A couple days ago, we published an article about USA Today “handicapper” Danny Sheridan buying Twitter followers. We’d like to pat ourselves on the back and highlight the tremendous investigative work we did to unearth this finding but, really, it was just so simple. After all, the notion that Danny Sheridan generated a few hundred thousand Twitter followers in 6 weeks of  baseball season is laughable on its face.
But we found something even more laughable: today’s USA Today article defending Sheridan.
In an article titled ‘Sports Analyst Sheridan Denies Buying Twitter Followers,’ boxing reporter Bob Velin repeats Sheridan’s assertion that he did not buy any followers. Â Of course, like most trying to only spin one side of a tale, they referenced WagerMinds, but didn’t link to our evidence.
Now, take a look at the most egregious sentence in this laughable article from Bob Velin:
“However, a review of Sheridan’s followers could find no such spambots.”
Of course Sheridan claims he didn’t buy any followers. That Velin reported that claim isn’t an issue. But the fact that he seemingly conducted a “review” of Sheridan’s followers and couldn’t find any spambots; well, that’s just plain hysterical.
So, to recap: Velin doesn’t link to our article where we present clear-as-day evidence of our claims. Velin repeats Sheridan’s assertion that he didn’t buy followers. And then Velin goes a thousand steps further to claim that his “review” of Sheridan’s followers proves Sheridan’s innocence.
Now look, we don’t know Bob Velin. We can’t be certain he has functioning eyeballs. So if he is actually blind, we apologize in advance. But we’ll play the numbers and assume he can actually see. So, to help him and everyone else at USA Today see our evidence, we put together a little video where we spend a good, honest 90 seconds proving that Sheridan has countless spambot followers.
Apparently, the “journalists” at USA Today didn’t have that 90 seconds to do the research. Or don’t know how to use Twitter. Or both. Either way, enjoy the video:
Haha. Those old bastards, always gettin’ tripped up by the complexities of the Interweb. Great work outing him. Unfortunately, this will probably only result in his getting some sort or raise.
It’s me! Mario!
that was too funny and the music was definitely appropriate for the occasion. the intellectual firepower of wagerminds > usatoday.
Not to mention he has about 2000 porn/date site spam followers easily identifiable by the super-hot chick in the photo who’s Twitter tag line is something about wanting to go out for a great time and looking for a big d__k.
You’re overlooking some of the subtler spambots too. Look at all the ones with fake profile pics that have a description along the lines of “is x y z” or some other “verb words words words” all have 0 tweets and around 300 following. Keren Meredith, Lyndsey Stielau, Veronica Bushorn…sports handicapper real popular with the ladies!