Does linking to your sitemap help SEO?

Ok, so obviously I know the importance of having a sitemap and linking to it from your own website. That is not my question at all. No my question is much more complex and intriguing.

But first...

A little back story to my question

I was doing some competitive link analysis for a client and found that one of their competitors was building links to their sitemap.xml file. This lead me to start to ask a few questions...

Having a link to your sitemap would ensure Google crawls your...

Does linking to your sitemap help SEO? WordPress ...