It was recently announced that Twitter will begin streaming NFL games on Thursday nights. In yet another attempt to bring more users into the fold, Twitter has made a sizable investment in bringing the country’s biggest sport to its platform. The details are fuzzy at this point, so we don’t know the exact way this thing is going to shake out. But the devil is in the details, in this case. What this whole thing will actually look like will have a great deal to do with its success. To ride the rails of a fairly-tired cliche; We know the who, what, where, when, and (mostly) why. The biggest question mark revolves around how.

A while back, I heard Ben Thompson — tech analyst and host of the Exponent podcast — describe Twitter and its problems in a way that stuck with me. I’m paraphrasing, but he essentially said that issue is that Twitter is that its dealing with two groups of people — people who tried their platform and didn’t like it, and people who love it and never want it to change. Somehow, they have to placate both crowds. They have the tech. They certainly have the brand recognition. They just need more people. With the NFL deal, they’re going after new audiences. But trying to solve the problem of gaining new users might run them headfirst into their second problem — those who don’t want it to change.

For people (especially sports fans) who use the platform, Twitter makes and excellent companion to watching something on TV. You hear about companies looking to expand the “second screen experience.” That all started with Twitter. It was a way to share and interact around a centralized event — the Super Bowl, the Oscars, a big news story. You watch on your TV, and you follow along with others’ views (and share your own) on your phone. But Twitter is trying to make your second screen your first screen in this case. Which is all fine and good, but it opens the situation up to a paradox. How can one share their feelings about an event on social media when the social media platform is how they’re watching said event?

Twitter is a large company that employs a whole lot of people smarter than I, so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt at this point. But if they want to keep the people they’re bringing in with the NFL offering and avoid ridicule from their current user base, they’re going to have to tread lightly. The experience is almost certainly going to have two elements. There will be the actual video stream, of course, and there will need to be a way for people to still read and share on the Twitter service. UI is key here. There are a lot of options for something like a laptop screen.

But how does this work on phones and smaller tablets? Will there be enough real estate for everything?

Let us not forget the fact that seemingly every time Twitter makes a change, people lose their minds. Most recently it was (probably rightfully so) algorithmic feeds, but there are countless other UI changes and other tweaks that drive the Twitter faithful crazy. Twitter is no doubt going to use its product to advertise the crap out of their NFL offering when the time comes. If that experience is lackluster, there will be noise about it.

If Twitter doesn’t nail this, NFL fans are going to happily return to watching on TV. CBS itself is even offering a stream of the games on their own platform, so it’s not as if Twitter has a monopoly here. There are other avenues fans can travel. Twitter is making a push — taking chances and working hard to bring their product to forefront of social media while trying desperately to take a bite out of Facebook’s current dominance. You can’t fault them for trying. But if history is any indication, they’re really going to need to nail this. They need to impress new customers while trying not to piss off the current ones. It’s an unenviable position. But a ten-year-old company that is still struggling to post profits needs to put themselves in that kind of position every now and again. They’re partnering with a very recognizable brand. If I were a lesser man, I would advise them not to fumble the opportunity.

If one were brave enough to scour the Internet, one could find a myriad of articles explaining how to optimize their workflow. Our workflow is super screwed up, it seems, and only optimization will help us become the well-oiled, hyper-productive sacks of meat we were always meant to be. You can eat better, you can spend your money more wisely, you can take a more efficient way to work, and you can certainly manage your time better — again, according to the Internet. My friends and loved ones point out my shortcoming often enough that I don’t worry myself too much with my workflow. I have, however, found a few tips and/or tricks which make the act of sitting at the computer a little less terrible. One such tip is using the application Launchy to help me perform searches faster. And by tweaking the program a little bit, you can make Launchy get you your desired content from your favorite sports sites without using your mouse to dig around for those little search boxes.

Launchy can actually do a whole lot more than what I’m going to explain here. It markets itself as a “keystroke launcher,” which basically means it’s a little applet that helps you perform tasks with just a few keystrokes. You can open other programs, search for files, or play music through Launchy without ever having to touch your mouse. If you’re a Mac user, you’ve probably heard of a similar program called Alfred. Alfred has plenty of its own perks, but we’ll be focusing on Launchy since it does what we need, is free, and is cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux).

Download and install Launchy. By default, it should open by itself. If it doesn’t hold down the Alt key and press the Space bar.

Now that Launchy is open, let’s test some things out. Type in Google and hit tab. Then type techgraphs and hit enter. A new browser tab should open with a Google search. Now open Launchy again (Alt+Space) and simply type techgraphs.com and hit enter. It should bring you right to our home page. You can even do math in Launchy. Open it and type 4+2 and hit Enter. You should get a result. This is just a sliver of what Launchy can do, but now you know the general mechanics of the program. Now that we have that, we can start customizing.

The first thing you will want to look at is the keyboard shortcut for displaying Launchy. If you click the little gear icon you’ll be presented with the Launchy settings page. On the left-hand side, you’ll see a section to select the hotkey for Launchy. By default (as we’ve seen), it’s set to Alt+Space (on Windows), but you may want to change it to something that feels better to your fingers. It’s not necessary, but if you do feel like changing it, now you know where to do that.

(Apologies for the slightly-off screenshots. I can’t get my screen-cap software to pick up the Launch pop-up window.)

That same settings window is where we’re going to add our custom sports searches. At the top of the window, click Plugins, then click Weby from the list of plugins on the left.

In this list you’ll see all the sites that Launchy can help you search, including some of the ones we tested earlier. These are very handy to have, but we want to add our own sites, which Launchy allows us to do. But first, we need the proper syntax. Launchy needs to know the search URL that we want in order to work properly. Let’s track one down together, like old friends. Click Cancel for now and close out of Launchy by pressing ESC.

Let’s start with FanGraphs, which my boss tells me is a fantastic baseball site. We’ll want to use Launchy to quickly search on a player, so we’ll need to start with the proper search URL. Go to FanGraphs and do a search for “Stanton.” Don’t click anything, just type “Stanton” in the search box and press Enter. In the next page, note the URL in the address bar. It should say http://www.fangraphs.com/players.aspx?lastname=stanton. Notice the last bit. The string “stanton” is passed along with the search URL. The address up to the equal sign is what we want: http://www.fangraphs.com/players.aspx?lastname=. Copy that and go back to your Launchy settings.

Back in the Weby plugin window, we’ll want to click the + sign. This will create a new entry. The name field is up to you, make it something you can remember. I use the boring but explanitory “fangraphs” (no quotes). In the address field, paste the URL you copied, and add %1 to the end (the %1 just means that we want Launchy to ask for a variable). The whole thing should look like http://www.fangraphs.com/players.aspx?lastname=%1. Press the + button again to save. Now press the OK button, which should bring you back to the main Launchy window.

Let’s test. In the Launchy box, type fangraphs (or the name you chose) and hit Tab. You should see the name, followed by a right-facing arrow. Now type Stanton and hit Enter. A new web browser tab should open up and bring you to the same page we saw when we grabbed the search URL. Pretty cool, right? Now, open Launchy again. Type fangraphs and hit Tab, but this time enter Giancarlo Stanton after the arrow and hit Enter. Boom, you’re brought right to the corresponding page. Pretty cool, yeah?

This only works with unique names, so searching for Alex Gonzalez by full name will still bring you to a search page where you’ll have to choose the right person.

This will work for all kinds of sites, so long as you know the search URL. Here are a few examples:

• Baseball-Reference: http://www.baseball-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?results=&search=%1 (You can also search for specfic teams by using syntax like 2015 Royals)
• Baseball Prospectus: http://www.baseballprospectus.com/player_search.php?search_name=%1
• Pro-Football-Reference: http://www.pro-football-reference.com/search/search.fcgi?search=%1
• ESPN: http://espn.go.com/search/results?q=%1

You can plug all of those into Launchy to create your own custom searches. Of course, feel free to search out your own. Just search for something on your favorite site and pay attention to the URL of the corresponding page. Copy out everything that isn’t your search term, and you should be able to plop that right into Launchy.

This is a great tool for writers, fans, or even fantasy owners during a draft. It might not save you hours off your workflow, but it will at least limit the amount of time you need to spend at your computer — an exercise that is probably killing you. Happy searching!

(Header image via Leo Leung)

Super Bowl L50 is nigh. While the NFL missed the opportunity to treat the world to Super Bowl Large, they’re keeping it simple with Arabic numerals, and CBS, which has the broadcast, is following suit: there will be no Megacast on Sunday night, and, really, nothing outside of what has become the ordinary. Truly a Jim Nantz production. Kickoff is set for 6:30 pm Eastern, and your broadcast options are as follows:

• Traditional television broadcast: CBS
• Spanish-language traditional television broadcast: ESPN Deportes; can’t keep La Nave Nodriza down
• Online stream: CBS is streaming the Super Bowl for free through their online player; Roku, Chromecast, and Apple TV users will have access to this feed through their respective CBS Sports apps; USA Today reports that CBS “is working with” Amazon to provide service to Amazon Fire TV users; Windows 10 and Xbox One users reportedly will have access to additional camera angles
• Mobile stream: the NFL Mobile app, available only to Verizon subscribers with Windows phones, iPhones,  Android phones, or similarly-connected tablets; outside of the usual data charges, there appears to be no additional cost for streaming live NFL games through the NFL Mobile app
• Radio: CBS-owned Westwood One (find your local affiliated station here) has the terrestrial radio broadcast; the satellite broadcast on SiriusXM will be on the NFL Radio channel; the Panthers’ local radio broadcast will be available only on the Carolina Panther Radio Network’s flagship station, WBT out of Charlotte; the Broncos’ local radio broadcast will be available across the entire Denver Broncos Radio Network
• Las Vegas-area television broadcast: As of yesterday, CBS; on Thursday, cable provider Cox Communications and area CBS affiliate KLAS-TV resolved an “impasse” that threatened to black out the Super Bowl broadcast to approximately forty percent of area viewers

If you’re more of a Puppy Bowl person, Puppy Bowl XII airs at 3:00 Eastern on Animal Planet. While there is a beta-quality stream of the channel, Animal Planet Live!, reports indicate that it will not be carrying the Puppy Bowl, so you likely will need to find a cable subscriber with a television to catch those little mutts in action.

Finally, if media overload is about to make you crack, I suggest Key & Peele’s completely unauthorized live Super Bowl commentary video feed, which starts a half hour before kickoff and is available online here.

(Header image via NFLRT)

The Case for Open Source Concussion Research

Not so long ago, the divide between hardware and software was fairly distinct. Certain companies made hardware and others made software. Or, to be more precise, companies made software and others scrambled like hell to make hardware that would run it. This was the time of the 80s and 90s PC market — Microsoft was king and others fought each other to build the machines that would run Microsoft’s software. But as time went by and the silicon got smaller and more diverse, it made sense for the manufacturers to also implement their own software. They knew how the hardware was supposed to function, after all. We see this now with smartphones and tablets. Apple makes their own hardware and software. Samsung makes the phones and and the heavily-modded Android OS that run them. And, of course, we see it with the wearable market. If you want to see the data from your FitBit, you need the FitBit app. The same goes for Misfit and Jawbone and the Microsoft Band. Truth be told, this is usually a perfectly workable system. But the boom of the wearable market has brought with it the proliferation of devices that do more than just track steps. Multiple companies now produce products that measure force and damage done to the head in efforts to try and reduce or at least understand concussions — a now-important issue in sports that we should have paid attention to years ago. But if individual companies are making their own hardware and software to collect this data, the collaboration disappears. Important sharing of knowledge goes by the wayside. Everything gets segmented and compartmentalized. With the threat of head injuries looming so large, should we not strive to pool our collective research? Can we not create products for both good and profit?

The term “open source” brings with it some confusion. Open source was spawned out of the Free Software movement, and in the name lies the first problem. When many people read the term “free software,” they think of those handy programs one can download for free off of SourceForge. It is true that many developers offer their products free of charge, but that’s not what free software or open source is about.

In the 1990s, Linus Torvalds — in either one of the most important acts in the history of computer science or one of the stupidest moves in the world of business, depending on who you ask — created his own variation on the Unix operating system and released it, for free, to anyone who wanted to try it out. It was released under the GNU Public License. The GPL basically* states that anything released under said license is free to be tested, used, and modified. Those who make modifications are even free to sell their product for profit, so long as they pay the GPL forward and release their code for the same testing and modification.

*I know I’m giving a very high overview of this. My apologies to the hardcore free software people out there.

Torvalds’ flavor of Unix was named Linux, and if you haven’t heard of it, your nerdiest friends sure have. It runs almost every web server, ATM, smart tv, and super computer, and can be found on around 50% of the world’s smartphones. This article is being written on a laptop running Linux. Company after company took Torvalds’ work and improved upon it, personalized it, and commoditized it. All they had to do was show their work.

This is how open source works. Google doesn’t technically make money off of Android, which is based on Linux. They do make money off the Android Store and the data the OS collects about users’ habits. Companies like Ubuntu and Red Hat make a killing selling their special flavor of Linux for servers, and/or by selling support for that software. Sure, some organizations do it just to do it — to work toward a common goal of creating something great and exciting — and for the mere challenge of it. But do not be fooled, there’s big money to be found in open source, in one way or another. Device manufacturers need not be afraid, especially when their work goes toward the greater good.

Imagine a company that makes sensors for football helmets. We have covered quite of few of them at this site. The sensors are meant to measure impacts and forces that could lead to brain injuries. The company packages their devices with their special software and sells it to professional, collegiate, and even high school teams. Meanwhile, another company is doing the exact same thing and selling their wares to other such teams. Who’s right? Who has the best data? Each system is self-contained so there’s no opportunity for this type of data to be compared, contrasted, and improved upon.

This is where innovation and collaboration stops. Sure, each company gets their share of the pie, but they’re not necessarily making athletes safer. This data is somewhat useful in the hands of coaches and parents, but imagine if it were open to research groups — if doctors and scientists could pick apart the code to find exactly what was being measured and submit improvements to the software. We might actually have a chance at learning something.

In a recent article about CTE, Deadspin’s Barry Petchesky wrote:

We don’t know a lot. We don’t know the rate at which CTE develops, or the mechanism. We don’t know the correlation with playing football as compared to other contact sports. We don’t know if some people are predisposed to developing it. We don’t know how its symptoms manifest in the living. (We don’t know if it has symptoms—correlation is not causation.) We don’t know if there’s treatment. Each announcement of another CTE-riddled NFL brain amounts to, basically, cataloguing.

Petchesky is exactly right. We’re at a stalemate with this issue. If a company were truly passionate about this, they would release their software under the GPL. They could still make and sell their hardware, but others would be able to sift through the mechanisms for measuring head injuries and submit advancements to make it better. Other companies could edit and enhance this code and implement it into their own sensors. Another company could come along and do the same. Meanwhile, everyone competing in this space would constantly be working to make better systems for tracking these types of things. Researchers, now armed with the code that powers these systems, could implement it into their own experiments and research. The conversation might still take a while, but at least everyone would be speaking the same language.

I understand that the point of all these systems is to make money. They give coaches and parents peace of mind knowing that steps are being taken to protect player safety. But there’s an untapped market here of contributing to the greater good. There’s still money to be made, it just comes with a little extra peace of mind that when a company uses this hypothetical open source system, they are putting their work out there for all to see. They are daring others to create a better system. These dares only lead to other dares, and sooner or later, people might actually learn something definitive about this subject. Players get better and companies still make money — imagine that.

The college football season wraps up tonight with the national championship game, which pits #1 Clemson against #2 Alabama. When the game kicks off at 8:30 (Eastern) this evening, ESPN will offer sixteen different ways to follow the action live. Let’s count them:

1. ESPN/WatchESPN: The traditional television broadcast will be on the Worldwide Leader’s flagship television channel both through TV and online;
2. ESPN Deportes: Spanish-language traditional television broadcast.
3. ESPN Radio: The traditional radio broadcast will be on your local ESPN Radio affiliate, as well as through WatchESPN and the ESPN mobile app;
4. WatchESPN: Clemson’s radio broadcast, with isolated camera shots of Dabo Swinney and Tigers players;
5. WatchESPN: Alabama’s radio broadcast, with isolated camera shots of Nick Saban and Crimson Tide players;
6. ESPN2: Film Room, featuring live game analysis from Florida head coach Jim McElwain, UNC head coach Larry Fedora, South Florida head coach Willie Taggart, Pittsburgh head coach Pat Narduzzi, and newly hired South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp, joined by ESPN analysts. This simulcast has been the most well-received alternative broadcast during ESPN’s two previous college football championship Megacasts.
7. ESPNU: New this year is what ESPN is calling the “Homer Telecast,” overtly biased coverage from Clemson alum (and the school’s all-time leader in passing yards) Tajh Boyd and Alabama alum (and three-time national champion) Barrett Jones, mediated by ESPN/SEC Network’s Joe Tessitore. According to ESPN, other “partisan” guests are expected to join the action, and the broadcast will come from field level, rather than a traditional broadcast booth.
8. ESPNEWS: Have a few empty spots on your couch? ESPN Voices promises to be a casual, “living room-type” conversation between an assorted bunch of ESPNers, including Michelle Beadle, Jay Bilas, Marcellus Wiley, and Teddy Atlas (sure!).
9. SEC Network: The Finebaum Film Room, which debuted at last year’s national semifinal game between Alabama and Ohio State, and made a return appearance at this year’s New Year’s Eve semifinal game between Alabama and Michigan State, will make its first appearance in conjunction with a college football championship game tonight. If you’ve never heard or seen the Paul Finebaum Show, this should serve as a good introduction to the program’s host, as well as its many colorful callers, who will be able to phone in during the game.
10. ESPN Classic: Sounds of the game. Had enough with all the jibber jabber and want to enjoy the game in relative peace? This is the channel for you, featuring nothing but the sounds of the fully enclosed University of Phoenix Stadium. Hear the public address announcer, as well as the full pregame and halftime entertainment programs. Also available on WatchESPN.
11. ESPN Goal Line: For the true football junkies, this is the “Command Center” feed, with enhanced split-screen action. You’ll see live game action next to replays of every play, isolated feeds of both head coaches, drive charts, and statistics. Over this will play the audio feed from the ESPN Radio broadcast.
12. WatchESPN: Replay Booth – What purports to be “an authentic recreation of the replay booth experience,” offering viewers the experience of those officials tasked with reviewing every single play and signaling when further review is required. Hosted by replay officials from the ACC and SEC, as well as an ESPN rules expert.
13. WatchESPN: Data Center – “Significant on-screen graphic content ranging from analytics, real time drive charts, win probability updates, curated social media reaction and more.” Guess you’re just going to have to dial this one in to find out what that means. Hope it works better than the Comcast/Xfinity sports app sidebar. Unclear how it differs from the “Command Center” feed on ESPN Goal Line.
14. WatchESPN: Student Section – Cameras focused on the student fan sections, bands, cheerleaders, mascots, and, if we’re lucky, a Bojangles outside Spartanburg.
15. WatchESPN: Pylon Cam – Want the simultaneously best and worst seats in the house? This feed promises to rotate between the twenty-four available end-zone pylon cameras, apparently showing twelve at any one time.
16. WatchESPN: Spider Cam – Not advisable if you’re extremely susceptible to motion sickness. Fly above the field the entire game with this view. Maybe the spider camera will get nailed by a punted football!

Say what you will about ESPN, and I have, but the Megacast is fun and the sort of thing more of which the network ought to do. Now we just need Bristol to invent a Buffalo-sauce-resistant television remote control. Enjoy the game!

(Header image via Wikimedia Commons)

If you’re following the rise of player tracking technology, most of what’s being discussed are in-game systems. Whether the system is camera-based, like SportVu in the NBA or Statcast in MLB, or sensor-based, like Zebra’s RFID tracking of NFL players or the Sportvision’s partnership with the NHL, the goal is similar: track how pro athletes in the heat of competition, with the hope of gaining a competitive advantage by the shaving of a fraction of a second here or optimizing a route there.

But there’s another way for teams to use technology to gain an edge: by keeping their best players healthy and in those big games. This requires a separate system, especially on large squads like football teams where it would be impractical to collect and process the amount of optical data needed to capture everyone’s movements across all activities. As a result, systems based on global positioning system (GPS) technology are used in practices and rehab by a wide range of teams across all major sports.

Most of the designs center around a sports-bra looking harness worn by the athlete under his or her shirt. The harness holds a device containing a GPS chip, along with additional components like accelerometers, gyroscopes, and magnetometers, to track how and where an athlete moves. The GPS device is often paired with a heart rate monitor, allowing the system to estimate exertion.

Because the device relies on satellites to track the athletes, most companies that market a GPS system also market a complementary indoor system, typically based off a technology such as RFID that is better suited to the indoor environment. If a basketball or hockey team is working with one of these companies, chances are that they’re using indoor technology.

For now, these devices are predominantly used in practices, as none of the major leagues currently allow on-field wearable sensors for safety reasons. But FIFA just relaxed their ban, following successful runs at the Women’s World Cup and Under-23 World Cup over the summer. National federations are expected to follow suit shortly, and other sports leagues (such as MLB) are drawing up procedures to approve devices for in-game use.

Most readers are familiar with activity trackers like FitBit, which typically include a GPS component. But monitoring companies say that they aren’t designed to provide enough information to accurately track an athlete’s performance during competition or training.

“They offer very little insight into athlete’s performance,” said Richard Byrne, STATSports’s Business Administrator. “FitBit themselves are the first to admit they will show you patterns relating to your fitness levels as oppose to wholly accurate data.”

It might seem surprising to hear that teams are investing in GPS technology as camera-based systems proliferate across pro sports. STATS’ SportVu cameras are positioned in all 30 NBA arenas, and soccer teams have tracked distance traveled with systems like Matrics for years. But GPS companies argue their devices provide more in-depth information than camera-based systems.

“Camera systems essentially turn a match into moving dots on a screen,” said Catapult director of marketing Boden Westover. “You get speed and distance metrics, but they’re a tiny piece of the athlete tracking pie.”

There are a number of companies that offer similar GPS systems. For this introduction, I spoke with representatives from three — Catapult, STATSports, and VX Sport — but others (including GPSports and Zephyr) are also currently being used by pro organizations.

Catapult

With over 440 clients in 40 countries listed on their website, Catapult is the best-known and most prolific GPS company. Based in Australia, their OptimEye S5 (and the goalkeeper-specific G5) use GNSS, a combination of the American GPS system and the Russian GLONASS system. The result, according to Catapult, is a system accurate to within 50 cm; an older system that uses GPS only has a stated accuracy of 100 cm. The OptimEye devices include an inertial measurement analysis (IMA) chip, an accelerometer/gyroscope combination that measures an athlete’s finer movements. For indoor clients, Catapult produces ClearSky, an RFID-based system.

Westover said that Catapult’s distinguishing characteristic was independent validation of the technology published in peer-reviewed journals.

“There are around 100 such articles that have been published on Catapult, which prove that our technology measures what we say it does,” he said. “Other systems out there being used by teams have never been scientifically proven.”

STATSports

Headquartered in Ireland, STATSports’ offering is the Viper Pod, a combination GPS and MARG device with a stated accuracy of at least one meter. The inclusion of accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer components allows the Viper Pod to track accelerations and decelerations, along with athlete direction and turning. The MARG components also contribute to the scrum analysis used by their rugby clients.

Although their current indoor solution works off accelerometry data, STATSports’ upcoming Viper 3 system (due out this year) will incorporate ultra-wideband technology for accuracy up to 10 cm. The new system will also use low-energy Bluetooth to connect to other devices like heart rate monitors.

Business administrator Richard Byrne said that STATSports prides itself on its software platform in addition to accuracy.

“Our customers tell us our software is light years ahead of anything else they have experienced,” Byrne said. “We have a host of innovative metrics which allow coaches who use our system an incredibly in-depth look at their athlete’s performance.”

VX Sport

VX Sport, a New Zealand-based company, is focusing its efforts on collegiate sports teams. VX Sport’s system combines three satellite systems — GPS, GLONASS, and an analogous Chinese system — but unlike other companies, doesn’t claim that the additional satellites produces increased accuracy. Instead, managing director Richard Snow claimed that the “dark art” of GPS accuracy relied more on high-quality components and intense post-processing.

“It’s a bit like talking about a pro digital camera vs. a consumer model,” Snow said. “If you picked up a pro Nikon from ten years ago, it’s always gonna be better than the 20 megapixel thing that you buy for $75 from an electronics store. And that’s the reality with GPS.”

VX Sport also offers an IMU-based indoor tracking system that caters to volleyball and basketball clients. Incorporating an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer, the device can track leg and hip biometrics based on the steps an athlete takes. The system includes software to summarize these biometrics into injury predictors.

Given the gameday motion capture systems currently in place, these GPS-based systems might seem superfluous. But Snow emphasized the importance of his system as a way to quantify players’ effort during the daily grind of training sessions.

“It used to be someone talking with the athletes in the morning, working out how are you feeling, what’s your readiness,” Snow said. “And then at the end of the training, how did you rate that? The only way they’re going to change that is with proper monitoring.”

While shifting technological, media, and economic sands may be signaling the approaching end of ESPN, the Worldwide Leader’s not dead yet, and it’s closing out 2015 with a bang. Along the lines of last year’s inaugural College Football Playoff Megacast, ESPN will be leveraging its multi-channel capabilities to deliver a variety of simulcasts for the two semifinal games taking place tonight, as well as the other four major bowl games– the Rose, Sugar, Fiesta, and Peach Bowls– spread across today and tomorrow. Although there won’t be as many options tonight as were available during last year’s championship game Megacast, it’s good to see the network continuing to take advantage of its resources by expanding coverage of these games. Viewing details on each of the “New Year’s Six” bowls are below.

Peach Bowl:

Teams: #18 Houston vs. #9 Florida State

Time and location: December 31, 12:00 pm, Atlanta, Georgia

Primary television: ESPN

Alternate television: Spider cam feed on ESPN3/WatchESPN

Audio: ESPN Radio, ESPN Radio app

Spanish-language television: ESPN Deportes

Trophy presentation: ESPNEWS, ESPN3/WatchESPN app

Orange Bowl (playoff semifinal):

Teams: #4 Oklahoma vs. #1 Clemson

Time and location: December 31, 4:00 pm, Miami, Florida

Primary television: ESPN

Alternate television: Spider cam feed and home or away audio plus ESPN visual on ESPN3/WatchESPN

Audio: ESPN Radio, ESPN Radio app

Spanish-language television: ESPN2, ESPN Deportes

Trophy presentation: ESPNEWS, ESPN3/WatchESPN app

Cotton Bowl (playoff semifinal):

Teams: #3 Michigan State vs. #2 Alabama

Time and location: December 31, 8:00 pm, Dallas, Texas

Primary television: ESPN

Alternate television: Spider cam feed and home or away audio plus ESPN visual on ESPN3; Finebaum Film Room, featuring in-studio analysts and guests, as well as live viewer telephone calls on SEC Network

Audio: ESPN Radio, ESPN Radio app

Spanish-language television: ESPN2, ESPN Deportes

Trophy presentation: ESPNEWS, ESPN3/WatchESPN

Fiesta Bowl:

Teams: #8 Notre Dame vs. #7 Ohio State

Time and location: January 1, 1:00 pm, Glendale, Arizona

Primary television: ESPN

Alternate television: Spider cam feed on ESPN3/WatchESPN

Audio: ESPN Radio, ESPN Radio app

Spanish-language television: ESPN Deportes

Trophy presentation: ESPNEWS, ESPN3/WatchESPN

Rose Bowl:

Teams: #6 Stanford vs. #5 Iowa

Time and location: January 1, 5:00 pm, Pasadena, California

Primary television: ESPN

Alternate television: Spider cam feed on ESPN3/WatchESPN

Audio: ESPN Radio, ESPN Radio app

Spanish-language television: ESPN Deportes

Trophy presentation: ESPNEWS, ESPN3/WatchESPN

Sugar Bowl:

Teams: #16 Oklahoma State vs. #12 Ole Miss

Time and location: January 1, 8:30 pm, New Orleans, Louisiana

Primary television: ESPN

Alternate television: Spider cam feed on ESPN3/WatchESPN

Audio: ESPN Radio, ESPN Radio app

Spanish-language television: ESPN Deportes

Trophy presentation: ESPNEWS, ESPN3/WatchESPN

The big addition here is the simulcast of the ESPN Deportes Spanish-language television broadcast on ESPN2 for both semifinal games. ESPN also plans “cross-platform coverage” of the national championship game, which it will announce next week. At a minimum, I expect a return of the general “film room” coaching analysis channel, a televised (i.e., not just online) alternate camera feed, and, in the unfortunate event that Alabama topples Michigan State tonight, the SEC Network Finebaum broadcast for the January 11 championship game.

(Header image via Wikimedia Commons)

FanGraphs’ Nathaniel Grow recently unearthed an interesting tidbit buried deep in a court filing involving Major League Baseball. Per Grow’s findings, it appears as if MLB is planning on changing up its MLB.tv service.

“beginning next season MLB will make single-team, out-of-market streams available for purchase (alongside the out-of-market package) on MLB.TV.”

It’s a feature that both the NHL and the NBA offer already, but it seems to be a harbinger of a sea change in the world of sports fandom — it’s now easier and cheaper for fans to be region-agnostic when it comes to picking their favorite sports teams.

Not so long ago, and for a very long time, if one found an affinity for a certain sport, their best bet — by far — was to follow the local team. That is, they were best served following the team that held rights to the local TV and radio markets. Those were the teams that kids could watch, listen to, and follow in the local papers (insert “you see, newspapers were these things…” joke here).

Now, fans have a choice, if they want it. It’s probably true that the ensconced fan — those that have been loyal to a team for most of their lives — aren’t budging on this one. But for young fans, or fans of any age that are looking to get into a new sport, it’s a liberating proposition.

The idea behind MLB.tv and NBA League Pass seemed always to revolve around the idea of the misplaced fan — the Cleveland native who was forced to move because of work/love or the offspring of the Yankees fan who moved to the South way back. It was, and certainly still is, a way for one to follow thier favorite team from afar. And these services are great tools for that. But they are also great tools for those looking to play the field — no pun intended. These are also built for the kid in Chicago who loves Giancarlo Stanton or the L.A. native who is a big fan of P.K. Subban. We are no longer tied to our local media markets. We can be free agents.

Again, not too long ago, if people were fans of out-of-market teams, those teams tended to be what’s known in the gambling realm as “public teams.” Think the St. Louis Cardinals or Dallas Cowboys or Chicago Bulls or Boston Bruins. These were the teams that got the most air time of their league’s respective Games of the Week that played on network (and later cable) television. If you didn’t want to follow the local team, your best bet was to latch onto a team that was on TV a lot. No more. Want to follow the Flames in Okalahoma? How about the Padres in upstate New York? No problem. Even college sports are adapting a bit, though only through conference-specific packages.

I won’t get into the specifics, because I already have, but a few years ago I was interested in finding myself a new baseball team. Ten years ago, this wouldn’t really be possible. I would have been stuck with whatever team was playing in my market (i.e. the Twins). But technology allowed me to shake off the shackles of the default.

It’s a microcosm of what technology did to commerce in general. I do believe that the rise of online retailers has been a hindrance to local businesses when it comes to the subjects of scale and wholesale-buying power, but it’s also done wonders for some. I love building PCs, but I could not imagine what I would do if Best Buy were my only option for buying PC parts. I’m lucky enough to have a Microcenter in my town, but if I didn’t I could always turn to Newegg or Tiger Direct to fill my needs. I could shop around.

The same now goes for sports fans. Think your team is dumb for supporting a domestic abuser? Sick of the local baseball team’s refusal to adopt even a modicum of advanced statistics in their daily operations? Go somewhere else. Find a better option.

In the grand scheme of things, we still have little power. TV money rules the kingdom, and blackout rules and other nonsense will still burden us peasants for some time, but there’s some light shining through. Yes, it will cost us money. Yes, the delivery methods aren’t perfect. But we are slowly being allowed to make our own decisions in the realm of fandom. We aren’t tethered to the local club. We might want to be. It’s usually easier and makes for accessible small talk with other locals. But we don’t have to.

My name is David Temple. I live in Minneapolis and I watch the Houston Astros during baseball season and the Edmonton Oilers during hockey season. I am the new face of the sports fan. It’s breaking my bank, but it’s lifting my spirits. Long live team-specific streaming packages.

(Image via Bernard Spragg)

As the World Series approaches– quick question: does StatCast display in metric for Blue Jays fans?– and sports dreams become reality, the tech beat, in which robot dreams become reality, marches on. What follows are some of the sports-tech stories from the past week that we found interesting.

First Gatorade, now head safety. The University of Florida football program has its priorities in chronological order, announcing this week that it is the first (collegiate, we suspect) team to test HITS sensors in its helmets. HITS stands for Head Impact Telemetry System, and the idea is to develop a better picture of the cranial contact football players receive during games for the purpose of improving safety.

Speaking of robot hats, IBM is turning the attention of its Watson computer to a number of sports-related applications, including player safety, through wearable technology monitoring; golf, though a “personal caddy” app that provides swing feedback; and hockey, through a program being used by the Pittsburgh Penguins to analyze fan data to improve the fan experience at home games. Still no word on that song Watson and Dylan are supposed to write together, though.

Feeling overwhelmed by all of these new wearable sports tech products? We’re only on the third story of this roundup! The NFL Players Association understands, though. Yesterday, the union filed a grievance against the NFL, claiming that use of sleep-monitoring sensors on players by “several” teams– including the Seahawks and Eagles– violates the collective bargaining agreement, because the technology is used outside of practices and games. This grievance is but the latest chapter in what is likely to be an ongoing battle over the scope of wearable biometric technology in professional sports.

In good news for the environment and most smartphone users, a significant segment of the secondary sports ticket market is going paperless. SeatGeek has introduced a mobile app through which the site will deliver a barcode for scanning when you enter the venue. Unfortunately, it does not have a ticket-sharing feature, but the company says that’s in the works.

It has been a somewhat contentious week in the world of online sports media. First, Deadspin and SB Nation resumed sports-GIF tweeting following account suspensions in response to Digital Millenium Copyright Act claims against them by the NFL (and not the MLB, as some initially suspected, based on a recently announced GIF-sharing crackdown by that league). The media entities appear to be preparing for a more combative approach in the future, arguing that their GIFs and Vines constitute constitutionally-protected speech. Meanwhile, ESPN and YouTube seem to be squabbling over YouTube’s new premium service, YouTube Red, which allows users to watch videos advertisement-free, in exchange for a ten-dollar monthly payment. ESPN shut down many of its YouTube channels, but it is too early to tell with certainty whether that decision was the result of a disagreement with YouTube policies or concerns over the legal rights to the sports footage often incorporated in ESPN videos.

Finally, still more drama in the e-sports world, where the coach and two members of a South Korea-based professional StarCraft2 team have been arrested on match-fixing charges. Authorities believe those involved manipulated the results of five matches this year, for which they received between $4,400 and $17,600. (If you want an even smaller amount to ogle, a professional League of Legends player was fined $556 for flipping the bird at one of his competitors. (Also, if you haven’t checked lately, take a look at that dollar-Euro exchange rate.)) Here, the magnitude of the government’s response, rather than the sum at stake, speaks to the growing global interest in competitive video game competitions.

That’s it for this week. Shake it off this weekend, and be excellent to each other.

CoachMePlus, a Buffalo-based company behind an eponymous athlete management system, recently completed a $600,000 round of venture capital fundraising, according to the company. The latest round followed a $1 million round of fundraising in October 2013.

The CoachMePlus software aggregates data from disparate sources into a single dashboard, making it easier for coaches and training staffs to combine the data from different wearable sensors, camera-based systems, and other sources. As such, they draw comparisons to Kinduct and Kitman Labs, which TechGraphs has recently covered. The difference, according to president and co-founder Kevin Dawidowicz, is that CoachMePlus was developed by “software guys,” rather than people with a physiology background. As a result, he argues, the company’s software is agnostic to a trainer’s methodology, which can mean a lot in a field as contentious as injury prevention.

“If I’m an industry expert, I’m going to shape my ideas and my software around my thought process,” Dawidowicz said. “But if you don’t believe in that methodology, then the software doesn’t work.”

This can be an advantage for teams with established sports science programs, who subscribe to their own theories on what keeps their athletes healthy. CoachMePlus also combines raw data with the outputs of algorithms produced by device companies to give front offices more options when working with data.

“We have universities that will use raw force plate data, put their own algorithms on top of it, and come up with their own indicators,” Dawidowicz said. “Nobody else is doing that.”

But not every organization is quite that advanced. For those cases, CoachMePlus has a network of consultants in place that teams can hire to help them analyze their data. The network, which Dawidowicz said was built entirely by word of mouth, keeps CoachMePlus from being influenced by a specific methodology.

“Everything that we’ve done is kind of through word of mouth, trade show attendance, and networking through different channels,” Dawidowicz said. “If you build these longstanding trust relationships, these coaching trees and these sport science trees open up because you’ve actually delivered for somebody.”

In addition to its data management tools, CoachMePlus also features workflow management tools, which Dawidowicz believes to be unique among his competitors. The tools allow coaches and training staffs to perform repetitive tasks like weigh-ins quickly and efficiently, even for large teams. The workflow tools also allow staffs to more effectively communicate with their athletes, so that athletes coming off the field can be quickly routed to the appropriate recovery therapy.

“We’ve created these workflows in our system that display this information throughout facilities and it lets people know ‘Something’s wrong,’ or ‘Go do something'” Dawidowicz said.

The origins of the company date back to the early 2000s, when Dawidowicz was running a software consulting company. The Buffalo Sabres’ strength and conditioning coach came to Dawidowicz to make an interactive version of the team’s workout book. But Dawidowicz, whose interest in strength and conditioning came out of his days as a self-described “bro-science gym rat,” saw the potential for something much more interesting.

“I get down to the locker room and I go, ‘You don’t want that, you want a calendar, and you want to put your periodiziation model on there, and you want to track your sets and reps, and you want to put your body fat percentages…’ and I’m just going on and on about all the stuff that it could be instead,” he said.

This relationship continued for a few years until the Sabres increased their budget, giving CoachMePlus the money to develop a prototype system. In 2011, CoachMePlus brought the prototype to the NHL combine in Toronto and signed deals with the Edmonton Oilers and Columbus Blue Jackets. The company still counts those organizations among their 48 customers.

“We’ve never lost a team, we’ve never gotten to the point where a team’s not going to renew with us,” Dawidowicz said.

In addition to their athlete management system, CoachMePlus has begun working with wearable device manufacturers to develop software that teams can use to take advantage of the new technologies.

“There are actual device companies right now that have given up on being software companies and instead pump their data into our system,” Dawidowicz said. “We’re finding more and more device companies looking to focus on just the hardware, and then we help them by focusing on the software.”

The additional venture capital funding will allow CoachMePlus to support the data management needs of even more organizations. Dawidowicz says the company will continue its focus on building software to the needs of its clients.

“It’s such a noisy market out there,” he said. “We’re playing the long game of, ‘Get the next customer, make them happy, continue.'”