As recently as October, we mused about the possibilities of augmented reality in sports, and I concluded with a brief story about some strange display technology my grandfather encountered in the 1960s — a device that could purportedly display 3D images without 3D goggles. I have always had trouble conceptualizing that idea. How to you make light stop mid air? How can you create a hologram without some sort mist or substance to reflect the light in transit? Well, I dunno. Maybe it’s not possible.

And maybe this:

This technology could be significant in many ways. It could illuminate the ball path for a touchdown throw, a three-pointer or a fastball on the outside edge for fans in the stadium (not to mention umpires and referees). It could show a glowing yellow line for the first down marker that more than just the audience at home could see. It could change the role of a scoreboard as we know it.

Obviously, glittering dots in the sky are a long way away from an illuminated pitch tracker. But computers went from singing Daisy to World is Mine, this, in under 60 years. We cannot say where this current technology can and will end.

Picture it: You’re sitting in the stands during an NBA game. The action on the floor is slow — maybe there are free throws or a 30-second timeout on the floor. You grab your phone, connect to the arena WiFi, and pull up a webpage. You scroll through a list of players, pick your favorite one, and choose a highlight you want to see — a dunk, a sweet finger roll, a step-back jumper, etc. During the next timeout, on the big video screen over center court, the video you selected is playing, along with your name. This is what Steve Ballmer wants to do with Clippertron, and it’s already happening.

The Los Angeles Clippers have teamed up with the company Second Spectrum to work on developing a new approach to fan engagement at sporting events. The system allows fans to use their mobile device to pick a favorite highlight to be displayed on the scoreboard. While Blake Griffin’s dunking prowess is impressive enough, Second Spectrum isn’t stopping there. Using their proprietary DataFX system, they will also display key stats and measurements that will show how and why Griffin dunks so hard, what makes up DeAndre Jordan’s shot-blocking ability, or how Chris Paul gets so many assists. As Second Spectrum co-founder Rajiv Maheswaran told the LA Times:

“It’s not just going to be highlights […] It’s highlights with a lot of effects but also telling the story with numbers you can’t get anywhere else. Nobody else on the planet is going to have them.”

According to the Times, the Clippers will be the first team to incorporate this kind of technology during games.

It’s a fairly logical move for the Clippers, as their new owner has such a rich tech background. But as certain NBA teams struggle to bring in crowds, something like what Second Spectrum is offering could help with fan retention. Basketball games can be expensive endeavors for fans when compared to staying home and watching the game on TV. Now, teams have the ability to bring a little bit of that TV experience into the arena. It wouldn’t be shocking to see more teams implement the same system — or something similar — very soon.

The folks at Polygon pointed out a nice Halloween treat provided by the folks at NBA2K. The hubbub around some of the terrible and sometimes frightening attempts at grafting one’s face onto an NBA 2K15 player is still palpable with some, and 2K Sports is attempting to take it in stride. In an effort to poke fun at themselves (or at least look like they are), the studio has released a Halloween mask making kit featuring eight of the more terrifying facial scan blunders.

All you need is a color printer and some string (or poster board and a Popsicle stick) and you’re set to scare the daylights out of some people this weekend.

2K Sports also releases a video on how to get your own terrible facial scan. It seems like it’s meant in good fun, but it also kind of insults people who had legitimate problems with the game’s feature.

Still, if you want to go to a Halloween party dressed as an inside joke to end all inside jokes, these masks might be your ticket. You could even get seven friends (or more if you want to double up masks) to join you and have your own impromptu Pickup Game of Horror.

Purchasing tickets online is nothing new, but Gametime has made the process even easier when buying from your mobile — Android or iOS only — device. The company has just update their free mobile app and now rather than refreshing a page again and again, the app now has a “pull to refresh” email style option. It’s a small change that goes a long way in terms of convenience.

Not only is it easier to search for tickets with the pull to refresh option, Gametime now shows exactly where you’ll be sitting. With a birds eye view of the stadium or a field view, you know if you’ll be up in the nosebleeds or right on the sideline.

The field view gives the section, row and seat while showing what the field/court/rink will look like from the seats you’re interested in.

The app allows purchasing up to 20 tickets per transaction and is within one second of real time availability. In an interview with VentureBeat, Chief Executive of Gametime Brad Griffith said of the updated ticket availability:

“We shifted to a video game style technology that can be immediately updated…It’s like playing a video game with another player. You have to keep it synchronized or it’s not a good experience.

Gametime currently works in 22 different cities and 60 venues. With app you can purchase tickets to NFL, MLB, NCAAF, MLS, NBA and NHL games. One downside is you’ll need a credit/debit card on file, as neither Paypal nor Venmo is currently a pay option.

Another curious quirk was the start times of certain games is wrong. After selecting Detroit as my city, it showed the Lions are playing at 8 am on Sunday, November 9. The game actually kicks off at 1 pm.

Gametime did get the University of Michigan game and the Pistons start time correct, but they were an hour early on the Michigan State game. There wasn’t a way to change your timezone, so make sure to cross check the actual game times with what is listed. After checking more Lions games, it appears as though each game time for the Detroit football team is wrong.

If you happen to find any other unusual goings on, reporting them to Gametime is as easy as shooting an email to their feedback email address or one could call or text them from 8am-11pm Pacific at their 1-800 number. Both help options are listed on their website FAQ, not in-app however.

Overall the app does exactly what it should: purchasing tickets from mobile quickly and easily, usually  without having to print them off. A small number of venues still require a paper PDF ticket but that is outside of Gametime’s control. It can certainly be a useful app for everything from a last-minute decision to go to a game or if you just need an extra ticket while on the way to the stadium.

Most everyone remembers the old “shin bone connected to the knee bone, knee bone connected to the thigh bone” song. While not exactly taught in medical school, everything in the leg is connected one way or another. And according to a recent study, calf muscles, not hamstrings may have more to do with ACL and knee injuries than previously thought.

The study was conducted by The University of Western Australia’s School of Sport Science as well as the University of Tennessee’s Exercise and Health program. The groups observed a series of Australian Rules football players each doing single leg jump landings while attempting to grab a football.

Analysts set up a series of 12-cameras to create a three-dimensional computer model of each football player’s jumping and landing. The findings surprised the researches and Assistant Professor Cyril Donnelly of UWA said:

“This was initially surprising as 30 years of clinical research has suggested the hamstring muscles were key players for supporting the knee during sporting tasks, We are not saying you don’t use your hamstrings, just not as much as we originally thought.”

The previously linked article states over 200,000 ACL injuries occur every year in the United States alone, and these numbers by the University of California, San Francisco claim approximately 70% of these injuries occur playing sports. Soccer, football, skiing and basketball being the primary sports behind ACL injuries.

Be it a figure skater coming off of a double-axel, a defender trying to head a corner kick out of his box or an outfielder leaping at the wall to rob a home run, one-leg jump landings are incredibly common in many sports. From an injury prevention standpoint or even rehabbing post-injury, perhaps we’ll begin to see trainers and medical staff focus more on the calf when dealing with ACL issues.

(Header photo via Becky Stern)

We are already accustomed to seeing unreal sights in our sports. But what about seeing tracers for free throws and drive charts on the gridiron when we are at the stadium?

When the yellow line appears on the first down line, we don’t hide behind our couches in caveman fear, nor do we dive under the bed when car names and driver photos appear above the machines zipping around the Daytona Speedway. And baseball fans have embraced the new MLB Statcast, which debuted during the 2014 MLB All-Star break and has shined in the 2014 MLB postseason. It essentially quantifies every movement on a baseball field and then visualizes the data for viewers at home:

But Google’s recent acquisition of startup Magic Leap has me pondering the next integration of the real and non-real sports experience. Here’s a quick primer on Magic Leap and why it’s important:
Read the rest of this entry »

Those wanting access to video training and analysis tool Ubersense no longer have to switch platforms, as the company has announced that an Android version of their popular mobile app is now available. Ubersense uses your devices camera to capture high-speed video of your performance for later reviewing. It offers slow-motion playback and drawing tools to break down movement frame by frame and help understand body position and angles. Ubersense claims it’s had over 2.5 million downloads since its inception from athletes in over 50 sports. Ubersense has even been used by US Olympic bobsledders.

The sport independence of Ubersense was always its selling point. While specific tools and apps for golfers and tennis players have been around for some time, Ubsersense doesn’t differentiate. It can be used by baseball players, bowlers, track and field competitors, and even dancers. Anyone who wants to take a look at themselves or their students in a hyper-specific manner can use the app.

Now, Ubersense can also boast platform independence. The Android offering comes in lockstep with their acquisition by Hudl, a similar app that focuses more on the coaching side of the sport.

Ubersense is a free download on either the iOS or Android stores, with a monthly or yearly charge for Ubersense Elite, which offers the ability to upload videos to online storage and sync across multiple devices.

(Photo via Ubersence Facebook)

The wonderful folks who run the Trade Rumors websites launched their latest app today. Rather than individual apps for MLB, Hoops and NFL goings on, now all three are together in a single free download for iOS and Android users.

The welcome screen loads all three sports at once, however a simple touch of the settings button allows the user to toggle which rumors they’d prefer to see. Running all three sports took a moment to load, so I decided to parse down the content.

As a baseball fan — the only football I follow is fútbol — fan I decided to hide both Hoops and NFL news. Upon narrowing the field down to only MLB news, I added my beloved Oakland Athletics.

Rather than just teams, the minds behind the app also allow the user to add news updates for specific players. If you’re looking for news on free agents, say, Hanley Ramirez or Max Scherzer, it’s as simple as typing their name in the search field.

In addition to customizable players and teams, you’re also given the option to filter All Stories or just Top Stories within each field. It’s impossible to tell what constitutes a Top Story, so it seems prudent to leave the default All Stories on.

The free app does a perfect job of keeping people up to date on trades, signings and the like. It’s a condensed version of their full site, and that is a compliment. Trade Rumors is basically an RSS feed for whichever team or player you could want, without the need to set up a real RSS feed. Given the quality of work from the Trade Rumors people over the years, it should be no surprise to see their latest project work so well.

NBA 2K15 launched today, and with it came a bunch of new features and tweaks. The 2K series hasn’t been without its flaws, but it has a long track record of being a very popular and polished game in the sports space for quite some time. I personally think it peaked with 2K13, but I haven’t spent much time with the latest iteration yet. Beyond the updated rosters and souped-up graphics, 2K Studios added a new feature to the already-excellent MyCareer subset of the game. MyCareer, as the name suggests, allows the gamer to create their own NBA player and simulate a career with said character. In the past, MyCareer basically ensured your player would get drafted. No longer. 2K15 makes you work for it, hustling for 10-day contracts as you try and make your way through the lowest ranks of the NBA. The game also added the option of uploading your own face to your player to give the process a bit of hyperrealism. Anyone who has the camera accessory for the Xbox One or PS4 can perform a facial scan and graft that scan onto a virtual body. It’s a pretty cool idea, but early trials have been a bit hit-and-miss.

Fans who picked up the game today have been uploading their attempts at facial scanning to Twitter, and the results have been fairly horrifying. I don’t mean that in an “if my ex saw me on the street dressed like this, I’d be horrified” type of way. I mean it in a full-on nightmare fuel, call-your-doctor-for-a-refill-of-Xanax kind of way. While some attempts turned out down-right goofy, others looked like they came straight from the set of The Walking Dead. 

This is the problem inherent in releasing a new version of a sports video game every year. Games are expensive, and developers are constantly looking for ways to differentiate between versions so as to not seem like just a roster update. They succeed in many ways. The defensive upgrades in this year’s version of the Madden franchise is just one recent standout (NHL15 failed pretty hard in their release, but that’s a different story). As it happens, even the process of facial scanning can be frustrating. A viewing of Owen S. Good’s attempts for Polygon is a short introduction to a man descending into madness.

NBA 2K15 has already sent along some steps for getting successful scans, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some patches coming in the not-so-distant future. In the meantime, enjoy dominating the NBA as a soulless member of the army of undead. If your character manages to overtake LeBron and snack on his tasty brains, feel free to link a video in the comments.

Given the success of MLB.tv and MLS Live, it was only a matter of time before another major sport followed suit with an all new online streaming service. With a clear shift in how people prefer to receive their sports services — so called cord-cutters are dropping television service in favor of online streaming — the NBA announced a deal yesterday that could see a major change in how fans watch games.

The nine-year TV agreement between the league, ESPN/ABC, TNT and Time Warner won’t officially start with the 2016-17 season, but it could include some good news for those who want to stream games without a cable/satellite package. Per the Wall Street Journal:

As part of its deal, ESPN negotiated a package of games for the online video service. The NBA’s “League Pass” offering already allows users to stream live regular-season games that aren’t televised nationally and aren’t available in their home market.

But ESPN has been cautious about letting its most valuable content—live professional sports games—outside the walls of pay television. Its streaming app WatchESPN is only available to pay-TV customers, so the new online service represents a shift in approach….

It isn’t clear whether the online service will be a subscription offering or a “transactional” one in which people will pay for individual games. The parties are considering licensing the package to wireless carriers such as Verizon that are building online video services, one of the people familiar with the matter said. The number of games that will be made available for the online service is still being decided.

The significance of being able to view games without a cable or satellite plan cannot be understated. The existing NBA League Pass allows one to stream out of market games online for 149.99 for the strictly streaming version — including mobile — or 199.99 for the stream + television package. On the worldwide leader side, WatchESPN requires an existing paid TV subscription to view games, so this new service must be something built from the ground up.

Curiously rather than the NBA buying out its own streaming services, NBA League Pass and NBA TV, the online games continues to be handled by the Turner Broadcasting Company. To outsource something as big as this and still not maintain full, top-down control is a questionable move, especially when considering past criticisms of NBA League Pass.

Assuming ESPN’s streaming service has nothing to do with the previous frustrations with League Pass, this could usher in a new era of free streaming sports for internet-only subscribers. ESPN has a solid history of online services, as ESPN 360/ESPN 3 were stable platforms, and given their renewed partnership with the NBA, ESPN should  invest considerable resources to their NBA centered streaming service.

(Header photo via Keith Allison)