Feeling Tessalone's Pain

TMZ.com is a newcomer to the sports world, and the TMZ loves itself a "juicy" controversy. Like Southern Cal reissuing it's media guide to adjust the number of Heisman winners on the cover. You can see TMZ's link to the two covers, and their jab at Tim Tessalone, USC's SID, for missing a removal of Reggie Bush from the count in the guide.

Look, absent the digital guide age, that would not be done until next year. Wanna have fun with revisions? Get a letter from the NCAA telling you to remove two national titles and any record references to one sprinter who's name has been made verboten in reference to an Arkansas career. Get the letter on Dec. 20. Your men's track guide is due at the printer on -- you guessed it -- Dec. 21.

Now THAT's some fun times. I feel Tim's pain.

Of Leaks and Quarterbacks

What might the Obama administration and Ole Miss head coach Houston Nutt have in common? They represent two ends of the social media spectrum, and how the ease of access to world wide communication is changing the way we should think about our daily lives.

No, this isn't about those internets. But is is about how if you're not careful, the potential for single voices to rock your world. Close followers of this space and the Arkansas chapter of Nutt's life might make connections here that are untended. Today, Houston is not the one with the problem.

That is the President of the United States, courtesy of the latest invention of our digitally compressed world, WikiLeaks. A level of anonymity provided to those who are disgruntled or disturbed with the actions taken by their organization can now reach out to this world-wide website to become the whistle blowers that personal identification would not allow. Military members and others are putting tons of memos, videos and other data regarding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on WikiLeaks to reveal things aren't exactly as White House and other agency spokespersons portray.

I bring this political and human rights website to this audience's attention to say: how long until WikiLeaks or something like it begins to peel back the carefully constructed Potemkin villages of athletics. Better forewarned -- it's a heck of a lot easier to just operate knowing you're in a glass house than to get a rude awakening one day that your best kept inner workings are posted. To some extent, that exists with the unnamed source and the tabloid for pay news organizations. Still, you need to know someone and trust someone to use those tools. The WikiLink concept is DIY. Citizen Journalist, meet Citizen Muckracker; everyone an Upton Sinclair.

For now, only six records turn up the term "NCAA" at WikiLinks, and that's deceptive as two of the six are repeats. Only one document relates to the college sports world (the other three uniques are passing references to NCAA sports inside military documents). It is the full report of the Congressional Research Service into the whether or not due process existed within NCAA investigations. Not exactly top secret stuff, but even though publicly funded, the CRS doesn't publish reports publicly.

But you promised an Ole Miss connection. Yes, and the saga of future Rebel graduate student Jeremiah Masoli. Could care less about the events of Oregon and the right or wrong of being a one-year journeyman QB in the SEC (Tony Barnhardt said it best -- we can get all high and mighty, but at the end of the day, every SEC head football coach is judged by wins and losses; period).

What does catch my attention is the hard work by Masoli and his camp to prove that "his story" isn't getting out there. Call it spin if you like, but why not allow the student-athlete to create his own narrative. He's between programs to say that he must conform to their rules of personal media engagement. It is a little over the top to have hired your own PR agency to assist with your personal website and to sit for a Sports Illustrated profile. Masoli is presented by the networked media both the opportunity and the tools to create his own image.

Perhaps the most interesting of all the links on a cleanly laid out message website is the one for "Media Mistakes." Fourteen news stories countered by the Masoli team, with more than one for Bleacher Report (hey, that's not a "real" newspaper -- well, it is if you're a college sports fan).

If he has indeed learned from his past and seeks to reveal for others the struggles it took to get there, isn't that the personal growth we want from anyone? If he feels he has been wronged by a system that did not suitably honor his vision, can we really say he's being a self-centered [expletive]?

Not if at the same time we praise the "brave" soldiers and diplomats outing "wrong doing" through WikiLeaks.

This is the ultimate point. Transparency for the quarterback and the President; by its very nature, one is no longer given the luxury of saying it applies for one and not the other.

POSTSCRIPT
As I've said recently, even the most "savvy" can get scammed by the clever phishers on the internet. The Masoli story is a perfect example. Don't type his name with ".com" -- that is a fake site that's got just enough links and stock football images to give you the mistaken feel that you could click around and get his story. You'll probably get some really nasty international spyware instead. No, use the ".net" for the real former Oregon QB website. Crafty work on the .com, complete with links to Oregon tickets, NFL news, jerseys, DVDs, a Masoli show -- curiously also links to a bunch of trending top things like Suze Ormand and Mylee Cyrus. I wouldn't know if they were real links. I jetted off that faux site ASAP.

Something in the Fla. Water?

I must inquire with my colleagues at UCF and UF, but two really interesting, albeit south Florida journalism tiffs.

First, FIU's beat reporter leaves in more than a huff; he sets the Miami Herald on figurative fire with a scathing blog post that didn't last so on on the newspapers website. But of course, it got archived off here (don't panic, it really is a JPEG screen capture).

Second, over at Florida Atlantic, a former campus newspaperman provides a thought-provoking screed that college newspapers that are on-line lack punch because, well, the journalists involved get off on the banner head, not the splash page screen.

Faux Branding

Looking at the somewhat formula-driven efforts of colleges and universities to "create" or "redefine" brands, I've come to a new conclusion:

Brand is what you do when you don't know who you are.

Quick, duck. Incoming flak.

Marketers, messengers, countrymen -- count to 10 after that line and hear me out.

I submit for your approval, the considerable efforts of Mississippi State's new athletic director, Scott Stricklin. Raise your hands, SEC brethren, if you've ever heard an illegal noise maker at a Bulldog event. The league has a pretty clear rule against them; they are all over the place in Maroon and White events. What to do?

Well, the new AD didn't try to "rebrand" MSU, or "educate" Bulldog fans to go against what is very clearly a long-standing tradition. Cowbells. Agriculturally-oriented majors (some very high level ones, might add), a proud rural setting for the school -- thus, phenomenal point of pride. One might say, it is what set apart these Maroon Bulldogs from Georgia 'Dogs (who would similarly say 'Dogs often rather than Bulldog) or from Louisiana Tech Bulldogs (who as women, are Lady Techsters, not Lady Bulldogs).

Stricklin worked to get some accommodations to allow his fan base to be who they are -- cowbell ringin' Bulldog backers -- but do it in a way that accommodates the no noisemaker ban that has been in effect for decades in the SEC.

See, those of us on the outside can make fun all day long about those damn stupid loud cowbells -- but we're not suppose to get it. We're not Miss State Bulldogs.

Kind of like that damn woo pig thing those Razorbacks do. Get it now?

Thus, the most successful "branding" is recognizing and emphasizing the things that set you apart; that are part of your core.

And when you don't know who you are or what you stand for, well, grab some glibness, add some slickness and wax on a thick coat of generic branding.

Far better to ring you inner bell.

Privacy Comes to Youth

What's the old cliche? A conservative is a liberal who's grown older? The Chronicle brings us a snippet from a study showing that young adults are beginning to worry about their privacy. Guess all those theories that the transparent world would lead to less concern about what future Senator candidate in 2030 did in 2010 in college because EVERYONE had the same problems might not be as sound as thought.

Two researchers conducted the study that showed 18 and 19 year olds were increasingly worried. They do admit it could be shaded by recent Facebook faux pas. I will interject that one of the duo is a Microsoft Research employee (hmm, fear the Google?).

Nevertheless: Chronicle here; abstract from UIC here; the journal article here.

Website 8.0

Today marks the ninth generation of website for my work with the University of Arkansas, and without a doubt, this is the best one. It is designed to act and feel more like my best hand creations of the late 1990s where you could custom build a special home page based on circumstances and had a more direct control of what went where.

Ah yes, he original full site back in 1996, coming off a sport only effort in 1995 after the Denver CoSIDA. Still keep that web design and HTML 2.0 guide book on my desk as a reminder of walking into the Cherry Park bookstore to buy at first manual. What a great ride starting with just one book and one idea.

Here's to seeing if there will eventually be a 9.0 someday.

This Bird is Bereft of Life

After a looooong morning of proof out on our latest design for ArkansasRazorbacks.com, I'm soaking in some early 1980s - a nice spin on my oh Lord now vintage Trek bicycle and an episode or two of Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days.

One of my childhood memories is of being dragged to the Travel Series at the local civic center where documentary film makers and slide show toting world travelers would delight the locals with tales from around the world. Ah for the days before NatGeo.

Palin's series came in his post Monty Python but pre Fish Named Wanda time. Two episodes stick out tonight, one where he's tuning his little shortwave radio to listen to the BBC World Service while sailing the Indian Ocean. Sublime days when you needed that little passport to world news.

The other was his walking through the bird market in Hong Kong, and stopping to talk to a parrot. I once did a sketch with you; my partner was beating you on the counter.

Great Moments in Media Guide Reading

I kid you not -- changes made to protect the innocent are the position and opponents; don't even ask me what school:

"He began the year as the starter at [POSITION] and made 10 starts throughout the season. He started every game, except games against [OPPONENT] and [OPPONENT], which were the only games in which he did not play."

Geary's Guide

I'm not sure if I've commented in the past about James Geary's pair of books on aphorisms, but they are simply must reads. His first book, The World in a Phrase, is a brief history of the writing form and his next was an encyclopedia of them, Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists. The guide talks more about the individuals who came up with such pithy phrases as:

"I prefer the folly of enthusiasm to the indifference of wisdom" -- Anatole France

I regularly and unabashedly steal from Geary's Guide for many of my picked up #WordsOfTwisdom entries on my feed.

And that only 454 people, as of today, follow @JamesGeary is somehow criminal.

Sorry to Have Been Away

Long story. Not to be written here for some time. Trust that it will all work out. Cryptic? Yes. But I felt a note for followers to explain gaps in past days and probably future days are unavoidable for now.

Enjoy the Gruen

Much sadness in this space to discover that one of the greatest television series in the world, The Gruen Transfer, was being geoblocked from Australia. If you have not had the opportunity to see the show, it is Mad Men meets Crossfire -- a somewhat no-holds bared look into advertising.

Produced by the Australian Broadcasting Company, Gruen enters its third season this "winter" -- summer here in the states. Fortunately for the rest of the world, ABC has relented in the copyright based restriction during the Aussie elections. And, the show gets recast as the Gruen Nation, focusing on the political race.

You can watch episodes here for the next four weeks. Along with the dissection of ads by the creative directors of some of Australia's top firms, there's a good deal of insight into the Australian election -- which some Stateside politicos are saying might be a foreshadowing of our own in 2012.

I made an effort to save off season two, which was on iTunes, but lost large chunks of season one. It is available for sale on DVD from ABC, but you can also find a lot of it on YouTube. The host is Wil Anderson, a stand-up comedian by trade prior to Gruen (think younger but as hip Dennis Miller).

Before you think oh, well it's Australia -- Todd Sampson is one of the ad man regulars, as in creator of Earth Hour, winner of Titanium at Cannes for that and a Yahoo Chair. The discussion is frankly world class, and anyone with any shred of interest in advertising, branding and messaging should be viewing/downloading/harvesting these shows.

Something to be Said for Quiet

I know that there are plenty of times to be accessible, and I'd be a huge hypocrite with the desire for being social and staying concerned for golden hour response, but there is something to be said for being able to turn off the email, the iPhone and have time to think and recharge.

To that end, I fear another great thing about travel - the ability to be inaccessible - takes another step backward with in flight wifi.  Being able to disconnect from the borg in transit looks like it will be the next great degradation of travel.

Careful With Those Lists

As we assemble for SEC Media Day in Hoover, Ala., I'm watching news on the treadmill about the JournoList scandal. I use the word "scandal" in air quotes. At the end of the day, a group of people that should have realized that if you put your inside jokes and crude humor out on the internet -- even if its a private list of your friends -- eventually it will get out.

The same folks who LOVE to ask for huge email dumps of FOI should know better.

Read more here from the Atlantic and the Wall Street Journal.

I bring this up to remind colleagues in the SID field two things. First, should you really be commenting on your Facebook pages about political points of view? No names here, but a recent thread about the point of view of a particular cable news network. Second, there are a couple of lists out there, and in the past I've seen my share of rants against coaches, administrators and policies. Don't assume those lists might not someday surface just like the Journolist.

Take the same care with your digital record that you advise your student-athletes. Digital assets are easily duplicated and last forever.

Help Me Out, I'm a Simple Man

Dear NCAA interpretations committee:

If an institution prints a media guide - an object by rule that is not to be provided to a prospect - anything that is provided to that prospect or posted on-line must conform to the standing 208 guidelines.

If an institution does not print a media guide, the restrictions do not apply.

Having a hard time seeing how this is not effectively forcing all schools to drop printed media guides. Let me see - black and white crippled presentation on-line versus full-color all-interactive on-line "media" guides.

If I'm missing the point, PLEASE correct me.

As I've asked of several, and now will make the open question here, what happens when success occurs for a team that we've decided to abandon print for. A very real prospect, just like our men's golf run in 2009 to the finals. I'd say there is a very real need for a printed media guide that weekend, and we had every intention of formatting for the web with color, but if the events required it, make a 20 to 35 short run digital guides to service the media.

But since we didn't predict that future, we have two choices. Tell the Golf Channel and GolfStat "go print it off the website," which is antithetical to the concept of providing strategic sports media communications by inconveniencing them or committing a institutional secondary violation.

No one is really asking for altered formats, really, we simply wish to conform to the medium. Last time I checked, the internets were in full color, and it takes nothing to "save as" into grayscale for what goes on the USB key or on print - to the media.

My sense is that the goal was a level playing field from interpretations. This one tips the balance against sports where a considerable media contingent remains.

Sweat the Small Stuff

Students and colleagues occasionally get tired of my insistence on detail. What is the concern about that sport -- it's small; meaning not a lot of attendance or not a lot of moneyed backers. Relax, let that slide. What's the big deal about separating pages on a website? It's easier to hang it all on one page. Why are making that background the same, or using that font? It looks OK.

Ask any football coach -- what is the key to the game? Blocking and tackling. Where does it start? Up front on both lines. Basketball? Free throws. Fundamentals.

We accept that from our sports, but somehow I see and hear more and more from PR types that stats aren't a big part of the SID job any more. Not important. It's big picture, message, meaning. The view from 30,000 feet.

Really? Unless your Jackson Pollack, I'm pretty sure that every "big picture" started with a single brush stroke. And those that overlooked their color palate, didn't use a quality brush, neglected their technique -- well, they're paintings are available in the traveling road show at the local Holiday Inn this Friday and Saturday only.

No one starts out as the SID of a BCS football team. They begin with a "minor" sport, and I taught for two decades you must act as if your sport was the top grossing, most visible sport at your school. That is where you learn the basics, and yes, make your mistakes out of the harsh glare of the 24/7 limelight. One doesn't turn on the ability to grind and be serious -- it must be taught, and worked within a system.

Near the end of baseball season, we discovered an innocent mistake. I was mortified about it. One of our best hitters crushed the ball out of Baum Stadium, clearing our pretty substantial scoreboard as it exited. According to reports on Facebook, it just landed about an hour ago near West Fork.

I say we in a feeble attempt to say the media caught the error in our baseball guide. The height of the scoreboard in the book said 39 feet. The size of the batter's eye is 40x80. One quick glance at the reality of right center field at Baum revealed that one of the two numbers was wrong. The scoreboard is clearly taller -- maybe as much as 10 feet taller -- than the center field green monster.

Debate ensued. My guess is that years ago, when the scoreboard was installed, it was 39 feet tall. But in recent renovations, the board got another line of adverting. Then it got a new fascia with panels for Arkansas all-time accolades. Then a really cool brick-and-mortar finishing with stylish bats in a grill work for a new "George Cole Field at Baum Stadium."

If you look at the original video board within all that upgrade, it appears to be about a foot shorter than the eye -- the 39 feet and 40 feet. But now, it might be as much as 50 feet tall.

So am I calling out the current baseball SID? Absolutely not, he inherited that copy from a series of people whole had the slot for a year at a time. These mistakes happen, it's a small stat within a whole of 208 pages.

If anything, it is my fault as the overall publications coordinator -- even if the E is a shared one -- I'm the one that breezed over those pages cause "they don't change much each year." I'm embarrassed to say, they obviously did.

I partake in this self flagellation this morning as I seal up a bill; one for a company that I know has a peculiar way of putting the return address on the reverse. Put in the envelope wrong, and guess what -- you end up sending your check to yourself. And, I did.

That mistake cost me 43 cents as I have to tear open the envelope and get a new one. Plus the time to hand address the bill.

What in God's green acre does that have to do with public relations? Everything.

Details like using less PDFs on a website have a reason: because they make it hard for media to cut and paste from the individual pages with actual text, that they can't be read on the iPlatform and that those with disabilities can't have the image of a PDF turned into spoken word.

Every day, I make mistakes -- lots of them. Hard not to in the real-time world of on-line media. The bottom line on this one little oversight is this: the next time we hand a figure to that media person (or colleagues in his circle) will he accept the number as accurate, or will he think back to the height of the scoreboard?

This Was F-ing Brilliant

In a week that was very busy, missed the first go around of the FCC's indecency standard being struck down by the courts. The whole debate goes back to Bono's acceptance speech at the Grammys when he exuberantly declare it was "f-ing brilliant" to have won.

What the court ruled is Bono, Janet Jackson and other moments of "fleeting obscenity" are not actionable by the FCC (read: fines). Good news for all who deal with eight-second delay, other costs and the fear of live programing. You aren't quite as hostage to the good behavior of guests and the emotion of on-air talent.

Whether or not this is the end of civilization as we know it, I'll leave that to the battle between First Amendment absolutists and pro-family advocates.

Read more from the Washington Post.

Danger: Plaque Mine Ahead

NPR News -- No. Really. You didn't just say that Billy Nungesser, the president of the Plaquemines Parish board, was from "plack mine". Hey, I get that local names are often a surprise to national media -- and this isn't a southern thing either cause for God's sake, I still don't know how you get "woo-ster" out of that suburb of Boston.

And if Nungesser hadn't been a regular in the national news since he started calling out everyone that was screwing over his corner of the world, it might be forgiven.

It's three syllables -- pla-KUH-men -- folks; not two. Don't confuse with Calcasieu Parish where they have the sulphur mines. Perhaps they thought he was from some evil anti-Tooth Fairy place where little devil sprites place plaque mines in your mouth at night blow up into cavities for your molars.

On second thought, considering the hosing south Louisiana has been getting lately, perhaps the new pronunciation is correct after all.

Scary Stuff

As the media evolves, more and more of the locally or regionally based investigative reporting comes from born digital enterprises like YahooSports' national writers. Today we get another look into the seamy side of big money sports with the details of the Pump brothers' charity activities. Hard to explain in a short post, but I'd recommend all my college friends to check it out if for no other reason than being prepared in case you get a question about this:

This is also not the first time the Harold Pump Foundation has drawn scrutiny. Tie-ins between the foundation’s charity events and the Pumps’ annual coaching retreat – attended by athletic directors and many of the top college basketball coaches in the country – have brought criticism in the past.

The whole story is here.

Even Brilliant People Screw Up

First, I'm just not having a great deal of the problems I'm reading about on iPhone 4. That said, Apple's response has been arrogant and ill-advised. One quote from the Daily Mail says it all:

Analysts say Apple has created a public relations headache for itself by appearing to dismiss or ignore the problem, allowing a minor issue to be turned into headline news.

Wall Street Journal chimes in with this priceless quote from Allen Anderson with Landor Associates:

If they bury their heads in the sand, and don't engage in conversation and act in an arrogant way they're going to erode a bit of their brand.

It rarely, rarely is the mistake; it is the cover-up that causes lasting trouble.

Welcome to the Video Village

This somewhat dated Nielsen article that was cited in the previously blogged Creating Results entry deserved special notice. It is all about how content is king, and there's plenty to read in the April 2010 column.

If you have nothing to say, say in a way that is not interesting or compelling (note: I didn't say branded), it isn't going to get traction and you're performing check list PR or journalism. Yep, did that. Can check it off the list. Shows I tried. Move on to the next check list item.

Buried down the column is some more validation for the CoverItLive experience, and a really cool description: the video village.

Telecommunities comprise people who simultaneously watch TV and chat real time online about the program. During the Oscar telecast, 11% of people who watched the Academy Awards were logged onto the Internet, which represents about four times more simultaneous usage than normal.

Does that 11% number look familiar? Remember our predictor of 12% of the in venue attendance participating in the CoverItLive? Want some more scary coincidence numbers?

Telecommunity members who connected via Facebook during the Oscars were online for 76 minutes and watched 50% more of the broadcast than the average Academy Award viewer.

Recall the 79% over one minute latency and the average 48 minutes of on-screen participation for our spring blogs.