Oakland’s ‘Detroit Sports Twitter’ representative

Dombrowski+with+Detroit+Tigers+all-star+Miguel+Cabrera

Courtesy of Tony Dombrowski

Dombrowski with Detroit Tigers all-star Miguel Cabrera

Since Twitter was created in 2006, 126 million people continue to use it as a part of their daily lives. It is almost impossible to predict what the inaugural users of Twitter saw for the future of the platform, but it is easy to assume they would not have expected the camaraderie formed by “Detroit Sports Twitter.”

There is not an official representative of the Twitter community surrounding Detroit sports, but if voting for a representative began today, Oakland University junior Tony Dombrowski would be high in the polls.

Dombrowski has been covering Detroit sports since 2017, his freshman year at Oakland. Since, his Twitter (@tonydombrowski), has amassed over 4,100 followers while spreading enough to reach the players he covers, including Michigan basketball player Luke Wilson.

“Luke Wilson reached out to me,” Dombrowski said, “to let me know ‘a lot of people go to Twitter after games to see what I have to say.’”

Dombrowski also recognizes that being the first time he noticed a genuine following.

“It never crossed my mind until then,” he said. “It was really the first time I sat back and realized that people really do care about my opinion on my ‘trash’ teams.”

Dombrowski rides the highs and lows of Detroit sports with the rest of the Detroit sports fans, and produces recap videos of the games he has watched, including all 162 Detroit Tigers games. His work on Twitter helped land him an internship in the sports department of FOX2.

Dombrowski recognizes the roller coaster of emotions Detroit sports fans go through, and he appreciates having a community to ride with him.

“The best part of Detroit sports Twitter is the interaction,” he said. “During every season, there’s an entire group of people talking about and reacting to what’s going on. And I think that’s really cool.”

It has also gotten to a point where people around Detroit recognize him from his videos alone, establishing himself as a local celebrity. Dombrowski loves interacting with people who recognize him on the street.

“Whenever I meet people, I always appreciate the moment,” Dombrowski said. “During a Lions game in 2017, one of my followers, Ben Cadoret, came up to me after the game and I still remember the conversation we had. It meant so much to me at the time.”

Detroit sports Twitter is a wild, wild world. There are opinions and takes wilder than one could imagine, and without a solid guide one could find themselves deep in some “Jeff Driskel > Matthew Stafford” takes, and that is somewhere no one wants to be. Let Dombrowski be your guide as you try to survive until the Lions win the Super Bowl.