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Mashable
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Bluesky knows ball.
Knowing ball is to be honored, though Bluesky being a repository of ball knowers might be surprising. But it's important to acknowledge that as we prepare for the NFL regular season, which kicks off this week. The powerful people running the NFL, by and large, lean conservative. And Bluesky, by and large, grew popular as a left-leaning alternative for folks disenchanted with X's rightwing lurch under Elon Musk.
And yet, Bluesky knows ball. So...how?
Why NFL Bluesky became a thing
The short answer: Mina Kimes. OK not really, but also kinda really. There are few people, if any, in NFL media circles more powerful and respected than Kimes. She straddles a few different worlds β a highly paid analyst on ESPN, a film-driven tape nerd, an NFL podcast host, and a Very Online ball-knower who makes jokes about the game. That's the kind of resume that can get lots of NFL folks to migrate to Bluesky and Kimes seemingly took that job seriously. She had a whole thread of all the folks she recruited to the app.
Of course she wasn't the only person doing so, but Kimes publicly cajoled NFL writers, talking heads, and others of that ilk over to Bluesky in 2024 β a popular time for people to leave X β and used her platform to announce their presence and boost followers. And importantly, she created and posted a starter pack for NFL fans looking to build a follow list.
That post got picked up by popular NFL subreddits β a giant source of web traffic β which then helped build a real community. It's difficult to migrate community, but with a little elbow grease...it was pretty much there.
It is a gross oversimplification to put this all on Kimes, obviously. But you need the presence and regular posting of big names to legitimize a platform. It certainly helped that folks like Kimes and a large portion of the NFL writers at popular sports sites like The Ringer made Bluesky home. And last season it felt like Bluesky hit terminal velocity, where enough people joined that you could fully exit to the site for football content. And with the migration of the professionals, the shitposters naturally came along, too. Because that's where the discussion was happening. There is genuine, easy-to-find, fun NFL talk on Bluesky with minimal interruptions from, say, weird ads or angry reply guys you might find on X.
But that's not to say the NFL experience on Bluesky is perfect. Adam Schefter, the league's premier newsbreaker, isn't on the site. In reality, that just means the news gets to Bluesky some 30 seconds after X or a live break on ESPN's airwaves. And for a period, NFL teams were actually barred from posting on Bluesky, though that prohibition appears to be over, as recent posts from the world champion Philadelphia Eagles would seem to show. (Go Birds.)
The most notable issue, however, is that there are fewer clips of games and film study posted to Bluesky. The league and its broadcast partners post to other platforms, but analysts and clip accounts have begun to migrate to Bluesky. Far more analysts have posted film breakdowns this offseason on Bluesky than previously, for instance, and we'll have to see what the clip ecosystem looks like upon kickoff this week. But that is a big drawback.
But if its main competition is X, Bluesky does have a leg-up in some areas β Elon Musk's site recently has proven unreliable for NFL fans. The site crashed the morning free agency launched, which is one of the most important days for NFL social media. And the sports tab β which used to be an easy, fun way to follow games in the Twitter days β degraded into near uselessness years ago. And, in general, X has morphed with Musk's image, which is focused more on AI and politics β not things like following football. Of course you can still follow the NFL on X, but it does involve wading through more junk than it used to. Bluesky offers an interesting alternative in that regard.
How to join NFL Bluesky
Joining NFL Bluesky isn't difficult. If you don't have a Bluesky account, you'll need one. Luckily, we have a handy guide for signing up and getting started on the site.
From there, you'll want to follow NFL-focused accounts. Bluesky has a handy feature called starter packs, which allows you to mass follow curated lists per your interests. Kimes' starter pack is sort-of the NFL gold standard. You can either go through and select your follows from her suggestions or just hit follow all. The pack is also a living document that Kimes said she'll update and edit before the 2025 season.
Hello twitter emigres! If you are here, poking around, a bit confusedβa lot of the football folks you know are already on this app! Smash the subscribe button on this starter pack and youβll instantly have a timelinego.bsky.app/8RH6KbH
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β Mina Kimes (@minakimes.bsky.social) May 24, 2025 at 10:38 AM
Mashable has also listed a number of the best NFL draft analysts on Bluesky, which you can find and follow in our article on the '25 draft. Once you curate your feed, I'd suggest sticking to the "following" tab rather than get inundated with random posts under the "discover" section.
Hopefully, with time, your feed will be filled with the dumbest, funniest, and most insightful stuff you'll find about the NFL. In other words...it's just posting, the same as it ever was.
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