Real-life Tony Stark — Telsa and SpaceX founder Elon Musk — is in the news again on the merit of a recent and fascinating Aeon Magazine article. The article sums up some of Musk’s recent Mars ambitions, and by way of recap: His original call for an 80,000-person colony has expanded to a 1-million-person civilization. And in case we might suspect the idea is discovery-driven, we should know the emphasis actual orbits the concept of survival.

And, oddly enough, it makes some sense. What he’s saying is:

1. There are no other civilizations networked across the known galaxy;
2. so barring any unknown unknowns, there’s either no life by Earth life or all other single-planet civs died off;
3. so what the hell? Let’s build a second Earth in case we break this one a little earlier than expected.

And since every science fiction movie ever includes Earth either being destroyed or being wasted via pollution, then I’d say we pretty much need to make that Mars colony right now.
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CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy is a fairly hot topic within the NFL lately. The disease is known to cause depression, memory loss and dementia among suffers. CTE is brought on by repeated head trauma, like that which can be found in contact sports like football and hockey. Recently, lawsuits have been filed on behalf of former NFL players against the league, and CTE made the news when it was linked to the suicide of former player Junior Seau. One of the many unfortunate details about CTE is that, currently, it is only detectable post-mortem. However, a recent collaboration between Boston University and Exosome Sciences may help create a test that can detect the disease among living patients.

Earlier this year, Exosome Sciences, Inc. (ESI) announced that they had detected markers that carried tau proteins across the blood-brain barrier and into the bloodstream. One of telltale signs of CTE is an elevated amount of tau proteins in the brain. Now, in partnership with the BU CTE Center, they are looking to develop a reliable test for CTE in living individuals.

The study, called Diagnosing and Evaluating Traumatic Encephalopathy Using Clinical Tests (DETECT), is funded by the National Institute of Health, the National Institute of Neurologic Diseases and Stroke, the National Institute on Aging and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

With the recent findings by ESI and the prestige of the BU CTE Center as a leading researcher of the disease, this partnership brings hope to current sufferers of CTE. Once the disease is detectable in living subjects, drugs and therapies can be developed to help mitigate the effects on sufferers. Once sufferers can be identified, further study can be done into finding the types and severities of head trauma that are most likely to lead to CTE. This collaboration is a big first step in treating, if not eventually curing, this terrible disease.

(Header image via thirteenofclubs)

Here’s something that could potentially be a big thing in sports: the Dallas Mavericks and the Dallas Cowboys are using microchip technology to collect data for bioanalytics.

The device emits and receives GPS and accelerometer signals, weighs about 1 ounce and is worn under practice jerseys, tucked into a pouch positioned near the top of the spine. The device emits real-time data on accelerations, decelerations, changes of direction and jumping (height and frequency).

Using the data, which Catapult calls “the world’s first bio-analytics platform,” sports teams monitor daily and weekly leg loads and adjust workouts accordingly. The data also helps quantify the progress of players who are rehabbing from injuries.

There’s so much potential for this in sports, especially in monitoring athletes’ health and rehab. It can also improve the data that’s already out there, such as in baseball with Trackman data. Scouting players and analyzing their play could be made easier with an increase in bioanalytic microchip technology within the next 10 years or so. There’d be much more accurate data — with a smaller margin of error — than there is right now, and that is a huge, huge thing for the future.

Of course, because it’s so recent, it may take a while for more teams to adapt this practice. Also, teams don’t necessarily have the same backing of a Mark Cuban-type like the Mavericks and the Cowboys have. Financial backing could, and would, be a problem for a lot of the small-market teams to incorporate. But, this is a start. There are still a lot of teams out there that don’t have the most advanced analytical technology yet, but it’s slowly being incorporated one way or another. Microchip technology could be the next thing.

(Header image via Raymangold22)

The smartphone app Snapchat may seem like it should only appeal to over-sharing tweens and dirty little dirty birds, but the company’s higher-ups are hoping that they can gain further traction with sports, leagues and athletes (pause for Brett Favre jokes) with a recent hire.

According to TechCrunch, Snapchat has recently swooped in and stolen Nike’s global director of digital, Eric Toda. Toda brings experience in social media, licensing, and content syndication, among others. Snapchat is most likely hoping to leverage Toda’s skills into cultivating partnerships in the sports world — to help teams and leagues better engage with fans.

This is all possible with Snapchat’s Our Stories feature. Users have the ability to add snaps to their own individual accounts, allowing their friends to view a 24-hour collection of all they wished to share. Our Stories brings in a bigger sense of community, allowing users to add their content to an event-based story that anyone could see. The recent 2014 World Cup was one such event, and fans could post images and video to that stream from the stands in Brazil or their own living rooms.

If Snapchat can work deals with sports entities, the Our Stories feature could widen to include individual games, playoff rounds/tournaments, or just be a place for fans of a certain team to post all their team-related pictures and videos. Fans could post scenes from their seats at the NCAA basketball tournament, videos from the Super Bowl, or clips of them cheering for their team during Game 7 of the World Series for the whole world to see.

Though it’s easy to speculate, exactly what Toda’s roll at Snapchat will be remains to be seen. But Snapchat would be a modern and fairly unobtrusive way for teams to create and cultivate fan engagement. Snapchat has moved on from naughty pics into big time corporate involvement. Sports seems like a logical next step, and it appears to be one Snapchat is trying to take.

(Header photo via Maurizio Pesce)

It appears 2K Sports’s NHL video game franchise is returning to life via the mobile sphere (h/t Polygon). With an undated title (simply: NHL 2K) it will be 2K’s first NHL game since NHL 2K11. While there is merit to the question “How terrible will the game be?” given that the rival game, so to speak, has been a wasteland of missing features, I think the enduring question is: What future lies ahead for sim sports games on mobile platforms?

And more generally: Are mobile devices becoming viable platforms for simulation sports game?

Madden NFL Mobile (Metascore 66) and the mobile edition for NBA 2K14 (Metascore 59) have shown (by their graphics) that mobile platforms are viable outlets for graphical demands of the simulation video games, but also (by their relatively weak reviews) that mobile platforms need more than just pared down or freemium versions of the platform games.

The mobile platform, to me, seems ripe for a renter model of video game use — a model many companies seem keen on using given the proliferation of MMORPGs over the last decade. Imagine paying — let’s be user-friendly — $5 a month to play an actively updated (with fresh rosters and occasional bigger patches and upgrades) version of MLB The Show. No upfront cost, just $5 a month — tacked onto your phone bill or your XBOX Live / PS Plus bill. You can play it on your mobile device, your home console, your computer. You can save your games to the cloud so your franchise is constantly developing whether you’re on the bus to work, in the bathroom at work, at home, thinking about work, and so on.

Brian Mazique and 2K Sports exec Chris Snyder discuss the new game.

I’m not talking about a freemium game. Because freemium games are not really cut out for simulation gaming and are also kinda the devil. Instead it would be a good game that, over the course of a year, would cost $60, but not expire come the end the season.

This model seems like a win-win to me. I can test out a game for just $5 (or, heck maybe $10) and if I love it, I will never have to buy a replacement and I will have it across all platforms simultaneously. I firmly believe this is what fans of simulation sports games want. Meanwhile, the gaming industry will get a steady income stream for his gold coin pool.

Of course, I could be wrong — maybe no one has an interest in pairing a controller with their iPad or Nexus phone; maybe no one else wants franchise mode in something that has a battery life; maybe there’s no better way to do it than it’s being done now — but maybe it’s time for a developer to find out. And maybe NHL 2K is the first step in that new direction?

(Header illustration via Bradley Woodrum)

When the San Francisco officially opened it’s new stadium on September 14th, they also opened one of the most technologically advanced stadiums in professional football. Levi’s Stadium is a connected facility through and through. One of the biggest perks for fans was the 600 Wi-Fi access points strewn throughout the stadium. Many were hidden under the actual seats, promising good connectivity even when sitting and watching the game. This allowed fans to both use the Levi’s Stadium proprietary app — allowing fans to order food to be delivered to their seats, amongst other things — and do all the necessary status updates and photo sharing that come hand-in-hand with attending a sporting event.

Well, fans certainly put that wireless network through its paces on Sunday. The stadium’s network reportedly pushed 3.3 Terabytes worth of data that day, beating a record held by MetLife Stadium during Super Bowl XLVIII. For reference, the maximum size of a photo upload allowed by Facebook is 25 MB. That equates to 1.32 million max-size photo uploads. The traffic total doesn’t come only from photos, obviously. In fact, a good deal came from video offered by the stadium’s own app.

When fans aren’t using the Levi’s Stadium app to order beer and food, they can also leverage it to watch replay video right on their devices. The 49ers said that fans watched 7,800 replays on Sunday. Considering the feature didn’t really work until the second half, those are some pretty impressive numbers.

For the most part, Levi’s Stadium’s data test went pretty smoothly on Sunday. As the 49ers work the bugs out, they will hopefully serve as a blueprint for future stadiums, as fans’ needs (or desires, at least) to view and upload content is only going to continue to grow.

(Header photo via Matthew Roth)

Are you the person people bring to bar trivia just for your sports knowledge? Can you recite a pivotal game of your favorite team’s history, play by play? Are you just a weirdo that likes sports facts? If so, newly-launched sit SuperFansCompete might be for you.

SuperFansCompete does trivia a little differently. First, it pits fans of one team against fans of another, and it’s all based on the schedule of actual NFL teams. For instance, the Tennessee Titans visit the Cincinnati Bengals in week 3. Therefor, on SuperFansCompete, fans of the Titans will be competing against fans of the Bengals.

The look of the game is not unlike the gamecasts one might find on ESPN or CBS. But instead of watching a real-life drive, players answer trivia questions in a quest to push their team down the virtual field.

The distance of a play depends on the level of difficulty. Easy questions get you a few yards. A flea-flicker play brings on a much harder question. String together enough correct answers, and you can find yourself in the end zone or with a field goal. Things like downs and a play clock also add pressure to the game. SuperFansCompete lay out all the rules on their site.

SuperFansCompete is still in beta, but it is free to play at the moment. As of this writing, there have been no announcements of prizes of any kind, though flexing trivia muscles — especially against opposing fans — might be enough to bring people to the site.

(Header image via nathanmac87)

Daily fantasy sports site FanDuel, fresh off their recent cash influx, ran into a bit of a problem on Sunday. Mainly, a whole host of fantasy players were unable to access the web site or mobile app to enter new contests or update current rosters. About 30 minutes before the 1 pm ET kick-offs, an important window for fantasy as this is usually when teams announce active and inactive players, FanDuel began performing poorly, with slow load times and spotty page loads. Eventually, the site degraded to the point of unusability. With only a few minutes before some teams kicked off — at which point rosters would lock — this left many people high and dry with unentered contests, unwanted rosters, and even injured players destined to gain zero points.

There was, shall we say, a fair deal of unhappiness among fans. A simple search of Twitter can tell you as much. And some of it was, in fact, justified. Many of FanDuel’s games cost money to play, and they run high-stakes tournaments like the World Fantasy Football Championships. When so much is on the line, the ability to change a roster in the final minutes is a necessity.

At the time, FanDuel did not seem to be responding to concerns on Twitter, but did offer one concession about a half hour after the opening kickoffs.

So sorry to all impacted by site issues. If you want your 1pm entries fully canceled & refunded please contact support@fanduel.com by 2pm ET

— FanDuel (@FanDuel) September 14, 2014

This gave users about 30 minutes to request a refund, assuming said users even saw the singular tweet.

Fantasy sports is becoming an ever-growing business. But, as FanDuel found out, a bigger user base can create bigger problems down the road.

Madden 15, the latest version of Madden franchise has been out for about three weeks now. Though it’s easy for the honeymoon period to wear off during that time, there has been one significant draw that keeps me playing it: defense. In particular the new tackling mechanics and options. Factor in the new block shedding and defense in Madden has gone from somewhat boring to something awesome.
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Way back when (i.e. 1975), the NFL was up in arms about television taking business away from individual teams. The thinking was that people’s abilities to watch the local team from their homes was causing a slide in ticket sales. In those days, gate receipts were a big part of a team’s (and the league’s) revenue. So the NFL went crying to the people who control TV markets — the FCC. The FCC enacted rules saying that games that were not sold out couldn’t be aired on local television. It was a rule to protect teams. In 2014, it’s become a rule that hurts fans.

Blackout rules have been a constant point of consternation to fans (and critics) of the NFL. Now, that movement has a big name in its corner — Tom Wheeler. You might not know the name, but if you aren’t a fan of the current blackout rules for NFL football, Wheeler is the kind of guy you want on your team. Tom Wheeler happens to be the chairman of the FCC.

In a recent op-ed for USA Today, Wheeler came out against the current set of rules, calling them “anti-fan.” He states his case about how the rules are now out-of-date, and confirms that he has sent a proposal to the rest of the commission to change how blackouts are handled. Wheeler states he plans to vote on the new proposal on September 30th.

Whether this new proposal discusses online-streaming rules and regulations is unclear. As of now, even subscribers to the expensive NFL Sunday Ticket package on DirecTV cannot stream a local game on the app if they are not near a TV. Fox has worked around this with their Fox Sports Go application, but CBS has no such option as of now.

The first step is getting games on TV. Hopefully, if these regulations pass, some definitive standards can be set for online streaming, as well.

(Header photo via Kyle Nishioka)