Eagles Central Wins 2010 BallHyped Readers’ Choice Blogger of the Year

When the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2011, the last vote had been cast and the BallHyped.com Readers’ Choice Blogger of the Year award had been set.

Congratulations to EaglesCentral.com, the first winner of the BallHyped.com Readers’ Choice Blogger of the Year award.

Eagles Central, part of the Rant Sports and YardBarker networks, is run by Bryn Swartz, a business and journalism student at Messiah College near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. (Read our Q&A with Swartz about the award, his blog and the NFL.)

Swartz held off an impressive list of bloggers that included 60 finalists from the BallHyped.com community – three of which gave him a serious run for his money, including @thewirk, @celticstown and @sidelionreport, who deserve a ton of recognition for their amazing posts and notable community following. Their Twitter streams this past week were flooded with messages from users who are avid followers of their blogs and the poll results show just how much influence they have in the blogosphere. Another Celtics blog (CelticsLife.com) and Lions blog (TheLionsInWinter.com) also fared well in the poll, which showed niche blogs that cover specific teams rather than entire leagues and general sports still have a strong community backing.

“I would like to give an enormous thank you to anyone and everyone who voted for me, especially those who took the time to campaign for me,” Swartz said. “Congrats also to thewirk.com, celticstown.com, and sidelionreport.com. It was a four-blogger race for awhile and anyone of us could have won.”

Here’s how the Top 10 of the voting shaped up:

eaglescentral.com (20%, 425 Votes) thewirk.com (18%, 376 Votes) celticstown.com (18%, 371 Votes) sidelionreport.com (16%, 330 Votes) thelionsinwinter.com (6%, 130 Votes) celticslife.com (4%, 82 Votes) babeslovebaseball.com (4%, 79 Votes) daysofyorr.com (4%, 74 Votes) redzonetalk.rantsports.com (3%, 72 Votes) nflmocks.com (3%, 70 Votes) Total Voters: 2,108

For the rest of the results, head over to the BallHyped Blogger of the Year poll page.

The BallHyped Readers’ Choice award is an impressive one for Swartz, considering he has only been blogging within the major sports networks for a couple of years and didn’t hype his first post on BallHyped.com until Dec. 1.

But in the month of December, Swartz went DeSean Jackson on the rest of the blogosphere, hyping 127 posts – becoming just the third BallHyped.com user to surpass 100 posts for the year. For a taste of his work, check out his latest post hyped on BallHyped.com: Year in Review: The 10 Craziest Moments of the 2010 Philadelphia Eagles Season.

Swartz, who is also sports editor of Messiah’s student newspaper, The Swinging Bridge, started blogging about the Eagles in October and also plans to write about the Phillies after the completion of the Eagles’ season – which he hopes is in February and not January.

“I am an extremely opinionated, passionate fan,” he writes. “I get very emotional following a big win or any sort of loss, and that shows in my writing.

“I love history and think that fans need to learn more about the history of their team, as well as the NFL. I try to incorporate history into many of my articles and I will write many historical pieces in the offseason.”

Congratulations to Swartz and Eagles Central as well as all of the blogs and bloggers who were nominated for our inaugural awards.

The rest of the category-specific awards will be announced this weekend, so stay tuned for those.

Thanks again to everyone in the community for helping make 2010 a year to remember on BallHyped.com. Here’s to an even better 2011!

Thanks again to all of the finalists, who deserve another look:

BallHyped Sports Blog of the Year Finalists