GENERAL


It’s Official: Sports Makes You eh … Cross The Street Better

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL on 03-23-11    No Comments


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via corbis images

Personally running away from the bigger kids made me a better street crosser.  Not playing stick ball. But it looks like I was a wierdo.

Sports is the thing you want to do if you want to get from one side of the road to the other.

The folks over at Medicine & Science in Sports and Excersize, the journal of the American College of Sports Medicine, recently reported that athletes really do do better at every day tasks. They tested street crossing as an example and found jocks got across the street faster, were less likey to get smacked by cars and otherwise had a more zen street crossing experience than the average geek. Which I guess formally explains why Micheal, LeBron, Kobe, the Babe and the Mick did not get killed in car crashes.

The study said nothing about being a womanizer, jerk, or drunk. Which it seems athletes to do pretty well at as well.




Does Your Little Leaguer Have The Right Genetics?

Posted by Alex Dalenberg in GENERAL on 03-10-11    No Comments


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via topnews.net.nz

via topnews.net.nz

Here’s a spooky story via The Associated Press, straight out of the brave new world of youth sports: Companies are offering genetics tests to parents which promise to tell whether a child has the inborn potential to become a world-class athlete.

Companies like Atlas Sports Genetics are selling home testing kits for genes such as the ATCN3 gene, a variant of which has been linked to the explosive bursts of strength needed for activities like sprinting and weight lifting Another provides a predisposition toward endurance sports.

Of course, the fact that these kinds of tests aren’t regulated by the FDA leaves the door open for all manner of quackery. There’s obviously a lot that genetics can tell us about athletic ability, but the given the skepticism expressed by many experts in this field, I think  it’s still an open book whether $169 for a cheek swab test can tell anybody anything about a child’s athletic destiny. It’s just not that simple.  Also, not to be a Luddite or anything, but there’s a lot more to sport than raw potential. The world’s greatest athletes are also notorious practice hounds: think Michael Jordan or any Olympic athlete. It seems like this sort of thing only feeds into the worst instincts of the über sports parent.




Help Us Give Away This Cool Internet Radio

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL on 03-10-11    1 Comment


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One of the dumbest things about being in the technology media business is that  electronics show up in our shop to be tested. But when we are done with them, we try to return them to the maker. And try. And try. And try some more. But for many reasons we can’t give em back. We can’t keep ‘em because that’s unethical. And giving electronics away is  much tougher than it sounds. Finding a legit charity is not easy. And then there are the logistics of giving these items away, shipping  and otherwise finding a good home for our unloved gadgets.

That is where you come in.

We will donate this really cool Livio Internet radio to the charity of choice of the person who helps the most to give it way. How do you help?  Comment here. Tweet about it. And mention it on your Facebook page.

It’s that simple. Sound cool?




The MBAs Are Coming For Our Sports

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL on 03-06-11    No Comments


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The dreaded MBA is trying to elbow its way into the sports business.

MIT had its annual sports geek confab over the weekend: The MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. This thing, which really was strictly geeks-only until last year, has suddenly become an important event in the sports industry.

The conference  fills two days and has everything from deep research papers to panel discussions on improving drafts and managing in-game tactics. Former Jets and Browns coach Eric Mangini and former Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy were on hand.

But there was a dark side to the event:  MIT clearly has an agenda here. Like many other profit-starved universities, it is trying to push its degree program, so it can charge money to train sports management professionals. If three decades of writing about  professional managers who come from these molds has taught me one thing it’s this: The traditional Masters of Business approach is probably the single greatest value destruction engine since small pox came to the new world.

MBA-trained executives now preside over a business environment where 80 percent of all start-ups fail and our economy is stuck in what will probably be a 10-year period of 10 percent unemployment. Meanwhile our formally trained, degree-holding managers and business leaders routinely enter into dubious, unethical and flatly illegal processes.

Everything from the collapse of the digital economy, the Internet boom and bust, the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and the destruction of the information-based economy was managed by those with degrees from MIT, Harvard, Yale, and the rest.

And now these MBA chuckleheads are angling for sports jobs? Like they’ve not done enough damage?




Sports Analysis Steps Into The Digital Slum

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL on 03-06-11    2 Comments


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Capture 1Maybe the jocks were smart to keep geeks at arms lengths. Let nerds too close to sports and  things just get screwed up.

One of the most dangerous trends in sports filtered out of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, which took place over the  weekend. What we’re talking about here is the new generation of scholarly research papers released at the event.

We all love Sabermetrics. Who doesn’t dream of reinventing baseball simply by looking at statistics? But the fact is that the early low-hanging analytical fruit is most definitely gone. Today, meaningful sports insight using statistical analysis is much, much more difficult.

But today’s sports analysts aren’t respecting how tough the stat game is. The villains here are the same as they are in business and economics, powerful analytic tools like digital data sets, video tools and the desire by universities to charge top dollar to research students who need jobs.

Just look the papers proffered at this year’s MIT event: DIGR: A defense independent rating of NHL Goaltenders using spatially smoothed save percentage maps. Or how about this one: Moral Hazard in Long-Term Guaranteed Contracts.

But one paper  jumped out and really showed the risks with this sort of stuff: Allocation and Dynamic Efficiency in NBA Decision Making, by Matt Goldman at U.C. San Diego and Justin M. Rao at the Yahoo Research Lab.

What these guys did seems interesting enough. They looked at four years worth of NBA shooting statistics and figured out if the shooters took the right amount of shots. The model was the usual mix of statistical formulas, mostly riffs on things like Maximum Likelihood Estimation. What they found was that higher-paid players undershoot rather than overshoot.  Good for you Matt and Justin!

Where these nerds go wrong is when they start speculating on why. They say the LeBron James of the world shoot less in order to save their energy, feature other players and stay healthy. All are interesting ideas. But just because mathematics is behind this insight doesn’t make it any more insightful than than somebody watching LeBron pass the ball too much.

The geek and the wider sports fan really play in a level analytic field. But these research geeks can’t admit that, and that is where the trouble begins. Since the researcher feels that his idea actually deserves respect in the real world, he drives team executives to make decisions based on these models and not on real life.

And just like that, the sports world becomes like the real world: filled with too much data and not enough real results.




TV Still Rules March Madness

Posted by Alex Dalenberg in GENERAL on 03-03-11    No Comments


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2010mmodlogo

via cbssports.com

The NCAA Tournament is expanding this year and so is the broadcasting. Not only do we get three extra games this year, but thanks to a deal between CBS and Turner Sports, with a little bit of channel surfing you’ll be able to watch every minute of every game the old-fashioned way — on television.

That’s right, for the first time ever CBS is splitting up game coverage four ways, with CBS, TNT, TBS and newcomer truTV broadcasting every game nationally between them. The games will have staggered start times, so instead of waiting for CBS to cut away to the endings of competitive games, you’ll be able to watch the ending of every game for yourself (if you can figure out which channel truTV is on, that is).

This makes a lot of sense for the television guys, Adweek reports that March Madness is second only to the NFL playoffs and the Super Bowl for advertising revenues, but where does this leave the web?

In the dust. The same Adweek article shows that CBS’ streaming services March Madness On Demand pulled in huge Web traffic, but only about 6 percent of the total ad revenue. As is so often the case, as far as the almighty dollar is concerned, traditional media is still king when it comes to sports.

Funny that the web can’t even support the early-round games, which are logical choices to be streamed online only. But the traffic and the ratings for these major events are such that no network is going to surrender that revenue to the Internet, even if it means sticking it on a deep cable channel like truTV. Basketball junkies and office drones can tune in from the net at work, but I don’t see the streaming service as being anything but ancillary to the main event as long as these companies are willing to suck this content away from being online-only. Used to be the web was your only option for getting every game, now it’s not.

TV beating out the Internet, what’dya know?




The New Jersey Devils Are Hunting For Nerds

Posted by Dan in GENERAL on 03-02-11    No Comments


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nerdsAre you one of the small subset of IT students who also love hockey?  Are you also part of the even smaller subset of this Venn diagram that live in the Tri-State area? Do you know what a Venn diagram is?

Anyway the NJ Devils are looking to some interns to bolster their tech department over there at the Prudential Center in Newark but unlike Deron Williams you have to want to be there. The job consists of some networking and telecom stuff, desktop support, and a few shifts as a 4th line defenseman.

So if you can check code — and forecheck — this job is for you.




The Smart Shirt Goes Mainstream at the NFL Combine

Posted by Alex Dalenberg in GENERAL on 02-28-11    No Comments


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TN-38383_E39_layersThe folks over at NFL.com seem pretty geeked over the biometric tee shirt that Under Armour debuted at the NFL Combine over the weekend.

Can’t say I blame them. It’s cool technology. The smart shirt measures heart and breathing rate, skin surface temperature and also force and direction, giving scouts another tool to break down prospects to the most micro levels of athletic performance and trainers a treasure trove of data with which to improve that performance.

As we’ve said before, you’re only going to see more of this stuff. Smart jerseys and smart balls and smart shoes and all manner of gizmos that can record and crunch data that goes beyond obvious stats like receptions and tackles are going to make sports more an exact science than an art form. The jocks’ future belongs to the nerds.

And they love it.

“The guys who are training with it are just enthralled with the ability to turn just around and look at how many G-forces they’ve generated,” Kevin Haley, a VP at Under Amour, told NFL.com.

Wait till they add apps to those babies.

What’s kind of funny about the headline on NFL.com is the inference that this kind of tech is new: “Technology in a T-Shirt? Only in pro sports”

Not exactly. Here’s a heart-monitoring sports bra that’s been around since 2006. The same company, NuMetrex, also has a cardio shirt and tanktop. And its parent company, Textronics, isn’t just limited to sports training. They’ve also got biometric wear for fire fighters and military personnel and medical patients.

Some students at Northeastern have also been using their own biometric shirt to measure pitching mechanics.

So, for the tech-minded fitness freak, and others, this kind of thing has been out there. Now that the NFL has ‘discovered’ the smart shirt for middle America, how long before you can buy something like this from the Under Armour website? My guess is you can have technology in a T-shirt sooner than later.

Think of it — the iJersey.




FIFA Sets High Bar For Goal-Line Technology

Posted by Seth in EQUIPMENT, GENERAL, STADIUM on 02-24-11    No Comments


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So stodgy old FIFA finally decided to act like it wanted to embrace modern technology. Act is the operative word here.

Soccer’s governing body is apparently taking a look at goal-line sensor technology that would help determine whether the ball crossed the line or not. They had a dog and pony show last week in Zurich where 10 companies had the chance the show the FIFA muckety-mucks what they could do. But if you read between the lines of a report in England’s Guardian, the whole thing was a sham.

First of all, one of the major players in this field, Hawk-Eye Innovations, declined to participate because they didn’t care for the conditions of the test. But regardless of the circumstances, there is one key problem that leads you to believe FIFA isn’t too serious about adopting goal-line technology: They want any system they put into use to deliver a verdict to the referees that is 100 percent accurate in 1 second.

One tick. One-one-thousand. Goal or no goal? Anybody else think that’s a ridiculous expectation?

It takes time to look at the video and see if the ball got all the way across the line. Not a lot of time. But longer than one second. FIFA should talk to the folks in the NHL’s War Room in Toronto, where they monitor goal/no-goal situations every night. It doesn’t have to be as hard as FIFA is making it.

At this point, the smart money says FIFA will add a goal judge behind each net before they put in goal-line technology. When the game clock starts counting down instead of up, then we’ll start looking for soccer to seek out techno solutions.




NFL Combine: Brings Your Hat, Gloves And iPod

Posted by Jonathan in GENERAL on 02-24-11    No Comments


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Forget Carmelo Anthony coming to the New York Knicks, the NFL Scouting Combine is the story of the moment.

And leave it to the nutty Internet to come up with both the most fascinating — and stupidest — information possible about the event.

This is one of the few NFL properties that the NFL does not directly wrap into NFL.com. Instead there’s NFLCombine.net.

The site, managed by National Football Scouting, is the information service for those attending the combine. And for these few days it is jam-packed with nuggets of what it takes to get a job in the NFL.

  • Know Everyone’s Nicknames: NFLCombine.net does a nice job of putting up an official invite list. And there, after name, school, and position, is a column called “Goes By.” And here you can learn that Olufemi Ajiboye from South Carolina goes by the tag “Ladi,”  Quintorris Jones out of Alabama goes by “Julio,” And Lazarius Levingston  goes by “Pep.” Hey, what else do you need to know?
  • What to wear: In the FAQ there is a simply marvelous tidbit on what players should bring to the combine. Though workout gear will be provided, it is suggested that you bring a sweatsuit, warm jacket, gloves and hat. Also you might want to bring an mp3 player, iPod or book to kill time between drills.
  • Honing your interview skills. But the most interesting nugget is deep inside the history page. Here is a note that running drills and showing your lateral motion is only part of what is expected. Each player is subjected to a series of interviews and exams. One of them, of course, is the famous Wonderlic test, the exam all NFL players must take. What month does it snow the most in the Southern Hemisphere, is about as tricky as it gets. The GMAT it is not.

Still, if you are looking to impress the new boss, and that boss works for the NFL, this is what you need to know.