Halftime (I)

Can you believe that one-half of 2009 has already passed by?

In some sports depots around the country, this year can’t end soon enough (talking to you, Detroit and Washington DC, despite your successful NHL teams). In others, the fun shouldn’t stop (the state of Pennsylvania and the city of Los Angeles). However, as we move into the second half of the year, there are six more months for a city/town to experience nirvana. There are also six more months for a city/town to discover sports’ version of The Ninth Circle.

You will undoubtedly read, listen to and watch a plethora of previews, mock fantasy drafts and ‘fearless’ predictions as all of the inactive leagues return this fall. If you’re fortunate to have a team in the active sports still in a playoff chase, you’ll certainly get swept up in the push for the postseason and beyond. However, between today and tomorrow, here are a few stories that you should keep an eye on as summer cools into fall and fall freezes into winter.

Today will be a general look at the sports industry while tomorrow will take on specific games.


“You know? I could do without the senior prom.”: For starters, there has been much made in recent weeks about gifted young athletes (and their families) trying to capitalize on their talents sooner than American society has traditionally expected them. Those of us who have followed sports long enough are certainly aware that leaving college early or forgoing it entirely is nothing new. However, there are players who are forgoing their senior years in high school because they feel that there’s not much left to accomplish at that level.

Bryce Harper and Jeremy Tyler are going to grab those GEDs and take faster tracks to their lofty professional goals. The ultimate senioritis, if you will. This has the “get your education” crowd up in arms because as opposed to dealing with athletes who rather pass on being essentially rented by colleges, now they have to contend with those see little opportunity to mature against players they routinely dominate.

While the next six months are far too short of a time to answer these questions, hopefully, we can finally ask what our country seems to avoid; Why is it such a problem for kids with NBA dreams – or truthfully, American kids – to take a different path where prodigies of nearly every other sport save football can get a leg up on their pro careers without a college degree? Will Harper, Tyler and many others who will follow be better players for the extra year they are giving themselves? Most of all, is it time to redefine, if not eradicate amateurism as we know it?



“Recession-proof? Yeah, right.”: There is this long-held belief that both sports and alcohol are recession-proof industries as the consumer demand is supposed to be so strong and insatiable that it will buoy both business through the tough times. Yet, you can’t change the channel or read something online without noticing beer ad after beer ad after hard liquor ad during programming that historically strayed from those spots.

Not too long ago on Scribe (via Advertising Age), you may have read about NBA teams taking advantage of relaxed rules about liquor ads in stadiums and team paraphernalia. MLB and the NFL have a longstanding relationship with the liquid courage producers – you can even say that those leagues were founded on them – but they have given those companies more opportunities to advertise. Even ESPN has taken to adding more hard liquor companies to sponsor and integrate their products into their shows and broadcasts.

This may reek of desperation or speak to a well-designed strategy, but with so many media and entertainment vehicles hitting them up for money, is when will the alcohol well run dry? Also, with the controversial, but effective means of PETA in terms of the Michael Vick scandal, should we expect organizations like MADD and the NCADD to pressure the NFL in light of Donte’ Stallworth’s vehicular manslaughter?




“Geez, did he really say that?”: A few weeks ago, you read about a rich-media application currently being used by the New England Patriots to keep fans abreast of their comings and goings. This came about because of a previous discussion on social media as the NFL used fake MySpace and Facebook profiles as part of background checks on draft prospects. Now as players, coaches, even teams and commissioners are gravitating to Twitter, there has been plenty of news about what’s being said on the micro-blogging service. Unfortunately, it’s not always for the right reasons.

Social media – more specifically, Twitter – is something that we are still trying to understand, if not, master. As Yahoo!’s Charles Robinson points out, there are some pros and cons of these figures being able to use 140 characters to speak their minds without a middle man (which isn’t all that bad, despite the access I have through the Beacon). Within the last few days, we’ve read a Twitter war of words between the Cincinnati Bengals’ Chad Ochocinco and Shawne Merriman of the San Diego Chargers, we found that Dwayne Wade may not be getting a NAACP Image Award any time soon (a screen cap of an n-word laden tweet was removed) and Charlie Villenueva may be a free agent because of his Tweets… okay, so maybe not the last one.

Some of you probably have your own accounts to follow your friends and family, favorite athletes and entertainers, media figures and bloggers. Because of that, I must ask the all-important question: is this only the beginning thanks to its increased use from our stars or has Twitter jumped the shark?

And if you’re wondering, Facebook is just enough for me and Scribe.

Say What?!?!: It’s been quite a while since you’ve been treated to a video. While it’s not going to be the most anticipated video posted on this blog (from the new Yankee Stadium), I hope you enjoy what’s to come tomorrow night/Thursday morning.

Social (III)

Note: Been having some issues with uploading photos over the last day or so (hopefully, it's more of a Blogger issue than a PC issue). So this post jumps the line of drafts. However, as there is more correspondence in what I personally believe is an intriguing and exciting topic in the sports world, there will be further updates to this particular post as well as the Social series.

After discussing and posting the press release about the New England Patriots' latest online venture, I was able to get in contact with Jim Munz, Product Manager of the OView platform at Optaros, about the Calendar Application that was released just a couple of weeks ago.  Questions are and will continue to be abound for sure, but this response speaks to the importance of protecting the Patriots brand while dealing with the social media realm. Please feel free to leave some as comments or email them to asportsscribe@gmail.com.

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Scribe: According to the quote from Fred Kirsch (director of interactive media at Patriots.com), protecting the Patriots brand is of the utmost order, not only for the franchise, but for a league that safeguards its image to the most minute detail. For the readers who may come upon this post that are not as familiar/aware of the business side of the NFL, could you elaborate some on this? What was the process in choosing the right tech partners and what was the reluctance in the past (if any) to come up with this application?

Pror to this news, I had discussed how sports leagues are starting to bring social media into their marketing fold with varying degrees of success and effort. I have always been surprised that the NFL, which is the country's most popular league, has been rather... should I say slow?... in adopting Facebook, MySpace and others as a part of their outreach with fans.

Munz: As you point out these sports franchises have been slow to adopt social tools such as Facebook, MySpace, (etc.) Part of the reason I believe that this is taking place is that in order to work within these spaces you need to provide something of value, in the case of the Patriots that is information, media, (etc.) around the Patriots to their fans. This works well for the fan when they do this because it provides another means to interact with the brand. A challenge is how do allow this out their and establish interactions around it with the fan base, without having people out on all of the sites where it lives 24/7.

The starting point here is with the Patriots Calendar App since it allows delivery across fan site, Facebook, and Patriots.com while at the same time providing the Patriots with a way to centrally manage this experience so they can maintain control of updating this information when it changes.

The Patriots are more progressive than most in this regards, they know they need to be out there doing these type of interactions on the social sites with their fans. But managing that without a tool to support them is difficult given the quick pace of the media schedule around the team.

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Many thanks again to the people at Optaros for the news and correspondence and I'm looking forward to contuing the conversation of social media and sports for all interested.

Social (II)

A big 'whoops' on my part for this one.

On occasion, I receive press releases about happenings in the sports media world. I don't post them here for two reasons; 1) Fang's Bites has that well-covered for us and 2) releases are sent to me because of work with other publications instead of Scribe, so I don't want to ruffle feathers by posting some without their awareness of this blog. However, through a friend of Scribe (and further back), this johnny-come-lately post is rather appropriate considering a recent discussion on social networking with sports leagues.

There was an intention to hold this until after the NFL Draft and maybe have a few questions answered. I was hoping to gain some insights from the Patriots and Optaros (the designers of the software) during the league's second most popular weekend behind Super Bowl weekend; how has the feedback been from users, future plans, etc. Whether it comes or not remains to be seen, yet consider this a mea culpa.

The NFL has become a 24-7-365 (or 366 on leap years) league where the regular season, playoffs and the Draft are not the only times in which it is in the spotlight. As we are well aware, the internet and mobile technologies have only exasperated the need for more info on everything related to the country's most popular league. Yet, while fans have created their own Facebook pages, MySpace accounts, iPhone applications and the like, they can't exactly match having rich media directly from the source. Even if you're not a Pats fan, expect your favorite teams to at least copy a similar model.

Many thanks to Pat Keating and Laurel Miltner.

The Patriots Calendar App is a downloadable calendar full of rich-media content from the New England Patriots, continually updated with all the team information that fans want to know, including: draft announcements, press conference videos, radio interviews, schedules, team history and special events.  

The Patriots Calendar App was developed by Boston-based consulting firm, Optaros, Inc. Dedicated to helping its customers reach and engage with fans anywhere on the Web, Optaros creates syndicated applications (like the Calendar App) through its new service, OView.  Using OView, the Patriots can manage all Calendar App content, aggregate numerous inbound RSS feeds, insert ads, make global updates, block undesirable sites and track user engagement analytics across domains.

Says Fred Kirsch, director of interactive media at Patriots.com: “We chose OView because it... balances our desire to engage fans across the Web with the need to protect our brand,” said Fred Kirsch, director of interactive media at Patriots.com.

You can download the Patriots Calendar App from the Patriots website here: http://www.patriots.com/news/index.cfm?ac=calendar or from Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?sid=beb4d2f14f2220e98a46b1af2ac9f6e9&id=37833023541&ref=search

See the full press release about the Patriots Calendar App at http://www.optaros.com/news/press-releases#optaros-delivers-front-row-seat-new-england-patriots-content