I promote a gambling company, I visit these mega threads and I know the rate of spam happening there. However, there are still good and quality posters there.
I do not have such time to moderate a thread but I also do not think that creating a thread and self moderating it will help curtail spam. It will only make spammers avoid the self moderated thread. The best option remains to report to a moderator.
It takes one who understands the sport to be able to distinguish between garbage posts and quality posts in these football threads. Like I said in my previous post, many spammers have been caught on JollyGood’s self moderated thread. I don’t know how he combs through all the comments to vet the trash out, all I know is that he’s very interested in football and is also passionate in busting spammers. That’s one hell of a combo.
I don't know how you view it and the hell of combo you are talking about. Discussing sports is one thing, hunting spammers is another thing. There's no joy in tagging those helpless and vulnerable accounts for silly reasons. I have seen a user who genuinely finds spammers and neutral tag them, I cannot remember his username but I think some managers do not accept anyone tagged by that user for spamming sake. He does that without creating duplicate threads or tagging people for silly and controversial reasons.
Always report to the moderators, that's how it ought to be.