Emerging Media in Sports
 
The NCAA is sitting on a gold mine.

Recently, college sports' governing entity made many postseason games in various sports available on DVD through its NCAA On Demand store. In addition, an ongoing project is digitizing some events for free online viewing in the NCAA Vault. Currently, the Vault features NCAA Basketball tournaments, from the Sweet 16 round through the championship, from 2000 to the present.

The ability to track down that special game and relive the glory is a great notion. I have my own collection of about 75 Marquette games, primarily from the past ten seasons, and at certain times, a classing MU game is just the ticket.

The NCAA would be wise to expand this offering to include as much of its archive as possible. While having free access to Marquette's 2003 tournament run is nice, I'd love to be able to call up games from "before my time," and I'd willingly pay a nominal fee to do so.

As for DVD's, there are certain games that I would love to acquire on DVD. The 1974 NCAA Final Four, Doc Rivers' buzzer beater against Notre Dame in 1981, and the 1994 NCAA tournament win over Kentucky come to mind quickly. I'm sure there are similar fans to me at virtually every school in the country that would love to see their classic basketball, football, baseball, and other sporting events as well.

Turner Broadcasting's new contract with the NCAA includes the digital rights management of NCAA content. Hopefully, having an experienced broadcasting company at the helm will lead to this expansion, and we can revel in the glory of our scho
 
One of the rapidly expanding elements of sports media is mobile coverage. Sports fans can use their phones to access news & information, team reports, and even live television & radio coverage more than ever. Here's a quick look at some of the sports elements I'm using on my own phone, a Google Android device on the Verizon network.


NFL, NHL, MLB, & NBA Official Apps - 


The four major professional sports leagues have all entered the mobile app arena. As a Verizon Wireless customer, the NFL and NHL apps stand out in particular, as they have exclusive contracts with the carrier.


The NFL Mobile app, exclusive to Verizon, is a free application. In addition to live game trackers and a news feed, the app offers VCAST Video subscribers 24/7 coverage of the NFL Network, and live broadcast of the NFL Red Zone channel, which whips through coverage of live games on Sundays, as well as the Sunday Night NBC game, live on your phone. This live telecast feature is great for a fantasy football junkie like myself, and I'm paying the extra few bucks a month for VCAST during the NFL season just for that. Video quality is pretty good, and there are very few hiccups in the broadcast, even with my outdated Droid Eris phone.


The NHL app is similar in design to the NFL one, also exclusive to Verizon and with a similar feature set. The difference here is that live broadcast of hockey games is not contained in the VCAST package (VCAST subscribers do get free audio broadcasts), but available for an extra fee, in the neighborhood of $80 for the entire 2010-11 season. This is a pretty steep price for the ability to watch games on a small phone screen, especially when broadband Internet coverage of games is available for a little over $100.


The MLB and NBA apps are not specific to Verizon. The NBA app, despite a somewhat clunky interface, does a great job of tracking games live, with full up-to-the-minute stats available for every NBA game. A $10 a month premium, that I happily paid, allows for audio broadcasts of all NBA games. An additional $50, a much more reasonable price, gives access to all video broadcasts of NBA games. A flaw in this feature- Local games (wherever your phone is at the time) are blacked out. I think mobile access is a great resource for people who might be away from home but in town when their local team plays, and not being able to pull up the game on their phone defeats the purpose for most potential subscribers. I know that I would consider forking over the money, if I could watch the Bucks on my phone while in Milwaukee. The video service is also available as part of the NBA's "Three Point Play" package, which gives users TV, Internet, and mobile access to all (non-blacked out) games for one price.


The MLB app is, in my opinion, the best designed of the bunch. A crisp, easy to navigate interface offeres game tracking, news, and plenty of social media options. Unfortunately, this is the only official app without a free version, but the $15 per season fee is reasonable, and includes audio broadcasts of every game, and on the iPhone, video broadcast of one game per day (Major League Baseball chooses the offered game, this feature is allegedly coming to other smartphones next season). A nice perk here is that subscribers to MLB.tv, the Internet broadcast package, can access video of all games, not just the MLB-chosen contest.


VCAST-

Verizon's VCAST Video service has an ever-growing library of sports offerings. The video service has archived clips viewable on demand from ESPN, FOX Sports, CBS, and other sports entities. In addition, VCAST broadcasts selected college football, hockey, and other sporting events (including last summer's World Cup) live, as well as the NFL broadcasts mentioned above. $10 per month is the premium for this, but if you use your phone to access a lot of video content (VCAST offers much beyond the realm of sports, including archived episodes of many current TV shows), this is not a high price to pay. I'm paying it right now for the NFL offerings, and will probably suspend it at the conclusion of the football season, but that is more a function of not using my phone to access vidoe to often, rather than my not being pleased with the service.


Third Party Offerings-

The beauty of smartphones is, as micro-computers, they allow for a limitless development of apps. Many developers are creating sports-related apps (some officially endorsed by their respective leagues or teams, some not), that allow users to access news, scores, information, and in some cases, audio and video of their favorite sports teams. As a result, sports fans can get the information they need on-the-go. This amazes me, as I think back to my childhood, and having to wait until the next morning's newspaper to get out of town scores. The mobile age has been kind to the sports world, and I look forward to what else is yet to come.
 
I'm doing a project for my Quantitative Research Methods class this semester on Twitter use by sports teams, and its effect on fan identification. In other words, teams are using Twitter to communicate with fans at an unprecedented level, and fans are feeling a more personal connection to their teams as a result (at least that's my hypothesis).

On a personal level, I've been keeping an eye on how my own favorite teams are utilizing Twitter. Marquette's athletic department has been a pioneer in social media innovation, and the Marquette Twitter account is a great resource for up-to-date Marquette athletics news and information, as well as links to media stories about the MU teams. Marquette also uses their Twitter as a vehicle to communicate with fans personally.

Craig Pintens, Marquette's former Director of Marketing, is now at LSU, and has essentially built a social media empire down in Louisiana. Craig comments on LSU Athletics through his own Twitter account, and manages individual Twitter accounts for all the University's teams, including football and basketball. Individual Facebook pages exist for the teams as well.


On the professional level, my Milwaukee Bucks have what seems to be one of the more active Twitter accounts, engaging in personal communication with many fans, as well as providing in-game updates and news in between games. The Bucks also do a great job of using Twitter to announce ticket promotions and other special events.


Clearly, teams are doing a great job of taking advantage of the wonderful marketing resource that Twitter provides. As time goes by, sports marketing professionals are devising new ways to use Twitter as a vehicle to market their teams. It will be interesting to see what direction this concept goes over time, as the practice is honed even further.
 
With graduation only two months away, it's time to ready myself for the impending job search. One of the items on my to-do list is to create a personal web site, which can serve as a virtual portfolio of sorts. As important as the resume is, in my eyes my site trumps it, as it will provide a one-stop shop to view my web design work, journalism clips, and other related work I have done over the years. In essence, it's a presentation of me, and a reflection of my abilities as it relates to the industry.


Anticipating this process a long time ago, I already own the rights to dannymanson.com, ready to host whatever content I bring it.


Where I'm struggling is in which service to use to create this portfolio. Weebly has been kind to me for the purposes of this class. The interface is intuitive, building a site is easy, and the options are seemingly limitless, especially if I spring for the Weebly Pro premium service. In fact, I'm so happy with Weebly, I will be using it to create some turnkey websites for a couple of freelance clients. It's ease of use will allow for my clients to make any updates or changes they want once I'm done with the "heavy lifting," even with little to know experience or knowledge of web design. In addition, the ability to edit the HTML code allows for a fully customized site experience.


All that being said, I've heard great things about WordPress. The service seems to be the most popular personal web site service around, with both free and competitively-priced premium options available. WordPress users can fully customize their experience as well, and, at first glance, through its apps and widgets, the service seems to have much more horsepower in the long run than Weebly, especially for the "power user" types.


I don't have much experience with WordPress, but I am intrigued by its potential. With a couple of weeks to decide, I'm putting it out there for readers. Which site do you use/recommend, and why? Also, if anyone has another preference (Google Sites, Homestead, "stop being lazy and do it yourself, you know HTML!") let me know. I'm open to suggestions.
 
My Apple TV arrived, and I connected it and went through the motions of installing Boxee. The reviews are mixed.

As far as streaming content I already have on a hard drive, this works fantastically. My music and movies play flawlessly, and the interface is very easy to use.

Streaming, which I was very excited about before, is a different story. Anything I stream through a hard-wired ethernet connection is slow and clunky, and the Boxee browser, which is supposed to load streaming video from virtually any site, barely seems to work. In addition, most streaming webs sites are flash-based, and flash functionality in Boxee's browser seems to be missing or limited.

Part of the problem could be due to the old Apple TV's limited hardware, but it's still disappointing. Since the unit still does strem my local files well, I'll be setting it up as a bedroom media center. As far as sports streaming