The best way to keep you head above water in terms of Timbers news, rumors, and sundry related topics is to religiously reload threads on Talk Timbers, aka the Soccer City USA Message Board.
But if you’ve been following the board for a while, you may have noticed the wrong side of the signal to noise ratio is getting higher and higher, and becoming a barrier to actually extracting anything useful or interesting from the discussions.
I’m here to help.
Below you’ll find my tried and true tips and recommendations for staying on top of Timbers news:
The Timber Mill remains the best source for Timbers schedule information, team and player statistics, and historical data. Allison Andrews, the site creator and owner, also produces some of the best match recaps, and photo galleries.
Despite the extra effort required, you’ll still want to bookmark your favorite sections and threads at Talk Timbers, and occasionally load the most recent posts. Tip: use the following link to get the 25 most recent comments (but don’t reload too often; you don’t want to overload the server!): http://www.soccercityusa.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?action=recent;display=25
Community and Social Networking
Join the 107 Independent Supporters’ Trust, aka 107ist.
Stay informed about Timbers fan activities and news with The Timbers Army. Join the Timbers Army Facebook group, and follow @TimbersArmy on Twitter (and check out the associated lists for other Timbers twitterers).
The Blogs
I recommend visiting these blogs daily:
Portland Timbers USL Blog at The Offside
Portland Timbers at Oregonlive
Dropping Timber Twitter: DroppingTimber
And check Dave Knows Portland every Tuesday and Friday for the Tuesday Timbers Tidbits and the Portland Timbers Roundup, respectively, wherein I aggregate much of the recent Timbers news and info from the above blogs and more. I read all the blogs and set up Timbers google alerts and organize the results so you don’t have to!
The News
OregonLive.com can be difficult to navigate. Fortunately the editors aggregate all the Oregonian Timbers articles and OregonLive Timbers Blog entries on this page: www.oregonlive.com/Timbers
At 95.5 The Game, scroll to the bottom of the Strong At Night page to find The Strong Blog, which features plenty of Timbers content.
The official organ of the organization: PortlandTimbers.com is the best source for player news.
As far as local television station websites go, only KPTV seems to be aware of the existence of the Timbers. Find their stories here: www.kptv.com/Timbers/
The Timbers coverage at other TV stations, The Columbian, Portland Tribune, and the alt weeklies is sparse to nonexistent; if you’re looking for Timbers news, they aren’t worth checking daily (though this may change as the season gets under way and MLS approaches in 2011). If these news sources do publish something worthwhile, you’ll probably hear about it through the other resources listed here.
Thanks for the link to the O-Live world. The site you mentioned (oregonlive.com/timbers) is the best launching point for all Timbers content there, either articles that the newspaper does or the blog entries that Rick and I complete. RCTID!!
Dave – where can I get a couple of Timbers scarves?!
Kip – No problemo. You’re turning out good stuff on O-Live!
Christian – I recommend making it to the tailgates pre-game (weekend games) over in the parking lot on 18th between Salmon and Taylor. Ask around there. Or pre-weekday games at The Bitter End (20th and Burnside). Also check out Talk Timbers, this thread: http://www.soccercityusa.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?board=merch