Posts tagged Sports2.0 at FanHouse

Former Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken Stabler was an NFL MVP and a Super Bowl winner, and any biography of him should focus, first and foremost, on his football career.

But any biography of him also needs to acknowledge that drinking and driving has been a major feature of his post-NFL life. He was convicted of drunk driving in 1995 and again in 2001, and his most recent DUI arrest has led him to take a leave of absence from his radio job.

So it's strange that someone keeps editing Stabler's drunk driving record out of his Wikipedia entry. First the information about Stabler's arrests and convictions will go up, and then it will get deleted. The absence of information about his drunk driving arrests has now been a subject of discussion at Wikipedia. One Wikipedia user writes:

I'm not sure why these aren't mentioned in the article, at least in some form...it can be done in an encyclopedic manner...why is there protection going on?

Good question. If someone who likes Stabler is trying to do Stabler a favor by whitewashing his record, here's a suggestion: Do Stabler a bigger favor by convincing him to stop risking his own life and the lives of everyone else on the roads.

At YouTube, you can watch these highlights from Saturday night's Dustin Hazelett vs. Josh Burkman fight:

Finding UFC fights on YouTube is something of a crapshoot. Sometimes highlight videos, like the one above, are posted by UFC. Sometimes full fights are illegally uploaded. Sometimes there's nothing.

But UFC.com has done something pretty cool: It posted the entire Hazelett-Burkman fight online. I just watched it, and it's a high-quality video with none of the bugs and glitches that often come with online video. If you haven't seen the fight, it's highly recommended.

Obviously, UFC is never going to post pay-per-view main events for free online, but posting undercard fights as a promotional vehicle makes a lot of sense. UFC is way ahead of the other sports leagues when it comes to online video.

Miami Herald writer Armando Salguero posted an item on the team's NFL blog last week saying that Dolphins kicker Jay Feely's big mouth was getting him in trouble with the team. It was typical off-season NFL fare, and nothing exceptional.

But Feely took exception to it, by posting a comment on the Herald's web site. The comment began, "armando, This is jay feely." And it also included this criticism:

I think you presented a much more controversial view of the situation than I did when you interviewed me. Never did I say they told me to 'shut up' as you wrote in your article. You asked me if they asked me to not do as much media work and I said 'yes, and I was willing to do that." I also told you my approach has been to work as hard as I could, to be the best kicker I could be, and that I believed the best kicker would win the job.

Feely has confirmed it really was him who posted the comment, and I think it's great. Feely might be the next Chris Cooley.

Hat tip: Sports by Brooks.

I've always thought that other sports leagues could learn a thing or two from the way UFC uses YouTube to promote itself. UFC has a popular YouTube channel, and it now appears to be attempting to expand its YouTube presence, posting several promotional videos in the last couple of days. Here's one hyping the Rampage Jackson-Forrest Griffin UFC 86 fight:

After the jump, watch another new UFC YouTube, of Jackson's first-round knockout slam of Ricardo Arona in 2004.

American soccer doesn't draw much in the way of TV eyeballs, but when there's a highlight like this one, it becomes a sensation on YouTube:

That was David Beckham from about 70 yards out against the Kansas City Wizards Saturday. That clip is the most-viewed video on YouTube in the last 24 hours, and the goal has been viewed about 2 million times.

Dan Steinberg of the D.C. Sports Bog reports that the Washington Redskins are looking to hire a blogger. This is good news for Redskins fans, for bloggers, for blog readers -- for everyone who likes football and likes going online to get information about football.

The reason it's good news isn't so much that the Redskins want to host a blog at Redskins.com -- there's nothing inherently good about blogs -- but that according to Steinberg, the team is committed to the idea of bringing in a writer who actually covers the team more or less the way an independent blogger would, not just to re-print press releases and talk about what a genius Jim Zorn is.

Steinberg's colleague Jason La Canfora reported that Steinberg himself was a candidate for the job, and although that ain't happening, the mere fact that the team is reaching out to someone with that kind of journalistic background is impressive. This is a smart move for the Redskins.

If you search YouTube for "Preakness infield," you'll find all sorts of videos like this one, in which a guy pukes his guts out while a girl mocks him:

The Preakness infield has virtually nothing to do with horse racing and much to do with binge drinking and the flashing of breasts. Everything about it runs contrary to the aristocratic "Sport of Kings" image that the powers that be in horse racing try to project.

And that's fine, if that's what the consenting adults who go to the Preakness infield are looking for. But as Andrew Ratner of the Baltimore Sun writes (in a column in which he quotes me), the age of cell phone cameras and blogs and YouTube has changed the Preakness infield because it can no longer be forgotten with a couple of aspirin the next morning. You might do things in the Preakness infield that you wouldn't do in front of your co-workers, only to have your co-workers see you doing those things online.

Strangely, though, I don't think there's any evidence at all that the behavior of the people in the Preakness infield has changed. I guess that afternoon of fun is worth it.

The Cincinnati Bengals blog stripehype.com reports today that the Bengals have threatened its parent company, the fansided.com blog network, with a lawsuit over what the team says is improper use of copyrighted images.

Says the blogger at stripehype:

we've been asking for access for months as a media outlet to be able to interview players, take our own photos, etc. We've been turned down, stating that the Bengals "do not issue credentials to non-traditional media."

It has always seemed to me that pro sports teams should embrace fan bloggers, as, in general, blogs written by fans offer more favorable commentary about their teams than traditional media outlets do. But apparently the Bengals disagree.

Note: I e-mailed the Bengals' spokesman to seek a comment on this; he did not reply.

As you unfortunate readers will find out this summer, a few of us at FanHouse's NBA HQ are salary cap wonks. The game is beautiful, the nightly docket (especially in April and May) divine. But I, for one, derive almost as much pleasure from poring through Basketball-Reference.com, the salary pages at HoopsHype and ShamSports, and Larry Coon's collective bargaining agreement FAQ. The offseason allows no rest for the minutia-minded.

So consider DraftExpress's new agent and salary database (via TrueHoop) a summertime goldmine. Jonathan Givony's site released the application Friday, and I've been otherwise oblivious to the world since. The player/team database uses salary figures from Sham, though Givony said in an e-mail some figures have been independently culled. (He added that the system's built in a way which always rapid updates and fixes on his side, which is a big improvement over existing references.) The agent listings -- with lists of top moneymakers and those with the most clients -- have been developed through independent research. Needless to say, it's impressive work.

For instance: Who's the top NBA agent? Well, Mark Bartelstein has more clients than anyone (41). But Arn Tellem represents players with a combined $193 million of guaranteed salary owed this year ... despite 12 fewer clients.

Sports By Brooks makes a fabulous point in a post about the Miami Herald's Barry Jackson this morning. Jackson, you might remember, penned the piece which got Bob Costas's face onto hundreds of basement blogger dartboards earlier this spring. A major part of Jackson's angle: Bloggers and the like aren't accountable, as they often write anonymously.

Brooks points out Jackson's recent usage of anonymous sources cited for the sole reason of bashing Shaquille O'Neal. Here's the relevant passage from Jackson's Sunday column.

Among words used by Heat people to describe Shaquille O'Neal, who lashed out at the team last week: ''a phony,'' a ''big baby'' and unprintable expletives.

Anonymous sources have their place in sportswriting -- trade rumors would be relegated solely to the realm of Sam Smith's imagination without them, and we'd never get contract details (important in this day of luxury tax consciousness) if reporters didn't publish the info without citing the agents who surely leak it.

But using "people" as a descriptor for folks who just want to bash a former player? In this instance, Jackson isn't a reporter -- he's a mouthpiece for some cowardly (but probably honest and completely correct) folks. Columnists stand by their name when they rip players and coaches. When players rip their own, they should be held accountable as well. And in this case, the only person who can hold them accountable is the writer. Don't blame the "sources"; blame Jackson for letting them get away with it.