You are all set for the upcoming NFL draft later this week. You know your team’s shortcomings and have read mock draft after mock draft seeing who is available at each position and what the industry experts have to say. Of course all of the appropriate web sites have been plundered for any nugget of information that might enhance your understanding of the moves and picks that are occurring. You have the time blocked off on your schedule to watch the programming starting Thursday and plan to skip back and forth between ESPN and the NFL Network to see which analysts are closest and which miss badly.
Yet you could be missing one of the more informative updates on the draft if you don’t turn to Twitter. The popular microblogging platform provides a valuable information and opinion outlet for mobile sports fans who cannot take a seat in front of the TV. Rather than have a website loaded on your phone that might be slow to refresh you can instead get a steady stream of news, commentary and opinion on events such as the draft easily and instantaneously.
Now Twitter might not be the first resource you turn to for football news, but an online Twitter chat, or rather a Tweetup hosted by Fox’s Jay Glazer was scheduled for Tuesday night is a sign of where social media can help mobile fans stay in touch with interesting events related to their favorite sports, kind of like an online radio talk show.
The chat provided an opportunity to ask questions to Glazer and “hear” what he thinks on a variety of topics related to the draft. Inquiries could be submitted not only via Twitter, but also by using a Facebook plug-in. If you’re not familiar with his work, Glazer seems to always be on the leading edge on major football stories, often beating the huge mass of reporters that ESPN throws at issues that it deems sports fans want continual reporting on, such as Brett Favre going to the NY Jets.
Tweetups, however, are just the tip of the iceberg on what Twitter has to offer fans. ESPN has a full lineup of sites that will be doing live Twitter feeds, including ones that are team specific such as ESPNChiBears and division specific such as ESPN_NFCSouth. Then all of its on-air personalities will also have live feeds for the draft. The same goes true for the NFL Network and its lineup. Other NFL related sites such as ProFootballTalk, Football Outsiders and The National Football Post () among others offer feeds as well.
The growth of Twitter as a tool for instantaneous communication among masses of people makes it ideal for draftniks who want to hear opinions on events just witnessed as well as to express their approval and disapproval of those events. It can really enhance a fan’s enjoyment of the draft or of a team
and provides an interaction that does not occur simply passively watching the draft broadcast.
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