on his advice… I think he overslept), Bill was working on establishing and building a web audience (as the Boston Sport’s Guy) before most people really knew what the web was. His popularity grew, somewhere along the way he became affiliated with ESPN, and now he is one of the most influential and entertaining sports journalists around. As his wikipedia profile notes:

His ESPN.com column is notable for being written from the viewpoint of a fan rather than an impartial journalist. Simmons aims for humor in his columns, often using extended analogies and references to pop culture (especially from the 1980s and 1990s).

But it’s from surfing around his newly designed site that one is really reminded of how far we’ve come in terms of media over the last few years. On there you’ll find his aforementioned Boston Blog, the new basketball blog and other articles, his recently launched podcasts (with Adam Carolla and Sugar Ray Leonard as recent guests), a “found on YouTube” video featuring recent Celtic acquisition Kevin Garnett in a 2005 interview, a link to purchase the Sports Guy’s book (which can be purchased via Amazon of course), and links to many years worth of archives and a variety of external content.

Of course in many ways, none of this seems extraordinary – but I think that’s the most extraordinary thing. Just stop and think about how different this really is then what was available even a few years ago, let alone when the Sports Guy got started. How did people waste time at work before anyway?

But the real questions I have now are how much better can the site get and how many other web 2.0 tools could be integrated (can’t Digg and Facebook get involved somehow?), will the Sports Guy name a future son Moss Simmons, and if his die hard devotion to the Boston clubs will flip from endearing to painfully annoying if the Celtics, Pats and Red Sox are all dominating at once. Of course, if it does there are all those other writers and podcasters to choose from and many more that can now make their voice heard on the web… another part of the web 2.0 many of us already take for granted.