Putting the VZ Into the NFL: Verizon To Carry NFL Network

Posted by Jonathan in MOBILE on 03-09-10    No Comments


The NFL continues to lock up mobile subscribers.

The League ( and that’s not a typo, the NFL really has become “The League;” capital T, capital L) said today that Verizon will be carrying part of its NFL Network feed its 68 million or so subscribers — or an audience about 90 precent of the entire cable universe. Not bad.

The four year deal is valued at $720 million, or a little over $10 a sub, or about $2.5 a year per sub. Keep in mind that cable companies pay $3.50 a sub for ESPN’s content.

Verizon will be pumping a full slate of NFL Network stuff through its cell system. Including coverage of the draft, the Sunday Night game, the RedZone and lots more. And I think it is definitely worth a test drive: I have been impressed with Sprint’s riff on NFL content.

Basically, this is a good deal for everybody. Verizon is smart to lock down a long term deal with the NFL now. Since the price of sports content will  only skyrocket. The NCAA’s  Basketball deal is coming due soon, which will almost certainly set a new record. Comcast now has NBC and is big into regional sports networks. So they are a new player. And don’t forget the   new slate of digital content operations looking for content. Apple will need something compelling to sell on iPads. As does Google. They even violated its “never pay for anything” rule by carrying cricket on YouTube.

The NFL in turn gets to broaden its mobile reach while still getting paid. Imagine what poor AT&T and TMobile will wind up paying with a few years of traffic data under its belt.

Really makes the whole ABC/Cablevision spat look like small potatoes.



Tecmo Bowl is coming back!!!

Posted by Dan in GAMING on 03-08-10    No Comments


tecmo-bowl-throwbackTecmo Koei America has just announced that they are bringing back SNES favorite Super Tecmo Bowl and calling it Tecmo Bowl Throwback.   The game will have a new 3D mode or you can play in old school 2D mode.  This version will have online multi-player mode and a national leader board.  Look for it on Xbox Live  Arcade and the Playstation network this spring.  I wonder who will take up the reins as the games’ unstoppable character, Bo Jackson in Tecmo Bowl had to be the most powerful video game character ever.



Do Steroids Work Because We Think They Work?

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL on 03-07-10    No Comments


How awful would it be if Mark McGuire, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez and every other doper and juicer had gone to all that trouble for nada?

Well, that might just be the case.

I’ve been digging around in the dusty ole performance enhancing drug world trying to get a handle on this human growth hormone nonsense. As I’ve been moaning about for some time, there really isn’t much “there” there when it comes to information about HGH.

And I came across a 2009 study. Done by Falk Eippert at The University Medical Center in Hamburg, the research used sophisticated imaging technology to show that pain was actively reduced by nothing more than a placebo. The test imaged the cerebral centers of subjects with mild burns who were given a fake pain reducing ointment. The sham goop worked just as well as something called naloxone, which actively blocked nerve receptors. This study was widely quoted at the time: it was clear the power of mere suggestion can help those with active burns help themselves.

With this kind of evidence, how big a stretch is it that high power athletes can recover faster, grow larger and hit further simply because they believe they can. And how interesting would it be to de-cloak the shady world of performance enhancing drugs to actually study this question. We really still don’t know if drugs really do enhance performance, or just give us the will to think they do.

As the great Zen Master Yogi Berra said, “Ninety percent of this game is half mental.”



Floating On Thunder Road: Drag Boats On Fire

Posted by Jonathan in EQUIPMENT on 03-06-10    No Comments


With college basketball not really compelling yet, and not much else on, I gotta say, for shear sports tech love these days it’s tough to beat drag boats.  This weekend, The Speed Channel ran the finals of the Lucas Oil Drag Boat Racing series. There was some decent coverage of the so-called Top Fuel Hydro drag boats, which raced earlier this year at the Firebird Raceway in Chandler, Arizona,

No doubt, these are some serious pieces of hardware: Top Fuel Hydros are 19 feet long, 93 inches wide, and weigh about 3,200 lbs. with driver and fuel. Props turn at a simply insane 28,000 rpm. 3,000 is really fast for most normal power boats. And features a legit General Dynamics F-16 cockpit windshield to stand the strain, water spray and pure speed.

These suckers can get up near 260 MPH. On the water. Wooh!

The cool part is these boats are un-restricted racers, with no wind tunnel testing or advanced R&D budgets. So basically if a racer wants to put a 6,000 HP engine in one of these bad boys, and see what happens they can. Never mind that Top Fuels regularly get airborne, flip over, catch on fire or otherwise fall apart. You wanna go fast. You go fast. What happens is up to you.

And that is what racing, and sports really, is  all about. Got to LOVE that.



Super Padded Batting Gloves Means More Batters Taking More Free Bases

Posted by Jonathan in EQUIPMENT on 03-05-10    No Comments


Here’s a major rules snafu in the waiting for Major League Baseball: A batting glove that claims to reduce the impact of a 100 MPH fireball down to a 40 MPH batting practice ball.

A company called ProTeX announced today that it is shipping a full line of custom right or left handed batting gloves that offer unheard of levels of protection to batter’s hands and wrists. Though the company’s products appear to be just padded versions of the classic batting glove, some pretty darn slick technology is built in. Called Advanced Impact Composites, the yellow areas on the left are a mix of rigid polymers and flexible pads which absorb the impact of the ball, similar to say, how motorcycle jackets and logging pants work.

Now, clearly many at-bats remain to see if these gloves can protect batters. But if the ProTex gloves can help a major league hitter even a little bit, batters will fear pitches less, crowd the plate bit more, and be more aggressive at the plate.

And at just $80, not only the major leagues, but the little leagues are going to find out how effective the ProTeX is.