Funniest Sports Twitter Accounts

They say brevity is the soul of wit. Maybe so, but you also need to be clever, ironic, and above all, good-natured — at least if you don’t want to go through life with a perpetually bloody nose.

Of course, with Twitter, there’s something worse than a bloody nose. It’s the embarrassment of saying something you thought would be funny and discovering too late that you were so very, very wrong.

Yes, it is my theory that Twitter was invented specifically to give wanna-be wits like me every opportunity to embarrass themselves.

Incidentally, Twitter showed some compassion by restricting tweets to 140 characters. Personally, I think they should have left it at that, what with Sturgeon’s Law being a universal truth and all.

(For the uninitiated, Sturgeon’s Law asserts that “90% of everything is crap.” Again, speaking personally, I think Sturgeon was an optimist. Be that as it may, Twitter’s allowance of only 140 characters within which to express your thoughts forced many of us, myself included, to consider their every utterance carefully. Others just barreled in and shanked it.)

In exasperation (that’s my theory, anyway), Twitter loosened its restrictions on tweet length, doubling it to 280 characters, which allowed some n00bs to post an avalanche of emoji-riddled gibberish that at least had the advantage of immediately identifying AILMs (Accounts I’d Like to Mute).

But an odd thing happened. Back when the character limit on Twitter was 140, the average tweet was 34 characters long.

After the doubling, the average tweet grew to… 33 characters. Which suggests that Twitter had done a very good job of teaching us to tweet succinctly, briefly, albeit not always coherently. Or maybe that was just for my benefit.

Sturgeon’s Law notwithstanding, there are some very funny accounts on Twitter, particularly those in the sports world (and its massive fan base).

There’s the trash-talkers, the snarkers, the sarcastic asses — and each group has at least one or two genuinely witty people in it to entertain us.

If you’re new to Twitter or just want to add some truly clever accounts to your follows, here’s a look at a few of the funniest to get you off to the right start. They’re in no particular order. Also, I’ve included many different sports, since I wouldn’t dream of deciding for you what you should think is funny (but these guys are, even if you don’t follow their sport of focus). Give them all a look. See for yourself. I bet you’ll find a few new favorites.

Incidentally, I’ve arbitrarily separated the accounts into Snark, Trash-Talk, and Plain Vanilla Sports Funneh. Obviously, plenty of overlap between the three.

Twitter wants to provide us all with a platform to say whatever we want, and it turns out that what many of us want to say is bad, hurtful, and funny stuff about the other team.

Trash-talking is as old as sports. Perhaps even older, but caveman trash talk didn’t really catch on until there was an audience. So, let’s just assume they were still learning, and fast forward through the centuries of zinging (with some time off during the Dark Ages and maybe the Inquisition).

No, modern-day trash talking didn’t start with social media, of course. The past few decades have seen masters at work, including Muhammed Ali, Larry Bird, and even Ric Flair.

My first nominee, @TrashTalkNFL, has a lot to say, and most of it is sarcasm, but not sarcasm that gets your nose bloodied (or at least I hope not, for his sake).

Starting right off, here’s @TrashTalkNFL zinging the entirety of football fandom with this comment regarding the Saints not making it to this year’s Super Bowl.

Apparently, TrashTalkNFL occasionally steps outside the target-rich world of the NFL to provide similar services to the even target-richer world of the NBA.

Here he is gleefully lampooning Stephen Curry’s failed dunk attempt during the final few seconds of an NBA playoff game between Curry’s Golden State Warriors and the Houston Rockets.

I guess we shouldn’t fault TrashTalkNFL for stepping outside the box, since virtually everybody in the Twitterverse — from @choyb0y (who bills himself as “the black Lebron James” and has 13 followers) to @ESPN (which has a few more followers) — rushed to dogpile Curry in an orgy of schadenfreude.

Snark is tricky to define, but like porn, we all know it when we see it. Snark is typically a quick comment that highlights the unintentional irony of someone else’s comments. The best snark makes us laugh and nod in appreciation and agreement.

The Onion has made a very good living producing faux news stories where even the headlines drip with ironic humor. One of its spin-offs — the Onion Sports Network (@OnionSports) — continues that tradition with vigor.

Here, they take aim at the Houston Rockets’ James Harden, who NBC Sports recently called “a master of drawing 3-point fouls.”

That’s harsh. But then, that’s the Onion. Here’s another.

Okay, that’s just mean. And it’s not even true. How many other sports have to install protective plexiglass to keep fans from being hit by flying pucks, blood, and teeth? You don’t go to a hockey game for the hockey. You go for the story.

If you don’t follow @NotBillWalton, you’re missing out. Now, Bill Walton was an NBA All-Star and a UCLA All-American who became a popular sportscaster for ABC, ESPN, and NBC.

As the nick “NotBillWalton” might suggest, this Twitter account is not Bill Walton. Who it actually is will (and probably should) remain a mystery, but regardless, the guy (and I’m just assuming it’s a guy) is funny. And mean. But mostly funny. Maybe a little mean. Call it 50-50.

He shines best when he’s live-tweeting a sports event. Below are a couple of NotBillWalton tweets commenting on Super Bowl LIII.

He first notes this about Tony Romo, the legendary Dallas Cowboys quarterback who stepped into the announcer’s booth to provide color commentary on this year’s Super Bowl.

About fifteen minutes later, he observes:

If words aren’t enough to bring teh funneh, perhaps images will help. @NFLMemes specializes in snarky words cleverly matched with appropriate (and I use that word advisedly) illustrations.

Here’s one commenting on Patrick Mahomes and an odd curse some believe is associated with the cover art for the Madden NFL video game series.

And here’s one from April 2019 during the NFL draft in Nashville.

@VitalVegas does some great tweets, if you consider gambling a sport (and if you don’t, what part of North Korea are you from?).

Here’s a public service announcement they provided recently to gentlemen visiting Vegas.

You don’t catch many NBA players talking trash these days. A decade ago, the NBA decided to clarify the rules governing social media and vis a vis professional basketball — and all because some player couldn’t wait to trash his opponents during a game.

So, ever since 2009, the NBA has a standing rule that prohibits NBA players from posting on any social media (including Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.) “during the game,” which it defines as starting 45 minutes before the actual tip-off and lasting through to the end of that post-game locker-room period where the media interviews players in their underwear — the players, not the media, although that might be interesting to watch as well.

In any case, while NBA players trash-talking their opponents is hard to find, the fans more than make up for it with parody videos and live-tweeting of games that make every basketball game a multimedia event.

One solid follow is @BleacherReport, which covers virtually every sport known to man, and a few only known to mythological Norwegian folk heroes.

Here’s an animated cartoon (redundant much?) posting they did recently — a clever take on Game of Thrones if it were about NBA basketball.

Bleacher Report actually does quite a few shorts, some animated, some real life (or as real as it gets in professional sports or on Twitter). Amid their game and score info, you can find little asides like this, featuring the Denver Nuggets’ Nikola Jokić.

Football and basketball aren’t the only sports with their class clowns. For instance, just when you thought golf couldn’t get any funnier, along comes @Skratch.

Here, @Skratch posts a gif of Charles Barkley playing (we assume) golf.

Go ahead and laugh. It’s all fun and games until somebody gets eaten by an alligator.

Yes, the alligator, named Tripod for obvious reasons, probably can’t run fast enough to catch you. We’ll never know, though, since no one seems willing to volunteer. Here’s a thought: Tripod didn’t get that big eating vegetables. I’m guessing there are a few ex-golfers in heaven wishing they’d run a few more wind-sprints before their last game.

In any case, alligators aren’t the only hazard one can expect on the links.

More and more, marketing departments are discovering that humor sells (yeah, who knew?). And yes, it’s marketing, but come on — if they’re funneh, they get a pass, right?

Here, Ellis Island Casino (@elliscasinolv) hawks their steak special (be sure to read the entire thread).

Call it football or call it soccer, it attracts its own Oscar Wildes-in-waiting. Sunday League Hipster (@HipsterManager) has something mean to say about everybody and everything. Here he is commenting on the recent erratic playing style exhibited by English football club Tottenham Hotspur striker Fernando Llorente.

Here, Sunday League Hipster comments on the bombastic nature of sports advertising.

Another great follow is Football Funnnies (@FootballFunnnys). (No, that isn’t a typo — they put three Ns in Funnnys). You don’t even have to follow soccer/association football — whatever it is they’re calling it this year — to get the humor (yes, it’s that broad).

Can’t resist one more.

Of course, some of the funniest sports tweets are the one-offs from people who aren’t necessarily famous or employed to be funny. Hard to find (unless you happen to follow some very funny people).

Here’s one from self-described “normal man” Brendan O’Hare, who is funny regularly enough to warrant a follow.

Mr D (@MrDuperouzel) is another unknown who is funny enough often enough to make this list.

Turns out, it is incredibly easy to find sports humor on Twitter. Simply type in the name of your favorite sport in Twitter’s search box and review the results.

Sure, you’re going to get lots of “yay team!” and tweets filled with solid blocks of emojis that you can’t quite make out (which is often for the best, considering the poop emoji Apple felt we all desperately needed in order to fully express ourselves). But you’ll also find gems of teh funneh.

Wish I’d known that when I volunteered for this assignment.