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It is probably not very often that a sports information director from a NCAA Division 1-AA football program, oops I mean FCS program, beats a prominent ESPN reporter with a story. After all, his job is to manage the release of information, right? Well it happened today as Idaho State University SID Frank Mercogliano reported the news on Facebook a full 10-15 minutes before ESPN's Joe Schad!

Well this trip got even more interesting...press conference for tonight apparently regarding Notre Dame football, and now New York Times is reporting Charlie Weis has been fired...can't believe I'm here witnessing this...

Frank is now sitting at the center of tonight's college football universe. Hopefully he will get to the presser and write about the experience on his Idaho State blog since he has already included the news on the school basketball page:

While the game is foremost on the minds of the Bengals, Idaho State is in the midst of watching a national media storm, with ESPN and other national media outlets having converged on South Bend to cover whether or not Charlie Weis, Notre Dame's head football coach, will be fired, despite having about $18 million left on his contract and the Fighting Irish going 6-6 this year after losing their last four.

Interesting times. The question is if this will pull the headlines away from Tigergate.

Although CBS Sports and ESPN have the lock on live Southeastern Conference (SEC) football game coverage. Comcast Sports Southeast (CSS) still has the rights for tape delay broadcasts (for now at least). But some things stayed in the family for the SEC for this year. When CSS play-by-play commentator Matt Stewart has to leave town to call Conference USA games for CSS, veteran and multiple EMMY Award-winner Bob Neal stepped into the booth alongside former University of Georgia quarterback Buck Belue to call the games.

The family connection? Bob is the father of Dave Neal, who calls live football action on the SEC Network for the early Saturday afternoon SEC contest each week.

This picture was taken in the Georgia Tech auxiliary TV booth as Neal and Belue were getting ready to record their open for the Saturday, November 28, 2009 game between Tech and UGA.

If you have watched a major sporting event for the last twenty or thirty years, Marty Aronoff was probably there, doing statistics for whatever announcer was calling the game. At the age of 71, Marty is till on top of his game. He was in Atlanta on Saturday, November 28, 2009 doing stats for Sean McDonough and Matt Millen for the ABC/ESPN broadcast of the University of Georgia - Georgia Tech game. I forgot to ask him if he was working the next day for Fox Sports Dick Stockton at the Tampa Bay - Atlanta game. Knowing Marty, he very well may have been.

Former Detroit Lions GM Matt Millen had color analyst duty alongside play-by-play announcer Sean McDonough for Georgia Tech's game against the University of Georgia on Saturday, November 28, 2009. This picture was taken in the primary TV booth before the game.

ABC/ESPN visited Atlanta on November 28, 2009 for the annual clash between the University of Georgia and Georgia Tech. In this picture, ABC/ESPN play-by-play commentator Sean McDonough is going over player information with Georgia's Hall of Fame Sports Information Director Claude Felton.

Georgia Tech's Bobby Dodd Stadium at Grant Field is sort of right next to Interstate 85 South in Midtown Atlanta. At nighttime, the skyline behind the stadium is absolutely beautiful. Although this picture from the November 28, 2009 Georgia - Georgia Tech game cannot do it justice, it might give you an idea of what I am saying.

The one sports movie that always made me cry was "Something for Joey." Now comes this awesome ESPN story, via Daryn Kagan, about the vision and courage of 12-year old Jake Olson and how he has been an inspiration for the USC football team this year.

There are so many blogs out there, some good and some bad. In the sports media arena, there are a few independent publications that are very good and the owners/publishers of those sites work very hard for little or no money. What little money there is to be made comes from ad revenue from Google ads and other ad networks on the sites. Of course, they only make money with Google  if people click on the ads. For this to happen the ads need to be relevant to visitors wants or desires.

An ad on Keith Thibault's Sports Media Journal not only caught my eye, it saved me over 45% on cat food for my children's cats for the next year!. How could this be? The well-timed answer is one that would make consumer advocate Clark Howard very happy. Actually, it would probably make him giddy

For people that do not own cats, it may seem bizarre that I would be writing about this. But for those of us that put up with them for the sake of our children, we know that Purina Cat Chow is NEVER on sale. Well except for this week as Publix Supermarkets is selling the dry food at 28% off. That in itself is a pretty good deal.

By happenstance, I was visiting the Sports Media Journal the other day and there was a banner ad for $2.50 off of a bag of Purina Cat Chow. Given that I, like others, are looking to stretch a dollar as far as I can in this horrid economy, I immediately clicked on the ad and was taken to the page with the coupon. To my delight, it was a stackable coupon, which means that it could be used in conjunction with existing sales prices. So of course I took advantage of this great deal and bought enough food for the next year (saving a boatload of money in the process), and albeit in a small way, helped support the hard work Keith puts into his site.

This last point is really what is important here. If you are visiting a site like Keith's Sports Media Journal or Ken Fang's Fang's Bites, don't be put off by the ads. They, and others, put a lot of effort into their work for little if no tangible return. While on the sites, you may see an ad or two that is actually relevant to your needs or desires. So why not see what is being offered by the advertisers, save yourself some money, and support their great work?

A few weeks ago, CBS College Sports play-by-play announcer Tom Hart wrote about the importance of the spotter and statistician to a game broadcast. What this former Comcast Sports Southeast (CSS) did not say is how lucky it is to have a full support crew available when calling games. You see, CSS also covers a "high school game of the week" in the Atlanta metro area. And believe you me, there is nothing harder than doing talent stats for a high school game broadcast. I learned this the hard way this past Friday night when I was called on to fill in for Newnan County's 9-7 upset of top-ranked Grayson High School (Number 14 in USA Today Super 25 poll).

Oh boy. Tiger Woods has had a really rough week. First he gets booed at a Stanford game. Then he get a masthead headline in the National Enquirer accusing him of an extramarital affair. The week ends, sort of, with a very bizarre car accident. When the news "broke" 12 hours after the incident, many sites (including this one) threw up the headline of Tiger Woods being "seriously injured."

Earlier this week, we wrote that Brent Musburger would be in Atlanta for tonight's game between Georgia and Georgia Tech. Well, oops, It is Sean McDonough amd Matt Millen.

I just saw this as I was ready head out. Check out ESPN and other new sources for developments.

Week twelve of the 2009 National Football League season is here. This weekend we find out if Ben Roethlisberger, in pressing to play against the Ravens, is stupid, crazy, or just messed up more than we thought by his recent concussion.

As Thanksgiving 2009 is upon us, I want to give thanks for all of my faithful readers and those who have graciously offered their talents, wisdom, and advice to help this site keep growing and gaining traction in the industry. But most of all I am thankful for my family, and the love and support they have given over what has been a rough 2009.

25 years ago on November 23, 1984, Doug Flutie led Boston College over Bernie Kosar's Miami Hurricanes, completing the 47-45 win with the incredible 48-yard "Hail Mary" pass that will forever go down in college football lore. CBS Sports was covering that game. Everybody talks about what happened with the players and coaches, but what about the CBS Sports production crew for that historic game? The game that some say changed television coverage of college football forever?

In a smaller college town like Athens, Georgia, football season is more than a sport played in the late summer and fall. It is the economic engine that keeps many downtown Athens businesses, hotels, and restaurants afloat for much of the rest of the year. It is also a sport that, in theory, provides much needed sales tax revenue for the Unified Government of Athens-Clarke County.

But something has changed this year as the Southeastern Conference (SEC) enters the first year of a 15-year television contract with CBS Sports and ESPN. Businesses in downtown Athens are hurting.

Sometimes I have to disagree with Ken Fang of Fang's Bites, who yesterday said the sports media was focusing on a nothing story of ESPN's Bill Simmons being banned from Twitter for two weeks because he crossed a line on Twitter. But there really is a story here.

This past August, ESPN instituted what many considered to be a horrible policy giving ground rules for how their employees used social media and social networking tools. They made it very clear that their behavior using these tools clearly reflected on the company.

At the time, I wrote that while it was not known how the policy and its language came to be, it is something that all companies need to institute to protect their brands, and to protect themselves in the case they took the drastic step of firing someone for their actions in the public space.

But what did Simmons do that crossed a line? He personally attacked a competitor and a competitor organizarion with tweets like this:

"WEEI's "The Big Show" was apparently ripping me today. Good to get feedback from 2 washed-up athletes and a 60 yr-old fat guy with no neck"

and this:

"Hey WEEI: You were wrong, I did a Boston interview today. With your competition. Rather give them ratings over deceitful scumbags like you."

and maybe, just maybe this:

"Thanks for a great LA signing! Highlight of tour: a porn actress (who couldnt be nicer) buying 4 books & turning the entire line catatonic."

Predictably, his fan base is in an uproar, threatening to never visit the ESPN site again if they did not let up on the poor man.

Frankly, these people do not have a clue and could care less about ESPN trying to manage their business and their brand, the only brand making money for Disney these days. However, it is indeed a tricky line that ESPN is toeing here because they are still "allowing" him to tweet about his book tour.

This "grounding" may just be what happens on a first offense under the policy, and it will be interesting to see where it goes from there. It will also be interesting to see how the ESPN Ombudsman addresses this (if at all) because this may be one area that Don Ohlmeyer is ill-equipped to address,

I encourage readers to visit my original story on the ESPN Policy, and read the article about managing social media risk that is linked to there.

Week eleven of the 2009 National Football League season is here, and the byes are done for the year. The big news this week was the Chicago Bears denying NBC Sports and Bob Costas prime time interviews for Football Night in America.

CBS Sports has the doubleheader this week, which means all the crews are working. The Jim Nantz lead A-Team has the New York Jets (4-5) at the New England Patriots (6-3)  in the second game of the double set, and then he and the crew have a short turn around to get ready for the Thanksgiving Day game between the Oakland Raiders (2-7) and Dallas Cowboys (6-3)

It was a Monday morning shortly after the Ann Arbor News announced it was shutting down print operations. On Ann Arbor radio station WTKA-AM, host John Bacon was on the air. Inside the studio with him was Sports Illustrated media writer Richard Deitsch. Deitsch was at Michigan participating in an almost year long fellowship program.

The two were discussing the sports news vacuum that the closing of the newspaper would create. On the phone, they had University of Michigan Sports Information Director Bruce Madej. What happened next was unexpected.

Tomorrow. the Ohio State Buckeyes travel to Ann Arbor for their annual love-in with the University of Michigan Wolverines. Although the game does not have the national impact is has in years gone by, it is still the "big game" for the schools and their respective fan bases. As such, the media from the two states will be there in force to cover the game. And sitting beside them in the press box will be credentialed bloggers.

Uga VII, the most recent mascot for the University of Georgia Bulldogs, passed away today after less than 2 full seasons in the job. When ESPN College Football Gameday rolled into Athens in September 2008, Uga, also known as "Loran's Best", made an appearance on the show.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution is reporting that Uga VII, the University of Georgia mascot since August 2008, has died of a heart attack. UGA VII, also known as "Loran's Best" is pictured below with Kirk Herbstreit during ESPN Game Day's visit to Athens last fall.

Some months ago, the Southeastern Conference launched a Twitter feed and started promoting content on their web site and on their Facebook page. The only problem is that they failed to include links, so followers had to guess where the content was located. This is not an isolated incident as ESPN's Joe Schad was guilty of the same "crime" today. So we will use him as an example of how to properly propagate content notices, and how to manage the risks around doing so.

Back in our November 4, 2009 edition of "Sports Media Best Practices", we talked about "Understanding Twitter Lists So You Can Leverage Them." One of the downsides discussed was what looked like the inability to add yourself to your own twitter lists. But there is a sort of non-intuitive way to do it. In this article, we will talk about why you want to add yourself to your own lists, and how to do it.

Seth Davis really scared me yesterday with this tweet:

"Siena was down 14 to a good Northeastern team with 7 minutes to play in first half, came back to win by 6. Now you understand my man-crush."

Late last week I noticed an addition to the ESPN.com web site menu. It was a drop down with direct links to blogs and the Ombudsman column. This looked like welcome addition as it has always been painful finding a direct link to the ombudsman column on the site.

This weekend was a rough one for men's basketball teams in the Western Division of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). On Friday night, Rider (1-0, 0-0 MAAC) upset then 19th ranked Mississippi State (0-1, 0-0 SEC) 88-74, knocking them out of the Top 25. The nest day, defending Ivy League Champ Cornell (1-0, 0-0 Ivy League) upended Alabama (0-1, 0-0 SEC) 71-67. Added in this mix was Auburn scoring 11 unanswered points to escape Niagara (0-1, 0-0 MAAC) 69-65 on Friday night.

Every week we watch college football and other games on various network outlets. But just how many people does it take to bring the game to your television screen?

The days of broadcast networks owning their own fleet of mobile production units. A long time ago, they outsourced this capital equipment. But there is a downside to that. When CBS Sports, Fox Sports, and ESPN are covering games, people walking by the truck "compounds" do not know, or may not know, who they are. So how does a sports network overcome the lack of branding?

Nothing was published this weekend as I was a bit busy. Saturday afternoon/evening was spent working the Auburn University - University of Georgia football game. Yesterday I was cloistered away in a chilly, dark room with a bug.

No, not the H1N1/Swine flu, but with the equipment, called the bug, that generates the scores and stats that appear at the top of your screen during a game. While I was not ill, there are definitely some symptoms from this type of bug that can cause problems.

Tomorrow on CBS College Sports, the 4th-ranked Horned Frogs of TCU (9-0, 5-0 Mountain West) host 16-ranked Utah (8-1, 5-0 Mountain West) at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth (TX) in a game with huge national implications. It is a safe bet that CBS College Sports has never had a game of this magnitude. Atlanta Tom Hart will be calling the play by play, Aaron Taylor has the analysis, and Lauren Shehadi is on the sidelines. Jon Norton will be producing the game, with Rick Beczynski in the director's chair.

Adam Zucker and "Mr. College Football" Tony Barnhart will anchor live studio coverage from the game site. The studio show starts at after the conclusion of the Navy - Delaware game, with kick-off scheduled for 7:30 PM ET.

A few weeks ago, Tom and I were talking about how important the statistician and spotter are to his on air success (and sometimes failures). He offered to write an article about it, and we are pleased to present it on the eve of this big game.

The People You Don't See or Hear are Key To a Successful Broadcast
by Tom Hart

The role of a television play by play announcer is simple. Call the play, identify the ball carriers and tackler, and if necessary give yardage and down and distance. Then get out of the way for your analyst to earn his money. Rinse, repeat, read a promo, then do it all again.

Typically the most quiet man in the booth is the most important. He may arrive carrying a laptop with personalized spreadsheet, a stack of post it notes and a pencil, or a dry erase board. In one college town I frequent the stat person uses a child's tear away magic pen set to write the stat, show it to the announcers, then lift the plastic sheet to erase the tablet.

Whatever the weapon, a good stat man adds helps the broadcast run smoothly. A great stat man enhances the broadcast more than HD and surround sound ever have. By listening to the conversation between the play by play and analyst, he can provide numbers to complement a story line or to drive home a point. This makes everyone look smarter. If there’s a mistake, quoting cinematic masterpiece Billy Madison, “we are all dumber for having heard that”.

Those scenarios are all too common in live television. For example, let’s revisit a Mountain West Conference matchup I called a couple of years ago.

The punter was having a great day, as difficult as that can be to picture. He was constantly booming spirals high into the thin mountain air, giving his coverage team plenty of time to get downfield and limit the opponents returns. Poor field position was the only reason he didn’t pin the others inside their 20 every kick.

Then he unleashed a boomer. Standing near his own 10 yard line he caught the ball flush and lifted a perfect spiral towards the clouds. A glance at the numbers guy was all he needed to be reminded to quickly calculate the distance. Employing a shoot first ask questions later mentality I told him exactness could give way to promptness on a long play.

“If we’re off by 1 or 2 yards it’s no big deal, just as long as your give me the number before we go to break”.

The number this time was 90! Wow! He really did crush it. But as soon as the words came out of my mouth I knew they were wrong.

At the break I removed my headset to talk to the stats man.

“Hey Chris, you know we’re counting yardage from the line of scrimmage today, not from where he kicked it, right?”

“Um, yeah. But you did pull a Burgundy.”

As in Ron Burgundy. He put the number in front of me and I read it without thinking. Could have been worse. I could have told San Diego to go scratch. But there’s the rub. As the announcer you need a critical eye to avoid mistakes, but you also have to possess a blind trust in the people you work with – especially the person in charge of providing real time game stats.

We laugh about it now, but it wasn’t so funny when a media critic blasted me in a column the next day.

A good statsman can be fantastic, while a simple mistake can cost the entire broadcast its credibility.

If he can identify trends that may be go unseen by the talent he can develop storylines with numbers.

Finally, he can help bring focus back to the game. This takes on added importance when discussion drifts. Perhaps there is a guest in the booth, or a topical discussion of Heisman hopefuls. Whatever the distraction, nothing pulls you back to the game and allows you to summarize the action like raw numbers.

There are more moving parts on a production team than even I know, and I call games for a living. In the booth it’s a delicate dance between voices in your head, scraps of paper, media guides and highlighters – in that order mostly.

That dance turns into a mosh pit sometime after the opening kick. Even when it should be calm during commercial breaks it’s just more of the same. When viewers are grabbing another drink or checking scores we’re doing exactly the same thing.

At the same time we’re also having discussions with the producer about upcoming packages, talking in the booth about team tendencies and emerging storylines, requesting specific stats to support our discussion and more. In this day and age we may also be text messaging, tweeting, or e-mailing to keep up with national storylines.

Another important support person is the spotter. During action spotters help identify players by pointing to a numbered box on a spotting board. It may sound simple, but next time you watch a game, try to count how many players are involved in a key play.

On a simple screen pass you may have the following:

Quarterback’s (1) pass tipped in backfield by defensive end (2) before it’s caught by by running back (3) who turns upfield before cutting back behind key block by an offensive lineman (4) on a linebacker (5), but before he can reach the end zone gets stripped of the ball by the free safety (6) and the ball is recovered by a cornerback (7).

Suddenly the spotter is pointing at numerous players and waving his hands in the air, it’s a game of non verbal communication that would rival the floor at the Exchange. Spotters wave imaginary flags, stage managers thrust index cards, Aaron Taylor practices his slide step, Akbar Gbjaja-Biamilia dances to ‘Thriller’.

Sometimes all of this happens at once.

Oftentimes the most difficult aspect of communicating within the broadcast booth is a simple question of real estate. If Imelda Marcos found room for her shoes in one closet, you would figure there would be plenty of room in a broadcast booth for the following, in no particular order: Play by play person, color analyst, spotter, Aaron Taylor’s Outland Trophy, talent stats, Akbar Gbjaja-Biamilia’s name plate, stage manager, etc.

But at most college stadiums I work at space is at a premium. It’s like planning a seating chart at Thanksgiving – someone is gonna get stuck at the kids table.

So when I entered the broadcast booth at Rice Eccles Stadium on set day for a primetime matchup between 10th ranked TCU and #11 Utah last year I was intent on thinking it through. This was a primetime showdown that would propel the Utes to a Sugar Bowl win against Alabama.

CBS producer Ken Mack encouraged me to set the booth to my liking, and personally promised that he would make sure every monitor would be exactly where I wanted it.

Not used to such a privilege, I simply went with the typical setup for our games. From left to right facing the field: Stat guy with stat monitor, me, my monitor, spotter, ISO monitor, Dan Fouts, Telestrator, Stage Manager. I was well on the way to diagramming this preferred setup when out of the corner of my eye I saw my partner ever so slightly raise an eyebrow.

Being the smooth communicator that I am, I inquired “What do you think Dan?”

“Well, I don’t want to step on any toes, but my old partner always had the stat guy between us.”

“Your old partner?”

“Yeah”, the former Charger continued, “Keith always said ‘the numbers guy is the most important man in here, you always want him in the middle of the action’.”

“Well, I think Keith would know” was my brief response.

Acquiescing to a Hall of Fame quarterback was easy enough, but as I told Dan, to go against the unrivaled voice of college football would be sacrilege. If Keith Jackson does it that way, then by golly I think it’s good enough for me.

Now if only Keith’s guy was available run stats that night.

About Tom Hart


Tom Hart is a veteran football and basketball play-by-play announcer for CBS College Sports Network, now in his fifth season. Hart graduated from University of Missouri after spending one season playing football at Quincy (Ill.) University. A native of Columbia, Mo., he was previously the television announcer for Georgia Tech football and host of the Atlanta Braves minor league show "Movin On Up".

Hart was the radio play-by-play voice of Wake Forest women's basketball for two seasons while working for ISP Sports in Winston-Salem, N.C. At ISP Sports, he served as a studio host for several schools' football and basketball coverage, including: Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, Tulane, Southern Miss, and Georgia Tech. Hart has also called ACC football, SEC baseball and basketball and Southern League baseball for CSS (Comcast/Charter Sports Southeast). Hart also spent nine summers calling minor league baseball for the farm clubs of the Diamondbacks, Cardinals, Blue Jays, White Sox and Mets, and is a two-time winner of the Southern League Broadcaster of the Year Award. Hart is one of four national media members who votes on the Associate Press college football poll. He currently resides in Atlanta with his wife and two children.

After taking a bye week ourselves last week (i.e. not posting the week 9 assignments), we are back with the week ten broadcast assignments for the 2009 National Football League season. Of course, because of the timing, we are not including last night's NFL Network game between da Bears and the 49ers. We think Jay Cutler wishes nobody knew the game was on the schedule.

For this Yankee (or as they say in the South - Damn Yankee), the start of the college football season in Athens, Georgia never really feels like football season. Until recently, the early games at Sanford Stadium were against no-name teams and started at 1:00 in the afternoon, in 95 degree temperatures, and no shade. It was a far cry from youthful September afternoons going to games at at Michie Stadium at West Point, Andy Kerr Stadium at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York, or the old Taylor Stadium at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Nothing said football like a crisp autumn chill in in the air and the beauty of the changing leaves.

As I would sit in stands for these University of Georgia games (the only games one could easily get cheap tickets from scalpers), I would wonder why they would not play these games at night. The weather would be cooler and people might not leave the games as early as they did to get out of the heat. After all, fellow-Southeastern Conference (SEC) school LSU is known for their night games and the atmosphere around the games.

Fifteen years later, things have changed and it is driven by the new ESPN and CBS Sports television contract with the SEC. How much of a change? This will be the first time in the modern lighting era at UGA that four of their home games will be played at night, and the most since the five played in 1943.

You have to go back to the 1940's for that tally because the stadium lights, which came out from the famous English Boxwood Hedges at the time, were installed at field level in 1940, and removed in 1964. According to one native Athenian I talked to, the reason they were taken out was so that the field would no longer be used by Clarke Central High School for their Friday night games.


Now with the new TV contract, times and things have changed. When the current lights were installed in 1982, a rule was put in place that UGA would only play one night game a year. This rule was later changed to two night games a year. In addition, legendary UGA Coach and Athletic Director Vince Dooley had a rule that no night game could be started after 7:05 PM or so.

And it is fitting how this ties into ESPN's selection of the Auburn - UGA game this week and the Kentucky - UGA game next week.

In 1995, ESPN wanted to start the Auburn - UGA game at 7:30 PM or so. Dooley put his foot down and said absolutely not. So the game time was set to about one minute before Dooley's line in the sand, and the game went on the air.

This week's game will start at 7:00 PM, which would easily fit into Dooley's old rule. But now the SEC Contract with the networks rules, so next week's game will start at 7:45 PM. Dooley's successor as Athletic Director, Damon Evans, does not have they say that Dooley did at the time. Right now the line in the sand for Evansa is that there will be no Thursday night games in Athens.

So how does this tie into next week's home game against Kentucky? If you go back to 1940, the first night game at Sanford Stadium, played on October 26, 1940, was against Kentucky. The end result was a 7-7 tie, a result Georgia cannot have this year to keep their bowl hopes alive if they do not beat Auburn on Saturday.

ESPN announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Spring Editora, a leading Brazil-based magazine publisher, to launch Revista ESPN, a monthly, Portuguese-language version of ESPN The Magazine. The new publication will be built around locally relevant editorial content customized by Spring Editora, to satisfy the interests of Brazilian sports fans. Revista ESPN will have cover features and stories that are unique to the market, and will also include content generated by ESPN The Magazine.

O Brasil vai ganhar uma versão própria da revista ESPN. No próximo dia 10, a Spring Editora lançará a primeira edição brasileira da publicação, que chega às bancas com tiragem de 50 mil exemplares, periodicidade mensal, circulação nacional, e traz como reportagem de capa um perfil exclusivo do Pelé, considerado o “atleta do século”.

Victor Hugo is credited with once opining that "Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age." I do not know if this applies in the case of ESPN anchor Linda Cohn, who turns 50 today.

One of the more innovative web development interfaces that has come along in recent years is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). The use of AJAX allows web developers to dynamically change content on a web page without having to refresh the entire page in a web browser. There are divisions in the the web developer community on the downsides of using AJAX from a usability standpoint. So with that in mind, let's talk about a big issue associated with the use of AJAX as it may impact web sites: usability and data presentation.

This discussion will focus on two web sites: si.com and our web site. These two sites are related in that both sites use AJAX to present basketball information. SI.com uses it to choose and display scores on a page. Our site uses it to present the television broadcast schedule databases.

The first issue is usability and data presentation. Two years ago, I made the conscious decision to go with an AJAX-based presentation of the the TV schedules. The reason was two-fold.

The first was as a proof of concept demonstrating how information stored and managed in IBM Lotus Notes and Domino could be easily integrated into other web sites at a fraction of the cost that some organizations are spending to do something similar. In this case, it was the NCAA. They had spent considerable sums of money on an IBM WebSphere Portal solution that was/is woefully inadequate in their data presentation. Instead of going into deep discussion of that here, you can read "When Bad Portals Happen to Good Organizations" over on the Business Controls Caddy.

The second was to make the access to the information as user-friendly as possible. By using AJAX, I was able to allow people to see data on a single screen without scrolling and/or without having to go through multiple page loads. In my use of AJAX, I only have to worry about the "redraw" of one section (i.e. div tag"). However, last year I made a subtle change on the basketball schedule presentation (not done this year yet). This change was not only to refresh the schedule information, but to display the school/conference logo and name when a specific school or conference was selected for display. This meant that if the presentation was to be accurate, I had to redraw two sections of the screen to match.

This is where the si.com web site comes into play. When I opened the story on FIU's loss to North Carolina last night, there was a "FanNation Game Flash" score banner at the top of the page displaying the Top 25 scores:

If you change the drop down to show you America East scores from last night, you get the Albany - Syracuse score as expected:


But what happens when you pick a conference that had no games that night? You might expect it to display "No games scheduled." But this is not the case, as you the header changes to reflect the conference selected, but the scores are not removed:


Is this by design, or a coding oversight? If the former, you need to ask why that approach was taken. If the latter, you have to ask if they did not think through this particular use case, or they just did not do thorough testing.

This is not to say this type thing does not happen a lot. It happens to all developers, including me. You might think you have every angle covered, but your end users will always find something you did not think of in your design, development, and testing.

So What Does This Mean To You?

If your organization is developing a web site for internal (Intranet) or external (Extranet and or Intranet), you need to bring in actual users from the stakeholder communities to give you guidance, feedback, and usability testing. There are a number of questions that need to be addressed, including:

• You need to look at performance issues for the users. A web site my look all cool, jazzy, and hip on your desktop, but what happens with the users at the end of the pipe?
  
  
• What if they have disabled JavaScript? Is your design deprecated enough to handle that scenario?
  
  
• What if they are still on dial-up for Internet access? How will the site perform in that case?
  
  
• If you are using AJAX and they have to use a screen reader, will they still have access to the data? If not, will they abandon your site in favor of one that meets their needs?

We wrestle with those issues every day for this site, and that is why we do a lot of test-bed/sandbox type initiatives on here. But there is one down-side to that, which applies to all web sites in general:

If users are having problems using your web site, they will almost NEVER tell you. They will just leave, tell their friends how bad their experience was, and never come back.

This happened to CBSSports.com last year. During severe weather all up and down the East Cost and Central states, there were huge performance hits on their Fantasy Football site during the Sunday Night Football game. The message boards and Twitter was abuzz with users complaining and dissing the site/brand. But did anyone think that the problem was not internal to CBS Sports, and that it had to do with the Internet infrastructure as a whole? Did any of them contact CBS Sports to ask them about the problem. The answer is no on both counts (as we verified with the CBSSports,com later).

You see, users do not care about issues with the wiring and plumbing. They just care that the site/tool they are using is behaving poorly. And that is what/who they blame.

Is your brand worth that risk?

Interested in learning more?

If you would like to talk to us about how we can work with you on these and other business process issues, both technical and non-technical, you can email us at infoATthecayugagroupDOT.com (replacing the AT and DOT of course) or call us at 706-363-0299.

The 2009 - 2010 College Basketball season kicks off tonight, ESPNU has three games including Isiah Thomas's collegiate coaching debut against North Carolina and Syracuse trying to rebound from their exhibition loss to cross-town Division II rival Le Moyne College. The Big Ten Network tips off with Alcorn State visiting The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

ESPN has built a fairly impressive web platform. Like others, I do not particularly care for the new userface too much. But I do love ESPN360.com to catch games I cannot otherwise see. I do not, however, like bait and switch tactics. I do not like being told to go to ESPN360 to watch a game they KNOW I cannot see because of blackout restrictions.

Athens, GA (Nov 7, 2009) - The following is the first cut of the 2009 - 2010 Women's College Basketball Television Broadcast Schedule. This is the companion to the 2009 - 2010 Men's College Basketball Television Broadcast Schedule published on October 28, 2009.

The 2009 - 2010 Men's College Basketball TV Schedule Database has been updated to include the full slate of Mountain West Conference games. Take a gander and if you see any teams and/or games missing, be sure to let us know!

The women are coming soon, I promise!

Since the launch of this site on November 6, 2007, we have experienced growth as most sites do. Before going into specific demographics, here is what the year over year growth as a percentage looks like from November 6, 2008 to November 6, 2009.

Two years ago today, Eye on Sports Media was started as an experiment. Our company, The Cayuga Group LLC, was looking for some data points as to the effectiveness of social media starting outside a cocoon we in the IBM Lotus Software community have come to refer to as "The Yellow Bubble."

As an IBM Business Partner, we wanted to look at the strengths and weaknesses of Google Blogger as a web content management tool compared to comparable tools offered in the IBM Lotus Software toolkit. We also wanted to see if there was any truth to the notion that lots of content equaled huge Google Ads revenue as being touted by "pundits" around the web.

The 2011 Men's Final Four will take place at Reliant Stadium in Houston, Texas. Today the NCAA revealed the new logo for the event, and it is a bit spacey. It is not clear why they went with this theme as the space program has been in decline since Houston first hosted the NCAA Final Four in 1971.

NFL Latino tiene una gran noticia para todos aficionados Latinos de la NFL: ¡El lanzamiento del concurso, Tu Pasion!

Durante este concurso puedes inscribirte y subir photos o videos al sitio de NFL Latino demonstrando la passion que tienes para el futbol Americano hasta el 22 de Noviembre 2009.

One person we hear from a lot here at Eye on Sports Media is NBC Sports media relations director Adam Freifeld. Wait, that is now Senior Director, Comunications, NBC Universal Sports & Olympics, as NBC Sports has announced his promotion. Adam is pictured below in a fun picture with now-retired NBA analyst Bill Walton. Adam has this posted on his Twitter profile, so it was perfect to use here.

Syracuse University (SU) is probably wishing they had veteran public relations professional and SU alum Chris McCloskey (SU '93) on hand after last night's embarrassing exhibition loss to Le Moyne College. But McCloskey had other things on his plate. Today, NBC Sports announced that McCloskey, former Executive Vice President, Communications, Arena Football League and nine-year veteran of the NFL's communications department, has joined NBC as Vice President, Communications, NBC Universal Sports & Olympics.

Here is the press release issued by NBC Sports this afternoon.

MCCLOSKEY JOINS NBC SPORTS

NEW YORK- November 4, 2009- Chris McCloskey, former Executive Vice President, Communications, Arena Football League and nine-year veteran of the NFL's communications department, has joined NBC as Vice President, Communications, NBC Universal Sports & Olympics.

"Chris is a smart, strategic thinker who is known for building strong relationships with partners and the media," said Mike McCarley, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Promotion and Communications, NBC Universal Sports & Olympics. "He brings a wealth of experience and a strategic approach to this position. We are fortunate to have him join the NBC Sports team."

McCloskey will serve as the primary media contact for NBC's Olympic coverage, NBC's "Football Night in America" studio show, Notre Dame football, golf and the NHL. McCloskey will report to McCarley and begin his duties immediately.

McCloskey recently served as a brand strategy consultant focused on communications and sports marketing for a number of clients, including Phillips-Van Heusen and NBC Sports. He is currently an adjunct professor at Iona College's Hagan School of Business where he teaches a course on sports and entertainment communications strategy.

Many of the skills McCloskey utilized during his six-year AFL tenure were learned while serving for nine years in the National Football League's communications department. While at the NFL, McCloskey conducted Super Bowl press conferences, supervised all media services at the NFC Championship Game and NFL Combine, and created publicity campaigns for the players attending the NFL Draft.

McCloskey oversaw all communications elements at the AFL and dramatically increased its media coverage, which contributed to a nearly 40 percent increase in attendance, a six-fold increase in television exposure and a doubling of franchise values.

McCloskey resides in Darien, Conn. with his wife, Renie Anderson, and their two daughters Callie and Kate.

Perhaps the best headline after last night's stunning, and I mean STUNNING, 82-79 upset of the 25th-ranked Syracuse Orangemen by cross-town NCAA Division II Le Moyne College comes from Sean Kirst of the Post-Standard: "At the Carrier Dome, hell freezes over."

Twitter has added a new feature that should have been available a long time ago: the ability to create lists of people that you want to segment from your regular Twitter feed. Why is this important? Because it allows you to immediately focus in on specific information you need, without having to wade through pages and pages of inane tweets you could care less about, but allow you to still follow your friends.

As colleague Chris Miller has pointed out over on The Social Networker, there are limitations on Twitter's implementation of lists that foster true collaboration. But as a personal tool, they have already paid huge dividends in getting information, finding additional contacts to follow, and saving time. The one big failure point in lists for me is the inability, so it appears, to target tweets to specific lists. Why is this important? Because information intended for a subset of people you follow may not be of interest to a lot of people that follow your tweets.

Here is a list of some, but not all, of the pros and cons of using twitter lists.

Pros

Ability to subset your lists to follow certain segments easier.
One of the big challenges in using Twitter has been that it is very difficult to hone in on specific people without clicking through many layers of tweets or many levels of the "following" lists. This especially frustrating because what Twitter presents in their core user-interface (UI) is not user friendly at all, because lists can grow exceedingly large and cumbersome to use.


Ability to follow peoples tweets without having to follow them formally

You probably have a lot of friends and colleagues you want to follow for personal reasons, and others you follow just to to see what they are saying (i.e. a watch list). This can make it difficult to manage your main feed. With Twitter lists, you can do this without cluttering up your main feed. Instead of having to maintain separate twitter accounts, you can manage from a single interface.


Ability to share lists with other people if you choose
With Twitter lists, you have the option of keeping your lists private. This makes sense if you want to add a level of obfuscation* to keep the people you are following "secret", as it is difficult to navigate big lists. However, you can also share the lists. This is a great way to attract followers and visitors that might not otherwise know about you.

*obfuscation
tr.v. ob·fus·cat·ed, ob·fus·cat·ing, ob·fus·cates

1. To make so confused or opaque as to be difficult to perceive or understand: "A great effort was made . . . to obscure or obfuscate the truth" (Robert Conquest).

2. To render indistinct or dim; darken: The fog obfuscated the shore.

Source: The Free Dicionary

Cons

Inability to target tweets to lists

It would be nice to target tweets to specific lists. However you cannot, and this is a big hole in the Twitter lists model. If this were available, the tool would be an even bigger winner. An important note here is that is you have someone on a list and they are not following you, they would not even see the messages if you could target them.

Inability to block people from adding you to lists

This is a biggie because you want to have some level of controls over who is "using" you on their lists. While it may be great to have someone like Linda Cohn following your main Twitter feed or adding you to one of their lists, you may not want to be on the list of a spammer or unacceptable group/individual. This may be important to you if are concerned with personal brand management.

Inability to Add Yourself to Your Own Lists

If you are maintaining private lists, there is no need to add yourself to your lists. But if you are creating lists for others to follow, they do not see you in the list. This is not good from a marketing perspective, and you can read more about this over on Chris Miller's "The Social Networker" blog.

UPDATE (Nov 19, 2009): There is a quirky way to add yourself to your own lists, and the steps are outlined here.

No Collaboration

As a company that focuses in the collaboration space, this is another biggie: There is no way to create and maintain and community managed list. As a result, you have multiple lists with overlapping content and similar (if not the same) names. Again you can read more about this over on Miller's blog.

Inability to Nest Lists

It would be nice to be able to have smaller lists like "ESPN NFL On-Air Talent" or "ESPN College Hoops Talent" that can be maintained separately and included in multiple master lists such as "Sports On-Air Talent" and/or "NFL On-Air Talent." This Visio diagram gives a visual example (click on image to see full resolution):




Again, you might ask why this is important. Very simply, it is always much easier to manage people in one list than have to deal with multiple lists.

Inability to Remove People Directly From Lists

If you are looking at one of your lists and want to remove someone, there is no "remove from list" command. You have to open their profile and remove them from there. THEN you can go back to your list and manage more people being followed. This is just too many clicks to efficiently manage a list.


So Who Has Eye on Sports Media Added to Lists?

I have created a number of lists that are still under development. It is a long painstaking process to create these lists because of the cumbersome process of going through our list of followers and followees to determine who to add to what lists. But despite the cons listed above, Twitter lists can be a very effective tool in your belt if you understand the limitations going into the process.

If you are a Twitter user (or not), here are some of the lists you might want to check out and follow.

@IOnSportsMedia Twitter Lists

List name	Following
@IOnSportsMedia/hockeybloggers	1
@IOnSportsMedia/sportteamowners	1
@IOnSportsMedia/sportsbloggers	5
@IOnSportsMedia/sportsmediabloggers	3
@IOnSportsMedia/mediarelationscontacts	23
@IOnSportsMedia/sportswriters	17
@IOnSportsMedia/onairsporttalent	97
@IOnSportsMedia/tvproductionstaff	2
@IOnSportsMedia/prosportsleagues	1
@IOnSportsMedia/sportsmediawriters	4
@IOnSportsMedia/collegefootballcoaches	2
@IOnSportsMedia/sportsbusinesswriters	3
@IOnSportsMedia/espnmediarelations	2
@IOnSportsMedia/bracketologists	1
@IOnSportsMedia/collegesids	1
@IOnSportsMedia/collegeconferences	9

Interested in learning more?

If you would like to talk to us about how we can work with you on these and other business process issues, both technical and non-technical, you can email us at infoATthecayugagroupDOT.com (replacing the AT and DOT of course) or call us at 706-363-0299.

Jenn Brown is has now found her proper role a contributing reporter for ESPN College GameDay. A couple of days ago we reported that she was promoting herself as the co-host of the show. She has now changed her web site to reflect this. Now all her California-based handlers need to do is add the privacy policy as required by California law.

In yesterday's case study, Resize Images Before Using in Press Releases, we talked about the problem of hugely inflated file sizes when organizations and people inadvertently resize logo images AFTER inserting them in Microsoft Word documents.

Today, we are going to follow up on that thought and expand the scenario a little bit. We are going to talk about the use of unnecessarily large images in documents, combined with using those images to convey important information that for all practical purposes is unusable by the document readers, especially those with vision disabilities.

Sports media organizations, leagues, and teams often make simple mistakes in how they use technology to distribute and share information. With all the current rage/focus on social media tools like Twitter and Facebook, people all too often make silly mistakes or misuse traditional technology in ways that make any attempts at using social media meaningless, and make the work of external stakeholders more time consuming and expensive.

I usually tend to upload stories from this site to Bleacher Report. This time I am doing the reverse, as the subject story (Under Fire, UGA Coach Mark Richt Seems To Be Wearing a "Kick Me" Sign) is more a college football story than a media story.

Jenn Brown is a contributing reporter for ESPN College GameDay. That is her official role as confirmed by ESPN media relations. However, she does not see put that way on her official web site. Much as she did when she was hired by Showtime Sports for Inside the NFL last year, she is publicizing herself as "Co-Host" of ESPN College GameDay.

As we have reached week eight of the 2009 - 2010 NFL Season, I thought it might be interesting to look at what games each of Fox Sports' markets have been getting this year. It would be nice to do this for CBS Sports as well, but they do not publicly release this information.