I’ve been busy to say the least so I haven’t been running a lot of my normal features. There’s been no Headphones On In The Locker Room, and no luv from me in the form of Bloggas Be Typin.. So here’s my apology, the mother of all BBTs.

The Starting Five:
A must read interview with Rob Parker, and a look at some double standards in Major League Baseball.

Signal To Noise:
The Mansnitch got ratted out by Brian Billick. Plus, a shout out to the WNBA champions..Ahh that’s sweet.

Ball Hype:
A man’s dream… A bunch of female sports bloggers in one place. I don’t know a sexy way to say this one, just more incredible NBA stat breakdowns.

Larry Brown Sports:
LB is all over LT acting like a B-A-B-Y, and Avery Johnson calling out “Lil D” in Big D.

DeadSpin:
Thank God for Isiah Thomas’ sexual harrasment trial. Does Steve Phillips get paid for his opinions?

Epic Carnival:
Hot chicks and all things MMA. Reggie Bush vs. Lendale White..Right now White’s winning.

The Big Lead:
ESPN replaces Byron Leftwich with O.J. Simpson. Elijah Dukes is in the news and it’s not all bad.

With Leather:
Shawne Merriman hanging out with porn stars? Polo on Segways= Watch this video.

The Big Picture:
A conversation between Byron Leftwich and Joey Harrington.

Mr. Irrelevant:
An Eagles’ fan Monday night pain.

Edge of Sports:
Nixon, Belichick, and cheating.

We Are The Postmen:
Taco Bell hopes nachos can ease Charlie Weis’ pain.

The fine folks over at Ball Hype let me do a little guest writing on their site. The name of the post is Roger Goodell’s Fantasy Quarterback Rankings. Do me a favor and check it out HERE.

The guys over at Five Tool Tool dropped their Top 10 Tips For Sports Blog Traffic a few days ago. I wanted to talk about a few of the things they’ve mentioned and add a couple of thoughts. Here’s a review of the FTT list:

1. Ass Kissing
2. Current Events
3. Whore Yourself
4. Whore Others
5. Whore Strangers
6. Tech Fun
7. Cheap Heat
8. Keywords
9. Gambling
10. Lists!

My list looks like this:

1. Good Material: It doesn’t guarantee traffic, but you have to have something interesting for the masses if they find you. How many boring blogs have you stumbled upon and then bookmarked? Exactly. It doesn’t matter if your post are breaking news, spins on mainstream stories, youtube clips, faux interviews, real interviews, something original, or a crazy story, you want to have something that can keep people’s attention.

2. Ass Kissing/Get Links: If you’ve crafted a masterpiece or you got a story/angle nobody’s going with, you gotta get the word out. The biggest sneezers in the sports blogosphere are DeadSpin, The Big Lead, and With Leather. If one of those sites picks up your story, you’re looking at a good day numbers wise. On the mainstream side of the tracks, your traffic’s gonna boom if you get picked up on SI’s Hot Clicks or The 10 Spot Blog… You’re fooling yourself if you think any of  those folks have time to sit and read through every blog, so your gonna have to point them in the right direction.

3. Be Social: The number one stop for a sports blog trying to get a rep is Ball Hype. It’s the easiest way to connect with other bloggers, and you can check out what everybody else is doing. In a nutshell it’s Digg for sports… Other bloggers see your stories on Ball Hype and they hype ’em up or down. On a good day, a number of sites will link to your story because they saw it on Ball Hype.

Don’t limit yourself to BH and Digg.. Go do some searching around and find which social site works for you. Blog Carnival is another site that can get you some new traffic, but I can’t explain how it works even though I know how it works… It’s just one of those things. All I can say is find a carnival, hop on, and enjoy the ride.

4. Spread Love: Traffic is the ultimate goal, but you have to remember you got brothas and sistas in the struggle for numbers. You see a story you like, link to it, or you can have the increasingly popular ”link dump”. The ”dumps” are a collection of stories from around the blogosphere. I have Bloggas Be Typin but you can check out Cheap Shots or Spanning The Blog as other examples. When you’ve linked to others, it encourages them to link to you. You can call it karma, I call it the Blogger Way.

 Deadspin’s “Blogdome“ is the most popular link dump, even if it’s been getting some neg(ative) press lately. Earlier this week Stop Mike Lupica wondered who’s leg do you have to hump to get a link on Deadspin, and got a few people aggy.. I definitely see certain blogs linked more often than the rest, but it is what it is. Like I said in tip #2, sometimes you gotta point people in the right direction.

5. Cheap Heat/Keywords/Window Shoppers/Current Events: I use this category to draw people that are passing through.. People that are looking for sports but not really. These terms draw the most people to me through search engines:

1. Serena Williams’ ass
2. Nip Slip
3. Brady Quinn’s girlfriend

The key there is the women. They don’t say sex sells for nothing. I wrote about the first story and linked to the last two, and everyday people find my blog by searching for those terms. I’m not saying those are the 3 best, but those perform for me. 

Just like sports radio hosts can yell “Pete Rose” or “Steroids” and watch the phone lines light up, bloggers have some automatics they can go to. I like to call ‘em Kobe and the 7A’s (A-Rod, Arenas, Artest, & African-American Athlete Arrested). Everybody does it in one way or another, and the only down side to this technique is if it’s your only technique.

STAT SHEET

These sites, technorati/alexa, allow you to track your ranking according to their guidelines. If you want all of your numbers delivered to you in one place check out popuri.us. Hopefully all of the tips above will have you climbing up the charts.

Top Ten Tips For Sports Blog Traffic. Courtesy of Five Tool Tool

DIGG IT  *  DEL.ICIO.US  *  REDDIT  *  BALL HYPE

The 10 PR commandments. (music PR) Thank you Street Census (peeped at Nah Right Lite)

Utah’s Dee Brown is out of the hospital. Thank you B. Shoals at AOL Fanhouse

The most mediocre baseball players of all time. Thank you The Smittblog

The Top 25 Hip Hop albums of all time. Thank you Straight Bangin (scroll down)

Pee your pants for the Brewers. Thank you Pee Your Pants For The Brewers

The Mav’s collapse was predictable. Thank you Hoops Hype (Eddie Johnson blog)

Take a look at these golf babes. Thank you Golf Babes

Freddy Roach got paid to train Oscar De La Hoya but it still cost him. Thank you Max Boxing

Chris Rock, Never Scared, “tired of defending Hip Hop” flashback. Thank you Nobody Smiling (NSFW language)

Yankees pitcher Chien Ming Wang gets his groove on. Thank you Matt at AOL Fanhouse

**UPDATE** I’m not sure how I missed this but The Starting Five has a good and lengthy interview with Dave Zirin. Great stuff in this interview. **UPDATE**

Props to Ball Hype for making this easy to put together.

DIGG IT  *  DEL.ICIO.US  *  REDDIT  *  BALL HYPE