Football
Thursday, October 11, 2007
So Confusing
The Boston… Yanks
I doubt they’d take that name today.
Friday, July 27, 2007
The Vanishing Vick
The allegations against Michael Vick aren’t just forcing him to miss out on football, but his name is being erased from all products baring his name. Nike suspended their contract (no pay) with Vick and Reebok stopped selling Vick jerseys.
Upper Deck also made an announcement that they were not going to include Vick cards in any future football card sets, and that they were stopping the sale of any Vick merchandise on their website, namely autographed memorabilia.
I wonder if any of this will actually put a premium on Vick products. He still has fans out there, and there are still those that will not condemn anyone until due process has taken place. Any new Vick product that gets pulled will be available in very limited supply, at least for now. Any possible demand could create an interesting market.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Caption Watch
From the did-they-do-that-on-purpose department.
This is the current photo and caption on Sportsline right now:
Giggity.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Be Like Mike
Not Jordan, you’re never going to be like him. But Michael Vick? Maybe you could swing that.
To help get you started is the Ron Mexico Name Generator. Learn more about Ron Mexico.
Oh, I’m Buster Italy, in case the legend ever gets told to you.
Tuesday, December 14, 2004
NFL and NFLPA Ink Exclusive Deal with EA Sports
ESPN is carrying the story about EA Sports signing an exclusive rights deal with the NFL and NFLPA. What this means is that team names, logos, uniforms and stadiums along with player names and likenesses are EA Sports-only now. Contrary to what some are writing it doesn’t mean it’s Madden-only, just EA-only, as EA Sports also makes NFL Street (under “EA Sports Big”).
Personally, I’ve always been a Madden fan. I skipped last season for the first time in a long time, but now that EA added support for Xbox Live and all of my friends picked it up, so did I. The game has some nice improvements over two seasons ago in all aspects of the game, but it’s hard to say it was all self-motivated.
Sega and ESPN teamed up to make a rival game a couple of seasons ago and has put together a solid product that rivals Madden in all reviews. Madden carried brand name, like Coca-Cola outselling a supermarket brand cola, and dominated the marketplace for years. ESPN wisely slashed the price of all their sports games this season in order to compete with EA. $20 compared to $50 was obviously enough of a difference to start making a dent in EA’s marketshare and EA slashed the price of Madden to $30 early in November. So now they have a rival gamemaker dipping into their sales and putting out a competitive according to most reviews. Instead of dropping price on the game permanently EA was able to slash ESPN’s jugular in regards to marketability by getting the NFL (and the NFLPA) to sign an exclusive deal for all things NFL.
Anyone familiar with the NFL is familiar with their exclusive deals. Visa, Pepsi (along with Pepsi product Gatorade) and DirecTV are all exclusive NFL partners. Anyone in a large metro area with no possibility of satellite or just anyone who prefers cable over satellite knows how irritating the DirecTV deal is. You’re a consumer with no options. It’s DirecTV or nothing (but broadcast and ESPN games). Not good for the out-of-market fan or the guy who wants to invite all his friends over each weekend.
So what good can come of this for the football video game fan? Probably nothing. I don’t think EA is suddenly going to scale back development on it’s Madden football product (or NFL Street, although with Midway not releasing a new NFL Blitz, there’s no current product comparison anyway); but without competition burning the speed of development can certainly slow down with little worry of a superior game coming out. Innovations in a competing product won’t appear for EA to mimic (and vice versa, as it could have been).
ESPN meanwhile is left to ponder whether or not they’ll even release a new football game. If they do decide to continue they’ll have to change the franchise name. “NFL” obviously needs to be dropped from it. Look for some nickname to appear in the title, like Pigskin 2K6. Phrases don’t fit well in titles and can misrepresent the game. For example, you can’t name a realistic football game “Two Minute Drill” unless you want everyone to think the game is all about the long passing game and speeding through your plays.
ESPN would then have to make up 32 team names, shouldn’t be too hard, just pick some “tough” names and some animals not used by NFL teams (example: how many times did you see the NY Knights in a generic sports video game?). Player names aren’t too hard either - but you do have to make sure that your generic Johnson on your made up Tampa team doesn’t accidentally match a position played by a Johnson on the Bucs, whether it’s Brad or Dexter.
What you do need to have, in order to have any hope of competing, is a fully customizable game, including at least these features:
- Stadium names and attributes (dome, no cover, movable roof, turf, grass, capacity, etc.)
- Player names and attributes (besides skillset, the look of the player)
- Team names and attributes (logos, uniforms, possible history)
However - that’s not the complete selling point of it - the ability to share your customizations has to be. This means you can put it on a memory card or swap with a friend online or even possibly allow people to set up spaces online to download from. Don’t worry - someone will do it. It’s the nature of sports fans. You might even see a loyal ESPN fan base split up the work and each swap a team or two until someone’s compiled all the correct NFL teams and rosters to allow others to download from.
Despite all this, it would still be tough to sell a game with generic teams and players. Besides having to do a little work to actually get the real ones in there, even if it’s just downloading them from a website, ESPN would likely need to fall back on to the generic rosters to keep online gaming fair.
In the end, fans do have to wonder about what will come from new Madden games over the next five seasons, and what they would have been like with some real competition.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Laughing at Losing
While a lot of major league teams sit and make war analogies about games and such, things are much different in the minor leagues (or in minor sports). They tend to just want to be entertaining, and when they lose, they’re much more likely to have a sense of humor about it.
From the Boston Globe via Ben Maller:
Not exactly flushed with pride
As promotions go, you’ve got to hand it to the Grand Rapids Rampage of the Arena Football League. After going 1-15 last season, they sent out season-ticket renewals with a bonus gift: a roll of toilet paper with “1-15” printed on each sheet. The roll came wrapped in a message that said, “It’s time to put last season behind us.” The promotion was the brainchild of the team’s ad agency, Justice & Monroe.
Love it.