We have verified artists for music, and verified authors for literature, why not pursue the idea of Verified Athletes?

We could get famous pro or collegiate athletes to get verified accounts, and they could give their breakdowns and thoughts on results of games and their stats. Maybe also give breakdowns on what was going on in their minds during the game, there’s ton’s of possibilities with what hey could do, and it would give almost a personal press conference just for Sports Genius!

Some Further Things the Athletes Could Discuss:

• What practice was like up to the game.

• Strategies and game plans.

• Thoughts on trades or free agency.

• Team Controversies.

• Workout regiments, maybe working with Lift Genius on that.

There are so many different ways this could work, and thousands of people would love to get an inside view of their favorite athletes, just like they do with verified rappers. It’s feasible to, I mean, we got hundreds of rappers to join Rap Genius, athletes shouldn’t be too much harder to attract.

Please feel free to discuss opinions or ideas for improvements below!

To be honest I thought about the concept, and we should think about it the same way every major sports team does: The younger generation is the new tomorrow.

We should recruit our high school players who would be interested in all of this. Maybe a head coach, star athlete, kid with a scholarship.

I don’t know about others, but one of our DT’s is headed to Boise State, out Coach led state championships as well as teams on the Top 10 HS FB teams in the nation, (think it might have been AP poll). We also have another senior QB who if I’m not mistaken is ranked #4 in the state, might be area though.

This is absolutely something I’ve been interested in and it’s been discussed briefly, particularly when we found out Brandon Jennings had the Genius app on the homepage of his iPhone.

It’s just a matter of actually getting in touch with the athletes. Starting it out small would probably be best… we’d likely have better success with the lesser-known athletes, particularly at the collegiate level.

I like this idea and the points that you brought up in OP. I would love to hear about the game from an athlete’s point of view

We could really, seriously look into ex-footballers who are aspiring coaches/journalists/pundits or even just normal non-athlete journalists who annotate a certain play, goal or refereeing decision.

Strategies and game plans.

As far as football goes, I don’t think this would be possible at all, with notable managers allegedly furious over moles and leaked strategies, I doubt we’d get anything from the horses mouth in that sport. All quite water tight at the top flight.

That kinda stuff would be more an analysis from a pundit/journo (e.g. Gary Neville or Gary Lineker – aim high?! or someone of similar ilk)

–

Thinking further… footballers, at least in top flight football (association football/soccer) are extremely media-trained and I doubt we’d get much luck out of anyone notable…

Our best bet as far as that sport goes, in my opinion, is to pursue possibly non-playing staff, ex-players/coaches, aspiring/current journos and physios.

For those who know him, how awesome would a Guillem Balagué section be? I mean, he’s got his section on Bleacher Report… I have both his books on Messi and Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona so we could see if he’s down to annotate some excerpts from that. Some really great stuff in there…

Maybe unlikely, but that sort of thing, anyway.

Great points @Wandawaisu… I’m not familiar with the world’s football (avoiding saying soccer haha), so maybe you could lead the charge on that sport? Ex-players would be great… I know Bleacher Report has many contributors who are ex-players in American sports.

TO EVERYONE:

Which athletes do you think we should start out trying to get in contact with? Think lesser-known guys. As @noterosLittleBrother mentioned, 5 or 4 star recruits coming out of high school could be a possibility for football. What about NCAA?

Our News Genius/Sports Genius twitter page needs, needs, needs to get more Sport Active.

Sorry for the UK football talk, but we have an absolutely awesome team working on sooo many games, dropping dope annotations and uploading some decent amateur coverage but nobody really knows about it.

I’ve seen how accounts like Thick Accent Football and (my favourite football acc) BarcaStuff have gone from 1 follower to thousands. I actually followed Barcastuff on my first twitter account when they had only 3k followers, now they’re on 338k with Gary Lineker, Cesc Fàbregas, among other people avid followers.

WE’RE SO MUCH BETTER THAN THICK ACCENT! We need exposure for this sort of thing, we need to show people we have material, GOOD material for them to read. We should follow and mention, pester accounts to RT.

I used to run an Arsenal fan account after deleting my personal page and this account had less followers than I, it was a couple hundred, and they were asking me for RTs and shoutouts but I got lazy and he usurped me and unfollowed anyone with less followers than him – PRICK! – but he’s followed by some top flight professionals.

But I’m going off on a tangent here. Ya’ll get the point. I think this is really possible as we have a dedicated Sports Genius team made up of so many avid sports fans across the board.

TL;DR – WE NEED EXPOSURE.

Promotion is absolutely key. More original content (like the Tommy John Crisis post… sorry for shameless self promotion) would be HUGE for us!

Obviously, having verified athletes would be dope. BUT, what they would break down on the site would be tough because:

Strategies and game plans

No way that an athlete would leak his team’s gameplans and strategies. That would be extremely foolish. Maybe a retired athlete could come in and say “this is how Coach Belicheck prepped us for games”, but to expect Damien Lillard to come on here and break down how they prepared for the Rockets is insane.

Team Controversies

This, along with “thoughts on trades or free agency” would also be a tough sale too. I can’t speak on international sports, but for NBA/NFL players, a lot of what athletes say is scrutinized and teams will also keep [certain] players on tight leashes on what they can/can’t say. American athletes have to VERY VERY careful about what they say, because the slightest slip-up could lead to the media running away with some bullshit / the player getting in trouble with the team for saying something he wasn’t supposed to. For example, an injured Arian Foster once tweeted his x-ray and the Texans were PISSED because apparently it could give other teams an inside scoop on his timetable for recovery.

Anytime a controversy comes out and the media interviews teammates, they usually side-step the question/give some BS answer. And anytime a real inside piece comes out, its always from an anonymous source/player. Why would anyone tell us the inside scoop? A lot of these guy are well-trained for the media, when something happens (an arrest of a player, for ex) the team’s GMs/Presidents/etc will come out and say “We are gathering information at this time” or “We’re disappointed in Aldon Smith for his recent arrest” but what they REALLY mean is, “WE’RE PISSED THAT OUR PLAYER IS A DUMBFUCK!” It’s just tough to get a real inside piece on anything sports because it could always lead to another team getting the upper-hand with the information that’s put out there.

The only thing I can honestly think of at the top of my head, is having a player break down a Performance of the Day; for example what was going through LeBron’s mind as he obliterated the Bobcats for 61. Or something of the sort.

We have verified artists for Rap/Rock/Pop Genius, we have companies/authors/various media figures verified for News Genius so I of course agree its only right that we eventually have verified athletes for Sports Genius. I just think it’s extremely difficult finding things for them to breakdown.

One last thing – I only read the OP, nobody else’s post. So if someone already mentioned this/mentioned an idea for potential breakdowns, GREAT!

@Baous Agreed, all good points. I remember the uproar about Foster tweeting that pic out… that wasn’t pretty. Annotated performances would be great, but what about their workout playlists? Would be pretty cool to see what various athletes are listening to and why… and also incorporates RG into our content (AKA front page postlet/retweet on RG)

@Baous read my mind

Hasn’t @Nappy thought about this before? Like he tried to get David Price right? I think it’s a great idea, but it sure is hard to contact people that famous. I guess I agree with starting smile.

@MrXercules Annotated workout playlists sounds like a STUPENDOUS idea.

@Baous @MrXercules I tweeted this to LeBron’s trainer; no response.

http://news.rapgenius.com/Lebron-james-1-hour-workout-annotated

Who do y'all think would be good to try and hit up for workout playlists? Both small and big name suggestions are good. I know Dwight Howard doesn’t have many fans around here, but he is really active on social media so he could potentially respond. He’s someone we could hit up eventually if this gets off the ground running.

@MrXercules Dwight would be good as long as he doesn’t mention that piece of crap everyone calls the Nae Nae.

Otherwise I’d say focus on younger guys or breakout players. NBA draft prospects like Parker, Wiggins, Smart would be a good place to start imo