Report: USA Today handicapper Danny Sheridan bought thousands of Twitter followers

"[USA Today handicapper Danny] Sheridan has resorted to the latest online spam tactic: buying Twitter followers. See, Sheridan had a reasonable following on Twitter. He joined Twitter in July 2011 and, after 10 months, he had accumulated approximately 11,000 followers. Not bad. But then something happened.

Sheridan’s follower count skyrocketed from 11,000 to nearly 200,000 in just 8 weeks. And then, in the following 2 weeks, he tacked on another 120,000 followers to bring his total follower count to 333,900. Now, this meteoric rise in Danny Sheridan’s popularity is hard to explain (see graph below). After all, the guy has been writing for USA Today for ages so why, suddenly, did Sheridan become such a big hit on Twitter?

Did he start dating Kim Kardashian? Nope.

Did Justin Bieber name Sheridan his favorite Captain Kangaroo look-alike? Nope.

Sheridan’s surging popularity has nothing to do with Bieber or Kardashian. It has everything to do with dollars and cents. See, Sheridan bought Twitter followers. Or whoever runs his account bought Twitter followers. And yes, you can buy Twitter followers. And yes, it’s pretty cheap to do so."​

Danny Sheridan, a sports analyst and handicapper for more than 25 years, including with USA TODAY, denied Tuesday a report that said he bought followers on Twitter.

WagerMinds.com, a sports betting Website, reported that Sheridan, who has more than 350,000 Twitter followers, bought thousands of them, at a cost of $297 per 50,000, and listed "spambots," which are just numbers, not names.

However, a review of Sheridan's followers could find no such spambots.

"I have never, ever spent a penny to buy followers on Twitter," Sheridan said by phone Tuesday.​