Posts from Sports

Fun Friday: Spurs Warriors

The Cavs and the Warriors sure look like they are headed for yet another epic finals.

But I am wondering if we should not look past the semi-final series, in particular, the Spurs Warriors series that starts on Sunday.

Does anyone out there think that the Spurs can beat the Warriors in a seven game series?

And if not, how many games will the Spurs take from the Warriors?

#Sports

Fun Friday: March Madness

We are on spring break with our son Josh this week in Utah and we caught most of the games yesterday. I am not a huge college basketball fan, I prefer the pro game, but there is something about march madness that is so great, particularly these first two weekends where the games come fast and furious.

So I thought we could have some fun sharing our brackets, or our picks, or whatever.

Here’s mine, sorry about the chickenscratch handwriting. I failed penmanship every grade in school for very good reasons.

I’ve got Villanova, Gonzaga, Kansas, and Kentucky going to the final four and Kentucky taking the trophy.

How about you?

#Sports

Cubs, World Series Champs

I’m back to photoblogging and this post is easy.

cubs-hat

I’ve been a Cubs fan for the past month. It’s been a lot of fun to root for a fantastic team and I could not feel better for Chicago and Cubs fans everywhere right now. Well done Cubs. World Series Champs.

#Sports

Fun Friday: The Weekend At Wrigley

The Cubs and Indians face off tonight, tomorrow, and sunday and the result of these three games will say a lot about who is going to walk away with the World Series ring this year.

I think the Cubs will be strong at home and believe they will win at least two of these three games and possibly sweep.

What do you think?

#Sports

Fun Friday: Cubs Fever

My friend Dave sent me this hat a few days ago:

cubs

I hope to be wearing it for the next week and a half.

The Cubs have not won the World Series in 108 years.

Unless you are a Dodgers or Indians fan, I think you have to get on this bandwagon.

Do you all agree?

#Sports

Cubbbbs

All I have to say this morning is go Cubs.

Man I loved how they came back last night.

Well done.

I’m rooting for the Cubs to go all the way this year.

#Sports

Fun Friday: October Baseball

I wrote in early September that I thought the Mets could make it into October. Well I was sort of right. The Mets were a shambles for most of the year but in September they called up their Triple A Las Vegas team and those scrappy kids got them into the wild card game in which our last standing young arm, Thor, went head to head with arguably the best post season pitcher in the game right now and held his own for seven innings. We all know that the Mets’ season ended with a three run homer in the top of the ninth. I am thankful to the Mets for giving us more of a season than we thought was possible at the all star break:

But now that the Mets are out, I have thrown myself 100% behind the Cubs. As I explained on Twitter yesterday, I can relate to them:

So as we do on Fun Friday, let’s get into the comments and talk. Who are you rooting for in the postseason?

#Sports

Video Of The Week: Allen Iverson's Hall Of Fame Speech

My two favorite basketball players, Patrick Ewing and Allen Iverson, are both products of John Thompson Jr’s Georgetown program of the 80s and 90s. Both went on to have hall of fame careers in the NBA and both were franchise players on teams that got close but never won an NBA championship. The thing Patrick and Allen have, more than anything else, is heart.

And Allen’s heart is on display in this rambling 30min acceptance speech he gave at the Basketball Hall Of Fame yesterday.

It’s about 25mins of him thanking people (his family, the people who shaped him as a child, his friends, his coaches, his teammates, his competitors, etc) and about 5mins of speech making. But in all of that are a few gems.

  • the feeling of stepping on the court against Michael Jordan for the first time
  • his relationship with the Philly fans
  • his relationship with the media
  • John Thompson Jr’s decision to recruit him to Georgetown and “save his life”
  • how he learned the crossover

Allen is far from perfect, as a player and as a person (who is?), but what you see in this speech is how he managed to hold it all together throughout a chaotic career and life. His reputation is now “solidified” as he says at the end of the speech. I am very happy for AI.

#Sports#Uncategorized

Let's Go Mets

Last year the Mets woke up on the last night of July. I called it here on AVC. They went all the way to the Series, losing badly to the Royals.

This year it took longer, but anyone who follows baseball knows that the Mets are the hottest team in baseball right now. They’ve won eight of their last ten and something like fourteen of their past eighteen games.

I started watching closely a few weeks ago when they started to put back to back wins together. And I’ve tried to watch as many games as I can since then.

They took a lot of hits in the first half of the season, most notably the loss of their ace Matt Harvey, but they have hung in there. If Cespedes does what he did last year and Curtis stays hot after a lousy year at the plate, then we’ve got a chance to make the playoffs and then anything can happen.

The Cubs and Nationals look like the better NL teams this year but the if the Mets stay hot we could be playing baseball in October in NYC. And although I’m a Yankee hater, they also might pull off a late charge. There is nothing quite like the cool fall nights in NYC with postseason baseball in the air.

#Sports

Streaming, Ads, and Subscriptions

Yesterday’s post on streaming the Olympics vs watching them on TV produced some great comments. 

A lot of them were about the crappy video quality and heavy ad load on the stream. I am not sure what to take from that but it is clear that NBC has not yet made their streaming experience as high of a priority in terms of user experience as they could and should.

But the more interesting conversation to me was about the business model for streaming the Olympics on phones, tablets, and smart TVs. A number of readers pointed out that the streams use the same business model (advertising) as broadcast TV and so the ad loads will be the same and just as annoying.

But I think the broadcasters like NBC have an opportunity to take a page out of the playbook of the streaming music companies like Spotify and SoundCloud and offer both free ad supported streams and subscription streams that are ad free and offer offline sync (record and playback later).

Would you pay for a $19.99 in-app upgrade on your NBC Sports app to remove ads and get offline sync for the entire 17 days of the Summer Olympics? I know I would but I also know that I am less price conscious than most AVC readers. Please weigh in on that in the comments.

The broadcast television companies have been advertising supported businesses for the most part. In recent years they have been able to get retransmission fees and start getting paid for their programming from the cable operators but I think the subscription opportunity in the streaming world is significant for them, particularly when it comes to big events like the Olympics.

I looked around for a subscription based app for NBC Sports and found something called NBC Sports Gold but that looks like an experiment that doesn’t support the main events like the Olympics. I hope we will see the main events make it onto something like that in the coming years. I think it would be great for viewers and for the broadcasters as well.

#Sports#Television