I've lived in Milwaukee for over 10 years, and over the course of time, managed to adopt the local sports teams as my own. MIssing from our wonderful city, however, is top-level professional hockey. In addition, growing up I lived and died for the New York Rangers. The 1994 Stanley Cup was one of the best sports moments of my life, and I attended the subsequent victory parade. My ties to other teams in New York might not have been as strong, but over the years I managed to maintain a great connection with my Rangers.


I still attend one game a year, whenever I can, usually when I'm back in the City for Thanksgiving. That leaves 81 others to worry about, though. Admittedly, my interest from a distance ebbs and flows based on how competitive the team is, but early on in the year, and come playoff time (when applicable), I find myself looking for way to watch the Blueshirts in action.


The NHL offers a television and online out-of-region package, similar to the MLB Extra Innings TV package I buy every year. While this would solve the problem, I can't justify buying two costly sports packages a year, and the baseball package is precious to me (I generally watch several games a night, whereas with hockey, I probably wouldn't watch too many non-Rangers games).


This leaves online streams as the final option. Always a legal gray area, several websites (which I won't mention or link to- they're easy to find) offer streams of sporting event, generally originating from someone's TV. Thanks to a good samaritan with a fast computer in the NYC area, I'm able to keep up with my team, from 800 miles away.


This year, I took it one step further. I dusted off an old G4 Mac Mini that I had lying around, and connected it to the VGA input on my HDTV. Add in a wireless keyboard and mouse, and I have a fully functional computer, right on the big screen. The G4's an old processor, but most every sporting event I have tried to stream has worked nearly flawlessly. An additional perk is that I have connected an external hard drive to the Mini, and am now streaming my media to any computer in the house (as well as the Apple TV in the bedroom). All in all, it's been a great setup.


As for the legality of the streams, as I said, transmitting the content is certainly a gray area, and occasionally the streams shut down mid-game, leaving me to scramble to find a new one. Viewers, however, are not breaking any rules by simply clicking on a link, and are subjected to the same ads that TV viewers in New York get, so I feel OK doing this, and will gladly continue watch my Rangers hockey as long as I can.

Earlier in the semester, I blogged about ESPN3 coming to Time Warner Cable. This transition has occurred, and Milwaukee residents can now enjoy a wealth of sports programming right on their computer screen. I mentioned that a subsequent update of the XBox Live interface would also bring ESPN3 access to XBox 360 game console owners. This has come as well, and after a month or so of tinkering with it, I'm blown away.


The picture the 360 delivers for ESPN3 content is great. I would say better than the picture on my computer monitor (a 22" HD screen), but not quite as good as the HD cable picture from ESPN. Still, far better than passable. In addition, I have yet to experience any lag or picture freezing.


All of the content that ESPN makes available online can be found on the XBox, and the interface has been customized to better match the standard XBox one. In addition, users can quickly, with the flick of the controller, bring up an up-to-the minute score ticker, that can even be used to channel surf from game to game.


Online television is clearly changing the way we view our programming, and ESPN3 has transitioned this into sports. Now that the XBox allows for a user to access the online programming from their big-screen TV, programming options are limitless, and sports viewing might never be the same.

The social media prodigies at Marquette Athletics have done it again.

Last week I blogged about the "Tweet Team" that Marquette created to tweet during basketball games. While there is no metric for how successful this has been so far in the young season, all things appear to be running smoothly.

MU raised their own social media bar at the last game: At various points in the game, fans' tweets that used the #mubb hashtag that was created for Marquette Basketball appeared on the ginormous new Bradley Center scoreboard, pictured below.

The Bradley Center's new 'board is massive, to say the least, and the increased space and HD screen allows for all sorts of new utilizations in-game or during timeouts.

MU is placing the tweets at the bottom of the scoreboard, appearing periodically during games. The graphic is unobtrusive to those watching the action on the video screen, and the tweets are clearly hand-chosen, to ensure that the most insightful (and non-vulgar) tweets are the ones that are broadcasted to the thousands in attendance at the Bradley Center. Of course, the Twitter user name of the tweet-creator is listed as well, ensuring that credit is given where it is due.

This is, in my opinion, a PHENOMENAL idea, and a great utilization of social media in-game, without being overly in the face of fans. Keep up the good work, Marquette!

As the Marquette Basketball season begins this week, the University athletics department is trying something new. Marquette has put together a "Tweet Team" of fans, both students and alumni season ticket holders, who tweet often about Marquette Basketball during games.