My Confession

I’ll be honest. I have a problem. I’m an arguer. If I see somebody write something that’s just plain wrong online, I have a pathological need to correct them. That’s part of the reason I started this blog. It’s a great time-saver. I like to win sports arguments, but I don’t like writing the same thing over, and over, and over again.

You make the argument once, post it as a blog, and then you don’t need to go searching through your Facebook activity feed. So, the next time someone tells me that Montana was better than Brady, or that all the Seahawks had to do was run the ball, that the Patriots success is due to their weak division, or Tom Brady owes his career to Mo Lewis, I can just copy my argument again – and include the link to back up my statements with facts.

(By the way, if you’ve ever considered getting your own website for such purposes, I use and recommend Bluehost, but there are lots of choices out there.)

Resources To Get the Facts You Need to Win Sports Arguments

Here are the best resources I’ve found to get the data I need to counter a lot of really bad online arguments. If you think I’m missing any, please include them in the comments below. (And thank you in advance, I’m always looking for more.)

Frankly, there are too many people online just screaming that other people’s teams “suck”, and that gets old in a hurry.

Statistics

For years, if you wanted this kind of data, you’d have to purchase enormous books, like the Baseball Encyclopedia. You don’t have to do that any more, but you can if you want to. It’s a big, big book – over 3,000 pages.

Sports-Reference.com is the king here. You can find every statistic available about any of the four major sports. You’ll find in each of their sites a massive amount of information. For starters, you’ll find sortable statistics. You’ll also find play-by-play and box scores going back decades. Want to find the box score from the first major league you attended. You can. Here’s mine.

Add to that transaction logs, draft logs, and more. Plus “game-finder” and “play-finder” features. Want to know how the Patriots did on the road, against teams that made the playoffs from 2001-2016? You can find out in a few seconds.

A real sports fan can get lost for hours at any of these sites. These sites will certainly give you the ammo you need to help you in any sports argument you can imagine.

baseball-reference.com

basketball-reference.com

pro-football-reference.com

hockey-reference.com

Rules

The NFL Rulebook

MLB Rulebook – rules on the field

Professional Baseball Rulebook – Player acquisition rules

The NBA Rulebook

The NHL Rulebook

Contract and Salary Information

How many more years is Isaiah Thomas signed for? How much money did Alex Rodriguez make?

Spotrac.com – A catchall site for contracts in all major sports.

Overthecap.com – Dedicated to NFL contracts. Has the best stuff on NFL free agency compensation picks.

Cot’s Contracts – Everything you ever wanted to know about MLB contracts. From salary by year, to no-trade clauses, to agents, etc. And it goes back years.

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Uniforms and other Minutia

Granted, you’re probably not going to have a lot of heated debates about uniforms, but just in case, or just in case your curious.

Uni-watch – Paul Lukas is really, really into the minutia of uniforms. It’s usually pretty interesting stuff.

www.gridiron-uniforms.com – An extremely detailed database of NFL uniforms going back to 1920. For more recent years, they’ve got week-by-week uniforms. Like what uniform did the Patriots wear in week 6 in 1994?

The grandfather of all online uniform databases was the Baseball Hall of Fame’s “Dressed to the Nines” database. Right now, the link seems to be broken.

Until that’s back up, jerseydatabase.com is probably your best bet. It hasn’t been updated in five years – but is pretty exhaustive before that, going back to the 1930s.

jerseymuseum.org – A visually beautiful website for NBA jerseys that’s almost complete. I’m picky, and the fact that it’s missing the Celtics green uniform with “Celtics” across the top takes points away. But it’s by far the best site I’ve seen for NBA uniforms.

NHLUniforms.com – Every NHL sweater going back to 1917. Exhaustive and easily searchable.

Ballparks and Stadiums

Ballparks.com – The design is very 1996, but the information is up-to-date. It’s got a massive amount information about sporting venues – past, present and future.

The Website Loved By Patriots Fans, and Hated by Yahoos Nationwide

YourTeamCheats.com ‘Nuff Ced.

Photo by Minda Haas Kuhlmann