Live Blog Dilemma

The NCAA comes to town this week with it's "improved" live blogging policy. As many know, I have been an outspoken critic of the policies as unworkable. I do respect the data rights when it comes to the live stat stream - it is an act of performance to call the game as surely as it is to do so on the radio or TV.

The improvement here is removing the time to post (two posts per quarter in football, as an example; one per inning) into the extraordinarily vague no descriptions of game play.

To quote from the policy:
"the blog may not produce in any form a “real-time” description of the event. Real-time is defined by the NCAA as a continuous play-by-play account or live, extended live/real-time statistics, or detailed description of an event."

Hmm. So if I were to record my observations of every play and load them an inning at a time - which media had figured out to comply with the old time/post rules, I'm in violation.

If we are to keep our website's credentials, we won't be able to do our interactive blog that has become so popular with our fans. We can't provide any real-time reporting, no descriptions of the game that will conflict with the streaming stats - rights held by CBS.

The dilemma - and where the NCAA is not recognizing reality - is that if I walked out into the stands, using my iPhone, I could run the exact same interactive blog. Just as the Olympic officials have discovered, technology is running over their ability to "control" the coverage.

Thus, do we serve our fans, or do we serve our masters? Again, if I didn't see official and unofficial interactive blogs for almost every major pro sports event (even concerts), I'd probably not think twice about this.

I'm pretty confident that absent our interactive, a thousand or so fans will have to go find somewhere to keep up - and it will not be the live stats. Pick up the clue phone, NCAA and CBS - GameTracker is a Flash based product; no iSpace coverage for you. Oh, and that streaming video that will be provided free, per NCAA? Yep, Flash based. Unless the NCAA sends a blogger, this will send the fans to the message boards, or some bright fan will run the interactive in the stands and off the grid.

What would you do?