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– Posted on December 5, 2011Posted in: Sports, Video Games
Sports Archive
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Business Insider Thoroughly Researches Musical Tastes
Ariel Sandler:
Sounds like Lions’ fans would prefer listening to the new Chrysler commercials on continuous loop than this. But thorough research has concluded people do, in fact, like Nickelback.
Did you know they are the second best-selling foreign act in the United States this past decade? Behind The Beatles?
Yup, because foreign act recording sales rankings constitute “thorough research.” I bet if I thoroughly researched this enough, I could determine that people prefer to not listen to shitty music.
via Business Insider.
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ESPN on Xbox Live updated for the ‘College Bowl Showdown’
– Posted on December 16, 2010Posted in: Sports, Technology, Video Games
I would totally be excited about this if I cared at all about college football. Sounds like a fun way to watch the games on the Xbox 360 – by competing with your friends and winning some stuff.
ESPN on Xbox Live updated for the ‘College Bowl Showdown’ | Joystiq.
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I Hope To God This Is The Future of Video Gamers
– Posted on July 14, 2010Posted in: Video Games
Quite a lot of mainstream press has been given to how video games contribute to the downfall of our youth and society. While I won’t argue that there’s a sizable collection of mouth breathers on something like, say, Xbox Live, there’s still hope for upstanding gamer youth yet.
Witness this video featuring Quake Live player, Shane “rapha” Hendrixson:
It’s a long video, but I guarantee you that once you start watching it you’ll be captivated. I had no intention of viewing past a couple minutes to get the gist of it, but found myself sitting through the entire video.
Young Mr. Hendrixson here has the articulation, poise, and humility that rivals even some of our best professional athletes.
I’m not trying to exaggerate here. I’ve seen my share of sports analysts and athletes give interviews and rapha’s performance in the above video leapfrog the vast majority of them. Just listen to him break down the mechanics and strategies of a high level Quake duel. It’s fascinating stuff that really brings to light how much strategy and planning that goes into the game, on top of the pure hand-eye coordination skills needed to execute them.
Compare this with any postgame interview of an NBA or NFL game. When was the last time you actually heard anything insightful from those “interviews?”
The kid even has the humility and maturity to acknowledge his opponent in a non-patronizing way (17:40 in the video) with no prompting from the interviewer. I’d wager that a good number of pro athletes including LeBron James could stand to learn something from rapha here, especially after last week’s debacle with “The Decision.”
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What Happened To Passionate Lakers Fans At Staples Center?
– Posted on June 4, 2010Posted in: Sports
Indulge me a bit for a semi-off topic post.
I really wish you could pick what kind of people you sat with when you buy tickets to a live NBA game. It’s something I think I would actually pay a small fee for the option to pick the type of crowd you are surrounded by.
I don’t know about you but I love to be around rowdy and fun people at sporting events especially if it’s a game deep into a playoff run. For me, the biggest reason to pay the money to attend a live game is to be around the energy of passionate fans who root for the same home team as you do. I want people to be heckling the opposing team and their fans, standing and cheering at the right times, and throwing out creative chants. If you don’t want to do any of those things, why bother spending the $80-$500 to come out to the game? You’d most likely get a better view at home on your TV plus you get announcers. (Obviously this argument is less effective the better your seats are. I’m assuming a ticket price that average people can afford.)
I’ve been very fortunate to be able to attend two Laker playoff games this year (1 game at each of the Suns and Jazz series) and Game 1 of the NBA finals last year. Now, I had seats in the upper deck because that’s all I could afford. You’d think that’s where the “true” Laker fans would be. The blue collar, rowdy “Laker Faithful” who saved up all year to be able to root for their team during go time. You’d think it’d be a riot zone up there with the heckling and potential drunken skirmishes with enemy fans.
You’d be wrong.
All three playoff games felt like a routine regular season game. There were empty seats around me every time. People didn’t even bother show up to a Western Conference Final game. Everyone around me acted nonplussed for most of the game. I felt almost embarrassed to stand up and actually show emotion after important plays. I was worried I’d have to turn around and apologize to people behind me for having the gall to obstruct their view as if it were the opera.
Now, there were definitely pockets of fun going around the upper deck of the arena. Dudes yelling random shit out, heckling the players, chanting “WE WANT BOSTON,” going nuts after dunks. It just wasn’t happening around me.
Which takes us back to my idea for crowd-type choice when buying tickets. Everyone wins out here. People like me who want to be passionate can be around each other and feed off the energy. The opera-goers can have their sedentary experience with the families who don’t want their kids hearing bad words. The Lakers/Ticketmaster make an extra $5 per person for matchmaking. (It’d be great for this to be a free service, but we know those bastards will invariably want moar moneyhats.) It’d just take some extra web/database tweaking on the ticket sales end.
Bill Simmons over at ESPN seemed to have a different experience than I did. But then again, he had comped tickets in the lower level. Maybe it’s a completely different experienced down there. Hopefully I’ll get to sample it one day when I make my first million. Maybe the upper deck at Staples for the Celtics/Lakers Finals going on now is everything I wanted a game experience to be. For now, though, I think I’m going to just stay home until either A) I get rich enough to sit with the celebrities or B) they let me choose what kind of crowd I want to sit with.
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Pottycast #6 – Fantasy Baseball and Football Preview
– Posted on June 30, 2009Posted in: podcast
Fantasy sports expert Tan Nguyen joins me this episode for some fantasy baseball talk and an early look at fantasy football. We also take a look at The Dirty Projectors.
NOTE: This show was originally recorded a week ago, but due to some setbacks could not be posted until now. The Dirty Projectors show at the Troubadour is now sold out and some of the closer situations have been settled in the interim.
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EA Brings Fantasy Football To The Xbox 360 / Playstation 3
– Posted on June 16, 2008Posted in: Sports, Video Games
EA’s looking to get into the fantasy sports market with the upcoming NFL season. The company’s advantage in the crowded fantasy sports marketplace is their ability to integrate functionality with game consoles.
And integrate they shall!
Although pricing has been unannounced, EA will be selling software on Xbox Live and the Playstation Network for users to follow their fantasy football teams. (the web-based game will be free)
The main three advantages for the game console applications are:
- Life drafting on the big screen if you have a local draft party – the game will upload the results to the web
- Easy import of your fantasy team into Madden 09
- Live scoring/team tracking
None of these features are revolutionary, but if the price is right it could be worth it if you have everyone over for a draft party. Importing your team into Madden should be possible to do manually and the live scoring is nice, but having to constantly flip from your console input to the TV input is going to be slightly annoying – I’d rather just have a laptop or iPhone nearby.
EA’s biggest hurdle is going to be convincing existing players/leagues to relocate from ESPN/Yahoo/Sportsline/etc. to the EA servers. With the main draw of the product essentially being a TV-output of the draft, I’m not so sure people make the leap.
View some more screenshots [easports.com]
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Top Ten Entertainment Experiences Of 2007
2007 was pretty lopsided for me in terms of where my quality entertainment experiences came from. It was a phenomenal year for video games. Perhaps the best single year of new releases for the medium since 1997, if not better. Conversely, there just wasn’t much there in terms of great music. Some solid releases, sure, but nothing that remain etched in my mind as transcendent. Live shows definitely resonated better for me than the album experience did. For sports, I’ll preface my conclusion by saying that I only regularly follow the MLB, the NFL, and the NBA. Besides the lone entry on the list, there were no other truly memorable moments for me this year. Television was fairly solid, despite the writers strike putting a damper on my mood late in the year. Comics had some pretty high moments, and also some pretty “meh” ones as well. Finally, 2007 was just not my year for movies as I wasn’t motivated to seek out much other than the obvious films. While some were fairly entertaining, I just couldn’t argue for their inclusion on this list over the items picked.
Without any more ado, here’s my top ten entertainment experiences of 2007:
Read the rest of this entry »
How Lebron’s Choice Is Like An Apple Keynote
Tonight, LeBron James will reveal which NBA team he will play for in a one-hour television special on ESPN. “LeBron’s Choice” some are calling it. I’d prefer not to, if only for the disturbing word association it invokes to a film about a unfathomable decision.
Then again, it kind of is a no-win situation for Lebron isn’t it? Choose to stay at home in Cleveland and he gets railed for running to stand still. Choose to go anywhere else and he becomes Ohio’s Judas for All Eternity.
It’s truly amazing that no one has gotten advance knowledge of his final decision, especially in this day and age of twitter, SMS, and instant broadcast media. In fact, one could say LeBron’s been almost Apple-like in keeping his most valued secret. (Well, prior to this year’s BarPhone scandal anyway.)
Think about it, how much speculation does the internet generate before every Apple keynote nowadays? It’s a goddamn free for all out there. Anything within reason gets blogged, tweeted, shared, much like all the different free agent scenarios thrown about with LeBron the past week. Why do we do this?
Because we love this shit.
We love speculation and we love drama. It’s in our DNA as red-blooded humans. We eat it up. It’s fun to analyze every little clue thrown to us. We’ve even made pseudo stars out of the best “detectives” out there. I’m sure Brian Windhorst over at the Cleveland Plain dealer has massively increased his audience lately, becoming the Jon Gruber of the sports media world.
Do you remember what Apple revealed at keynotes prior to the iPhone announcement in 2007? Yeah, neither do I. How about E3’s before the Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and Wii were announced in 2006? Mmmhmm.
Now, we expect the spectacular announcment every year during those shows. We want the circus of rumors, gossip, and speculation to culminate in an orgy of event live tweeting and blogging. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if the planned TV announcement special becomes the norm for any superstar free agency decision in the future. As American Idol and reality TV have proven over the years, we’re willing to sit through “results” shows where we watch 59 minutes of fluff to get to content that could be over with in one minute. Why wouldn’t LeBron do what he did? There’s already a precedent for it out there.
Personally, as someone who doesn’t have a particular rooting interest in where LeBron goes, I kind of want him to go somewhere else. I want the NBA landscape to be changed. I want to participate in the avalanche of Twitter posts and comments troll hate. More importantly, I want my fascination over this dog and pony show to have been for something. Because what’s shittier than sitting through an Apple keynote only to find out that they’re just selling faster Macs?