Sports
The Top 2 Ways to View the Bleacher Report
Time has put the Bleacher Report in the Top 50 Best Websites of 2011
The standard of quality is markedly higher than at some community-created news hubs, where "citizen journalist" can be a synonym for "poorly paid amateur."
OR
SportsPickle has its take on Bleacher Report's Honest New Redesign with catchy headlines like: What sport does Lebron James play?
hmm...
NFL’s Ticket Opportunity
I actually like the NFL’s Ticket Exchange commercial:
Maybe it’s because I’m a dad, maybe it’s because I watched it thinking he was selling his tickets to just one game due to his wife who’s ready to pop.
Seattle fans? Not a lot of love.
Baseball and DNA
The New York Times has a piece about MLB’s use of DNA testing to confirm identity, as fraud and falsifying documents have been common with prospects coming from Latin America.
The use of DNA for identity isn’t debated all-too-much, but there are major concerns over what else can be learned by DNA testing. What diseases a person may be genetically-disposed could affect who is signed (and for how long and how much).
It seems pretty obvious that a team would be hesitant to sign a player who may not stay healthy, until you think of this:
Mark Rothstein, a professor of bioethics at the University of Louisville School of Medicine, said: “The funny thing about this all is that the most famous baseball player with a genetic disorder was Lou Gehrig. Would they have signed him if they knew he was predisposed to A.L.S.?”
Who wants to be the scout to take a pass on the next Lou Gehrig?
Bringing Wang’s ERA Down
After getting shelled the first three games of the season, Chien-Ming Wang has an ERA of 34.5 in just 6 innings. 23 earned runs will get you there.
Before the season started, Wang’s career ERA was 3.79. Now it’s 4.08. That’s over a 7% increase in 6 innings of work.
If Wang pitched at 3.79 the rest of the season, he’d wind up with an ERA of over 4.5.
Wang would need two complete game shutouts to average less than one run per inning, bringing his ERA below 9.
To bring his 2009 ERA down to his ERA going into the season Wang would need to pitch 48 2/3 innings of shutout ball. That’s 5 consecutive complete game shutouts and change.
Switch Hitter vs Switch Pitcher
Semi-Private Eyes
Report: Clemens’ attorney hires private eyes to study McNamee
Roger Clemens’ lawyer has hired private investigators in an attempt to challenge the credibility of Brian McNamee, who has claimed to have injected Clemens with steroids, a lawyer familiar with the matter told The New York Times.
How effective can a private eye be if the whole world knows what they’re doing?
So Confusing
The Boston… Yanks
I doubt they’d take that name today.
Sportsline Becomes CBS Sports
CBS Sportsline is now officially CBS Sports. The website had a mini-facelift to go along with the rebranding. It’s slightly more readable than before if nothing else.
CBS decided to rebrand in order to cross-brand between websites and television easier, at least that’s the explanation given on paidContent.org.
Normally it’s a smart move, and it may be here, but Sportsline is an established internet brand. It’s also been CBS Sportsline for a while. Recently, a friend of mine didn’t realize you could use “www.” and not “cbs.”. That says something about the strength of the name and the association between CBS and Sportsline.
However, CBS Sports makes it more of a big media company. Sportsline existed solely on the internet, despite being CBS Sportsline. CBS Sports is on tv. CBS Sports is the NFL, March Madness and the PGA, among other things.
What CBS Sports isn’t is its own channel. In that regard, it’s like NBC Sports on tv, but online CBS is clearly a top player, where NBC is not.
The appearance of having some form of independence was no doubt a plus. It’ll be interesting to see if the rename has any effect on the website’s reputation. paidContent.org cites SportsBusiness Daily (paid subscription required) mentioning that the company is concerned about the rebranding possibly harming fantasy sports operations.
Fox Sports is currently one of the sports website leaders, thanks in part to its contract with MSN, and also a network of local television channels. Fox also has its college stations, Fox Sports Español, Fox Soccer and the Speed Channel.
ABC Sports ceased to exist a few years ago. Instead, the network chose to brand its sports programming “ESPN on ABC”, capitalizing on the popularity of its cable channel’s brand.
The only non-television network sports website that rivals the top players in traffic is Yahoo! Sports. Yahoo! has cleaned up the site over the past year, as well as adding more original content. Yahoo!, like Sportsline, has leveraged its fantasy sports section to drive traffic to its content.
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.
Best Fantasy Analysis You Can Get
Sportsline’s fantasy analysis update for Jorge Julio:
Julio is awful. Cut him in all leagues. He is no closer to being the Marlins’ closer than you or I.
Thanks to Mike for the tip.