The Why and the How Twitter Makes Sports so Much Better

Apr 4, 2015; Indianapolis, IN, USA; Wisconsin Badgers fans cheer during the second half against the Kentucky Wildcats of the 2015 NCAA Men

1. Find All Reactions in One Easy Place

Twitter allows us to easily collect and browse reactions to whatever’s big in the sports world. There’s something extremely validating when someone who you don’t know and who could be a country away feels the same way that you do on a penalty that was called or about that shattered record.

That’s the beauty of watching it live, because anything can happen at any given moment.

If you think about it, Twitter actually complements the nature of sports very well. Merely commenting on a game after it’s concluded isn’t how fans do things, and it’s also not how sports were meant to be consumed. Sports wants you to be engaged, to be thrilled, to be caught up in the action every single minute. That’s the beauty of watching it live, because anything can happen at any given moment.

Twitter is a platform that moves at the speed of its users, which means it never falls behind the action. If Jay Cutler throws a huge interception during a Bears-Packers game, Twitter will light up with responses to it. But if Aaron Rodgers immediately throws a huge interception right back, Twitter can and will immediately change its focus of commentary, just as instantaneously as a group of people at a bar will groan or celebrate.

Twitter reactions are not limited to in-game action either. Breaking sports news often racks up even more tweets. Remember when Tim Tebow signed a one-year contract with the Eagles around a month ago? (I apologize profusely that I am bringing Tim Tebow up, but the example was too perfect.) Less than an hour after the news broke, there were 98,000 tweets about him.

After huge events like this, the media actually does a great job of accentuating just how inextricable Twitter is to the world of sports. All over the place, articles pop up that are essentially collections of some of the best reaction tweets. Let’s look at more recent news rocking the football world: Tom Brady and Deflategate.

Here’s a compilation of tweets from when the news first broke, a compilation of tweets from when the NFL released its findings after the investigation, and a compilation of tweets in response to the punishments the NFL decided on, conveniently grouped for you by level of dramatic flair. Twitter is able to dissect something in a thousand different ways all in easy-to-read pieces.

Next: Inside the mind of the athlete