The Long Tail of Athletics

Chris Anderson's book, The Long Tail, was recently reissued in paperback with an additional chapter and some revisions. I regret not having seen this business book earlier, but at the same time glad that during the last year I had not.

I say this to prod others to go get a copy and read it (it's a quick read, and well written). The editor of Wired magazine, many of his conclusions have been my own independently arrived at theories of where we are headed as an industry.

The Long Tail refers to the growing ability in the digital marketplace of profit to be obtained from inventory or information once considered unworthy of reaching the shelf in the physical business world. He also speaks to the ability of things out at the end of the Long Tail effecting brand.

In other words -- it all matters. It matters what the minor sports or doing (and how they are covered). It matters that those bloggers are defining who we are.

The most stunning chapter for our field relates to the Chevy SUV experiment where they encouraged people to make their own commercials. I vividly recall how the Madison Avenue-ites clucked at Chevy for being stupid enough to let the public use their website against them. To make anti-SUV ads. To poke fun at the brand. And to let it all stay on line. What clueless idiots.

Get the book. Read what really happened to Chevy's SUV sales numbers.

Anderson hits some of my favorites (and he's a much better writer), but really hones in about the change from Speech to Conversation with your fans regarding the brand; that we no longer control our brand -- our fans do (see the Dell Sucks section).

More to come over the next few weeks from the book. In the meantime, it's in almost any Barnes or Borders, pretty sure its at Audible.com also.

The Importance of Metrics

So, who does your clipping these days? All the SID types remember clipping -- cutting out those actual literal articles and filing them away. In the digital shift, clippings start to have less and less meaning to the majority in our field.

That's all the more reason to clip more.

Tracking and measuring the success of placement of messages -- oh, sorry, press releases -- is crucial to the ability of the office to do two things. First and regrettably foremost in these Excel-spread sheet driven times, it proves the worth of the enterprise. X-number of inches can be translated into monetary value.

What should be more important is gauging the effectiveness of the operation, and it is more important the further down the Long Tail of sports publicity we move. Anyone can generate voluminous copy for a major sport at a major college. Except where pro sport franchises are sucking the oxygen out of the mass media, how many inches D-I football gets isn't the issue. How many inches is the soccer team pulling at the same time; the D-III football team, etc.

Certainly there are other metrics -- click through on websites, as a prime example -- but for the publicity office this remains an important one. If the inches are declining, what are the factors? Smaller news hole? Sport attendance also dropping, indicating a decline in fan base? Here is where the SID can shine, because if they can buck those trends, they have proof of their effectiveness.

Was It Watergate Bad?

Back when I was at Northeast Louisiana, my GA was taking a readings course for his communications master's. He recalled the less-than-stellar effort of one of his classmates on a review, which ended with her proclamation that the scenario covered by her book "was bad; it was Watergate bad."

Ever since in our circle of friends, when we speak of the clueless and their errors, it's always referenced that the event was "bad, Watergate bad."

Submitted for your approval today, one Isiah Thomas. He has, indeed, been bad, Watergate bad.

Just ask the chief of police in Harrison regarding Thomas' quite incredible statement that she was the person who had difficulties. That the 47-year-old male transported from his house to the hospital for an al overdose wasn't necessarily the former coach of the New York Knicks.

Thomas told the New York Post that he wasn't the one treated for the sleeping pills problem, and inferred without directly saying it that it may have been his 17-year-old.

The money quote from police chief David Hall:

"These people should learn something from Richard Nixon -- it's not the crime, it's the cover up."

The Thomas family is sticking with their story, as Isiah's son is also saying it was his sister that needed treatment, not his dad. To this the Hall replied:

"My cops know the difference between a 47-year-old balck male and a young black female."

On the one hand, I'd ask the media to consider their impact on the family by gleefully engaging in a Schneidenfreud contest at the expense of the Thomas family.

But Isiah. Really. That was bad. Watergate bad. Both literally and figuratively.

The Latest in Free Video

As the 20th century world continues to try and limit the expansion of streaming, this just in -- want to beat the system for your home team's video stream? Hook up a deal with someone off shore, rig up the slingbox to a Dazzle unit, push stream through a proxy to the off-shore and then tell all your buddies about the free video.

Or, by shorter name, justin.tv.

Are we really surprised? Free television beget pay cable; over time pay cable became standard thanks to advertising and cable systems wanting to hold off satellite. Now various pirates around the world are making those ever-so-portable digital assets, well, portable.

The networks have finally figured it out. The streaming is free (to the end user; of course it's advertising supported) for Hulu and many of the major sports teams.

This is just the more advanced, less cease-and-desistable, version of using the home state billing and zip code to fool systems (or proxy servers to beat IP checking).

The college sports world will fight to keep its blackouts and protections. And the ones that will get hurt are the ones with U.S. addresses. Kind of like the reward Real got for trying to play by the rules with the movie industry over copying DVDs to hard drives. They're injuncted, but all those off-shore DVD rippers that will never pay royalty dollar one continue to roll.

Losers on Both Side of a Digital Divide

Sarah Palin's hacket is charged for breaking into her Yahoo account. The son of a Tennessee legislator is paying the price for compromising the privacy of a public official.

Unfortunately for the governor of Alaska, Palin is now getting reprimanded for using a personal email account for doing public business.

Readers here will know that's a no-no -- proven already in the LSU women's basketball situation as administrators tried to loop around their ".edu" known FOI'able accounts.

Turns out the state of Alaska takes a very dim view to not doing the public's business on the public's email system. Learned today also that the state of California (Brown's Law) is even more of a stickler under a combo of FOI and open meetings.

Let's repeat again: Don't expect to keep your private email private if you use it at work, even for private functions. Why? Because you are using state computers, state routers, state connectivity. I continue to be amazed at colleagues -- here and at other schools -- that insist on using a Yahoo or GMail account to read ALL their email. Good luck separating out your personal business from that account you are forwarding your ".edu" official business to.

So the world has this hacktivist from Tennessee to thank for revealing the Palinista email circle. So, you betcha, he's gonna pay some fines; but gosh darn it, the illegal activity revealed another illegal activity.

You Didn't Just Say That

Moments ago, the talent for ESPN's telecast of Clemson-Georgia Tech:

DAVE PASCH: It seemed like the players had a lot to do with this because Terry Don Philips was allowing them. The Athletic Director was allowing their voices to be heard.

ANDRE WARE: Which should never be the situation in a the case in this. You’ve got to gather everybody up, and you go to the coaches. If it does indeed come down to this kind of situation. Kids should never be speaking out about changes that are made from the top. It should never happen.

DAVE PASCH: With all the different kinds of media we have out there. Players’ comments. You’re in a small town like Clemson, South Carolina, where anything the players say is going to get printed and talked about ad nausium.

Whoa. Wait a minute. Let's parse that shameless shot at TDP.

First, God Forbid an athletic director that talks to student-athletes. Last time I checked, the job in college sports has dramatically changed from being autocratic to being inclusive. That's the reality.

Second, and the most ridiculous, it was the fault of the athletes that live in lil' old country towns like Clemson?

How about this small town paper -- ESPN? No problem in this pre-Bowden departure game story of Wake quoting the Clemson quarterback's vent.

And of course, who missed Tiger QB Cullen Harper's quote when Bowden resigned:

"It's what he deserved," Harper said. "Dabo Swinney is a fine man and will do an excellent job."

What small down paper carried that quote prominently -- why even in a big text pull quote box in it's front-page story. That would be E-SPN.

And how did ESPN get that quote? Harper texted it in to ESPN reporter Joe Schad. He realized later that was ill-advised, but did manage to dig himself a little deeper with a blog on Sporting News. Oh, those darn internets and texting.

Never forget what the first letter stands for: Entertainment.

If the ESPN crew wants to say that Harper's comments were in bad taste, sure. That they were self-serving as he had been benched by Bowden, sure. But these are the days of Web 2.0, and people want their opinions heard.

Does Harper need a little media training? Oh Yes. But Pasch and Ware might want to understand that their own company was that small town that printed the words of the players.

UPDATE: The talent crew in the closing minutes of Miami-Duke are picking up the mantle. The payoff line -- a kid shouldn't say someone deserves firing because there are children involved, other coaches and families involved -- and that Harper should not have spoken out.

Care to guess what network? Yep, ESPNU.

While we're piling on the "kid" for speaking out, why is no one getting on the "adult" reporter who didn't take into consideration that perhaps a young person was making a mistake with his text message?

On the Wall

Or maybe Twitterish -- at soccer, waiting for kickoff.

Great discussion today with colleagues at another major college about a project regarding the reaction of SIDs to the new media.

Proofing through 192 pages on-line will leave you a little blurry.

More coherent comments tomorrow. Meanwhile, The Long Tail is the book on the nightstand. Huge. Again, more later.

Time to set the streamer and get ready for futbol.

I'm Back

Lord. Anyone who's been through the wringer can relate to facing down 192 pages of media guide.

But, it's over for the 20th time here at Arkansas; the 24th in a row on women's basketball.

So, what did I miss? I did take a moment to drop a note about the faux death of Steve Jobs. My good friend Dan Gillmor once again has the best, succinct take on the event. His blog entry recalls how the techniques were used and misused.

Leo Laporte on This Week in Tech (OK, it was last week's This Week) had several of the key details, most notably that the first-post anonymous blogger used a proxy to make his now infamous rumor post.

As I noted, it's not the citizen journalist that was wrong, it was how horribly bad traditional media can't handle when it tries embrace Web 2.0. A modicum of checking would have revealed the obvious attempt to mask tracking.

Not the Way to Reintroduce a Coach

Again, light posting here as we wade through printing deadlines, but this couldn't wait. It's from the English Premier League as Newcastle United announces the return of Joe Kinnear to the league as a manager. Let's just say that one might want a better relaunch, and it takes any tirade by an American coach. By one estimate, 51 bleepable words in the rant, and Kinnear settles some scores with individual writers.

I warn you right now, this is not anywhere close to PG-13. Depending on your connection, it may not be viewable and could be considered NSFW. The F-word is prominent.

It's horrible, yet you can't look away . . . .

Newcastle's Joe Kinner: "I have had a million pages of crap written about me."

Failure to Administer

Citizen journalism gets down right dangerous when established media groups use it as a replacement for trained staff, or as a primary source for short-staffed situations. CNN got a very hard lesson in that with today's rumored Steve Jobs heart attack. Silcon Alley Insider has the best recap on this on their page.

It reveals the danger of no governor journalism -- the person making the post was a first-time poster to the iReport part of CNN. Even the most basic rule of thumb is not let a person go full post on the first time.

Bit chilling that according to web sources, not only has "johntw" and his post disappeared, his profile claims this iReporter has not uploaded any iReport stories. That's Soviet-style revisionism at its finest.

Expect investigations, not unlike those by the FBI and Secret Service into the hacking of Sarah Palin's email. This time it will be the SEC (not the athletic league, the government regulators), and you know they will have the IP for johntw by lunchtime.

Gonna Be Scarce

It's almost October, and that time for the fun and games known as women's basketball press guide season. So the posts will be few and far between the next three weeks.

Um, Where to Begin?

Mike Masterson turns his attention this Saturday to the eeeeee-villllll that is the blogosphere in his op-ed column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. We get the usual set of new media hater cliches ("pajama-clad pundits," "Internet rumors," "accuse-anything Internet").

I've known Mike for a while -- since back when he was the editor at the NW Arkansas Times -- and there's probably much more to this than meets the eye on the column. It comes for me at a very bad time to counter, but in time, I think will get a written rejoiner.

His premise is the heart of the series I work with on the side at KUAF, "We're History," where Kyle Kellams and I dissect the presentism that runs rampant in the media.

One of the money quotes in Mike's column:
"Sad to say, calculated rumors, shaded truth and outright lies have become commonplace in what 20 years ago was the primary marketplace of reported facts."

Um. Gee. About 25 years ago, I was still working in a newsroom. Guess what, there was plenty of calculated rumors and shaded truth to go around about one Edwin Edwards, high-times Gov of the great state of Louisiana. Some of them started by Eddie himself. Remember when he famously quipped that he couldn't lose unless he was caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy?

The difference? Anyone can publish the rumors today.

There's more in this, and with deadlines looming I'll let this ride for now with just one small counterpoint.

Does Mike forget that a little over 100 years ago, that great bastion of journalistic principle, William Randolph Hearst, was trying to foment a war with Spain? How about those upstanding politicos of the party newspapers in the 1800s? Too old? Yesterday's freak-show drug addict becomes today's sage -- Hunter S. Thompson did call for Hubert Humphrey to be castrated and said things of Richard Nixon that, well, remain scatological even in the 21st century.

Shouldn't Be News, But It Is

For a couple of years, I've preached the risks of college athletes in the public domain -- and the threat the simple cell phone camera. Travel columnist Robert Smith in one of our local newspapers regales the readers with stories of the quick use of cell cameras to the Arkansas attorney general's office to build evidence against gougers after the hurricanes.

The AG asked folks to take before and after snaps of gas prices, and he got over 1,000 text messages with attachments plus another 1,500 emails.

The duh, I mean, money quote:

"The effort shows the value of the technology as a watchdog tool."

And, I might add, a not so subtle reminder to Matt Lienart.

Scary Things

While waiting for my iPod to sync . . .

A look at the world of news outside sports that should scare the bejezus out of some fans and some adminstrators.

First up, the hacking of Sarah Palin's email account. Very cute. Done with anonymizer software. Posted with screen names. Ha, ha, ha, says the blogger. Until the FBI arrives. Guess what? Within 24 hours, the cyber division had a person of interest, knew exactly what computer was used through what local ISP to perform the hack, post the data and brag about the reveal.

What have I told my friends in the blogosphere over and over (and my colleagues who often try to dip their toes in anonymously) ? There is no such thing as anonymous, just degrees of secrecy.

That said, next up is the hot new product for trying to Hack Sarah Palin (sounds like a teen movie title, doesn't it?). The Iron Key is a USB device with advanced encryption, a secure browser and claims to be able to allow users the ability to surf anonymously. Either this $75 USB key is one heck of a ripoff for a 1 GB of storage, or a huge threat to everyone that must deal with the public with transparency.

Last of all, the rise of hacktivism -- which is what the person or persons who went into Palin's email would call themselves. Bill O'Reilly's website got hacked, and personal data of the users of the site were revealed. There's much more on this from ZDNet, but it reminds those of us in the public sector of the data we need to protect, and the lengths to which the upset will go to achieve their ends.

Google Rules: Just Ask UAL

Another item that flew past -- no pun intended -- last week was the re-emergence of an almost six-year old story about United Airlines' bankruptcy. It went to the top of Google's news crawler and cause the markets to flip out. UAL's stock crashed on the mistaken belief that the major airline was going into bankruptcy again.

Unfortunately, it was just a stick in the Google cache -- mistakenly posted as new news. Even though it came down after 13 minutes, UAL stock went down almost a billion.

How did it happen, and how can it impact you in the college sports world? Consider what the impact would be to your school if old NCAA investigation stories happen to pop up right before the dark period for coaches heading into signing day?

There's a great primer on how it happened and what it means on the Association of College and Research Libraries website today:

Information is Power -- Even When it's Wrong

Amy Fry wrote the entry, and the whole thing is required reading. However, my money quote is this:

If any one of you has been underestimating the role of Google in the information food chain, STOP.

Waiting For Downloads

A moment for more thoughts on the future of the {YOUR MASCOT NAME HERE} Channel. The ability to project one's brand belongs to those who retain rights, and when yielding rights, does so in a way that maintain as much control as possible while trading that for A) filthy lucre; B) better distribution tools.

Case in point: ESPN360.

Look, I'm not the only person in the world who's 17-year-old son has an overwhelming desire to watch one out-of-market team whenever, however. And I'm not the only person who took the time to build a cheap (less than $350) but screaming fast, tuned for video lunchbox computer who's only purpose in its digital life is to drive a plasma screen HDTV.

Open weekend courtesy of Hurricane Ike allowed some quality tuning and tweaking time with the box, and by the end of Saturday night, the games we were watching were of no less quality than the old over-the-air analog signals I grew up with. To have the access was well worth the trade in quality. More important -- the price? Well, thank heaven I switched to a certain global monolith that provides internet access AND free ESPN360.

In the space of the last six months, the entire landscape in college sports broadcasting has changed. And no, it's not just because Will went over the wall from spin.

The Olympics have shown that IPTV is now a reality. That the consumer does want his MTV. And his syncro diving. And he wants it now; unless now is five hours from now when he gets off work and for him, time stands still.

CBS is streaming the SEC. NBC will stream the NFL. MLB and NBA will stream locally (which, when you think about it is absurd -- the people who want it are ex-patriots living in other markets -- perhaps it won't take 25 years before Sunday Ticket gets reinvented on-line).

Back to the school's channel. I've been surprised by the amount of ferocious shelling we've taken the past two weeks from folks who want Razorback football streamed. Other schools do it, why don't you? On the surface, a legit question. The main reason -- no offense to others -- but our games are monetized with contractual value. Even when NBC "gives away" NFL streaming, it's still commercially supported and while free to the consumer is not free by any means.

Thus, smaller schools and less popular sports can continue to give away video streaming because it has not gained the popularity yet to have serious commercial value. That is no slap to those others, in fact, it should be an encouragement.

NCAA men's basketball did not become anything important until ESPN, then CBS, took the flyer to run every game and create a sensation. Ask any aspiring band, you make the MP3s, you put them on the podsafe network and you hope that by building popularity someday you get paid.

The same is true for college sports. Women's basketball, softball, baseball and other emerging sports have a real future on-line, but only if schools are attentive to the hoovering contracts of the content providers. While picking up the fully-commercial properties of football and in some areas men's basketball, they seek to lock up other sports or entire schools and conferences. The goal is to create excess inventory to float against advertising sale, or simply to put content on the shelf as an exclusive.

Here's where schools must insist on the A & the B. If you want to take it all, you must pay a price that will counter-balance the recruiting blow that unavailable (or subscriber based) content inflicts. Think about it. This is a national recruiting market. If proud parents know they can remain virtually linked to the kids -- streaming video, a quality website, solid communications avenues -- they'll let them go anywhere. The schools where that isn't available are at a disadvantage. That's where the B comes in -- if they don't insist, don't give away any more rights than necessary.

Or one day, you discover you can't stream you own stuff outside your own state.

More Streams Join the Fray

First, it was NBC with the Olympics. Then MLB and the NBA joined in with local streaming. Last week, CBS announced it would provide free live streams of its SEC game of the week.

Michael Hiestand has a great review of this in Wednesday's USA TODAY. He repeats the argument taken as conventional wisdom -- free streaming of content available concurrently through advertising support on television only widens the audience.

The payoff quote:

And networks are being convinced online simulcast won't cannibalize the big bucks tied up in TV, figuring you'll watch online only if you can't get to a TV set, or you'll log on as you watch TV.

Sounds familiar to this space.

Live Blog Impacts

Some things we attempt on faith, and creating a game-day live-blog for your primary sports on first blush seem like a leap into unproven territory. Is it worth the time? What happens when things go bad for your team? Will fans find it useful?

Several schools go before us, notably our colleagues at Wisconsin, with highly successful game-day blogs. Our began with a somewhat quiet launch -- no promotion, just a part of the game-day fan instruction page and a link from the front page.

Week One -- the football blog was the No. 3 story in unique viewers, second only to the post-game story and an extremely popular story on the release of the new uniforms. There were some questions about the efficacy of doing the blog, particularly when some unfortunate computer issues led to interruption of live stats. Why waste time blogging while the live stats are dead?

Two quick answers emerge. First, the live blog allows fans to jump across to a stream of information that is agile and able to get through FTP and connection issues. So it plugs the gap. The second reason is far more important.

Right along with encouraging two-way conversation with fans -- which, quite frankly a game-day blog is not about -- the most important thing a website can provide is value-added content. Here is the true value of the live blog. Yes, stat-heads like myself enjoy reading the stats and seeing the play-by-play transaction. What fans want are description, interpretation.

One of our coaches on the road told me how convenient it was to keep up with the game in an airport on his mobile device. A fan that was hearing impaired, thrilled to be able to read color commentary that was never available before. Another long-time follower of the website, keeping the stat viewer and the blog open, as he described it, getting his play-by-play (the raw stats) and his color (the blog).

Week two saw the number jump three times -- the game-day blog in 24 hours became the No. 1 story on the site, with the post-game story at number two. Both of our non-conference games, not exactly traffic drivers, now set the stage for a big number with our first SEC game in two weeks.

For the media relations office, again, why range off into the land of bloggers? It's about content, and the ability of the institution to bring an official account of the event for its fans. How different is this from radio play-by-play? The beauty of the blog is the ability to interject other details that perhaps radio or TV can't, or no longer will, relay. The reaction of the crowd to plays, the songs of the halftime band set, the names of the captains, the little side notes.

We'll open up a little more in two weeks, looking to add more fan-based details. I did get my first tailgating photos, which one managed to be added to the blog. With any luck in the pregame portion, we'll add more of those kind of interactions. Perhaps not to the extent just yet of some of the pro venues and some colleges that are encouraging the use of camera phones to send in fan shots during the game, but we're working on getting there.

Twitter -- coming in the near future.

And You Were Thinking What?

More tales from the Dark Facebook side: Kutztown University senior Adam LaDuca is forced to resign as the head of the Pennsylvania College Republicans because of an ill-advised description of Barack Obama. We'll not repeat the line, but here's a shock -- "a comment he later said he regretted."

OK, let's concede the future will be filled with soon-to-be middle-aged politicians who will be haunted (and forgiven due to the ubiquitousness of the medium) by stupid jokes and statements of their youth.

Still, how many more examples do you need to get the idea: post nothing you wouldn't expect to be read by your worst enemy, your current or future employer, your current or future spouse/partner.

Plenty of Labor Day

Sorry about the pace of posts here; it's been packing and moving time for the realignments at Arkansas. So on this Labor Day, it was moving day. With any luck, the pace will return later. Until then, for the rest of you, enjoy your day off.