A Schelling For Your Thoughts

I love the NCAA Tournament.

This isn’t groundbreaking news, or anything that I’ve newly discovered. I’ve loved the Tournament since as long as I can remember. Since I was in middle school, I’ve been participating in bracket pools at school and work, among other places.

What is new, is the way Twitter has enhanced my enjoyment of the Tournament in 2010. Rather than simply watch the games, I can watch them on TV or online while following my favorite sports writers and on-screen personalities on Twitter. Of course, there’s always the tweets from regular people as well.

Regardless of who you follow, Twitter allows for a much greater interactive experience during the NCAA Tournament. This applies to any sporting event, though. For any team or event you follow, there is likely to be a “hash tag” that you can search for if you want to discuss the events as they happen.

For example, if you’re watching Wisconsin play Cornell, just search for #badgers, #cornell, #bigred or even #wisconsin. Now, the latter could give you non-sports tweets related to the state of Wisconsin, but any of the those four is likely to give you plenty of commentary on said game.

If you want more knowledgeable commentary during games, follow Seth Davis of SI (@sethdavishoops), Dick Vitale of ESPN (@DickieV) or Gary Parrish of CBS (@GaryParrishCBS). Don’t like those three? Just about every big name journalist or on-air personality today has a Twitter account. And most of them tweet frequently during big sporting events.

If that’s not enough for you, try Herald Sports during Badger football, basketball and hockey games (@bheraldsports) or follow me (@jordanschelling) or my fellow BH sports editor Adam Holt (@adamjsholt) for live updates during sporting events.

Say what you want about Twitter, but I couldn’t imagine covering/watching sports without it.