No independent bloggers were issued media credentials for this year’s Super Bowl, but not because their applications were rejected by the NFL. Of the 5,000 requests filed by the November deadline, none were submitted by bloggers without ties to large media companies.
The league insists that unaffiliated bloggers serving a large national audience and covering the NFL on a daily basis most likely would have been approved. But do bloggers even care?
“I can do the job just as effectively from my regular base of operations,” said Mike Florio, who operates the widely read Pro Football Talk out of his home and law office in West Virginia.
Blogs such as Pro Football Talk
keep theirdistance from traditional
media outlets.
NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy believes that sentiment is widespread in the blogosphere. “Whatever they’re looking to blog they can probably do an even better job at home or off-site,” he said.
Sites such as Deadspin and The Big Lead have become de facto ringleaders for a band of blogs that wear their lack of mainstream affiliation as a badge of honor, and that mandates staying out of the press box. They instead focus on the stories the mainstream media aren’t reporting, like what’s going on at the infamous Super Bowl parties.
According to an editor of The Big Lead, the choice is easy: “Hordes of grumpy media members swarming the buffet line and jostling for a spot in the postgame presser, or debauchery, women and booze? Is it even close?”
Last year, The Big Lead was out front on the reconciliation between former Philadelphia Eagles teammates Terrell Owens and Donovan McNabb, who ended their much-publicized spat while attending a Super Bowl party in Miami.
Deadspin dispatched snarky correspondent A.J. Daulerio, who chronicled his efforts to sneak into media day and the amorous activities of some prominent party-going media members.
