by Ben Atlas on 01.11.2010.8:34am
Drew Brees, a quarterback for the New Orleans Saints. weights against the NFL in the case in front of the Supreme Court – Washington Post:
“The case involves a multimillion-dollar deal struck in 2000 between the National Football League and Reebok that grants Reebok the exclusive rights to make hats, sweatshirts and other gear with NFL team logos. What does that deal have to do with the ability of my teammates and me to perform our jobs and entertain football fans around the country? Potentially, quite a bit: The gains we fought for and won as players over the years could be lost, while the competition that runs through all aspects of the sport could be undermined.”
As it stands today and because of the “free agency” agreement with the player union, NFL is a strange hybrid. On one hand there is a total monopoly in regards to merchandising, TV, video rights, etc. On the other hand every player (and a team) is a unique separate enterprise and even employer agreements with each of the NFL players are tailor-made. While in majority of business a worker enters a standard agreement for a company. If NFL is to act as a state it should take a cut (tax) from any mechanize sold but not to restrict and dictate who will have a monopoly on hats. This also means that a game could be shown on any channel, as long as a tax or fee is payed to the NFL, instead of restricting a game or even a Superbowl to a single network. Drew explains:
“Amazingly, after the NFL won the case, it asked the Supreme Court to dramatically expand the ruling and determine that the teams act as a single entity not only for marketing hats and gear, but for pretty much everything the league does. It was an odd request — as if I asked an official to review an 80-yard pass of mine that had already been ruled a touchdown. The notion that the teams function as a single entity is absurd; the 32 organizations composing the NFL and the business people who run them compete with unrelenting intensity for players, coaches and, most of all, the loyalty of fans.”
Incidentally there was a competing football league XFL that played only one season and failed. Go Saints!
by Ben Atlas on 12.26.2009.8:35am
This post is a collection of links and thoughts about media and statistics.
Marc Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, posts about the recent TV rating records across all major sports leagues:
“The internet has trained us. It has trained us to assign two distinct values to content that is available to us, regardless of media. The 1st variable is participation value. The 2nd variable is shelf life. The two variables go hand in hand.”
Read the post but to be honest I often find Marc’s written logic confusing. I will try my spin on it. People essentially are social creatures. We want to talk and tell stories and sports became a common conversational thread, something we can safely talk about without offending anyone’s feelings. A perfect metaphor of struggle, hope and defeat, the mirror of the society divided into super rich and poor and the byproduct of this culture – the obsession with celebrities. To illustrate this I noticed something during my walks around the Cleveland Circle Reservoirs in Chestnut Hill where a Blue Heron took a permanent residence. People who linger to look at the Heron are couples or groups of friends, while single walkers or runners just pass it by. My conclusion is the people don’t just want to stare at the bird; they want to talk about it. Blue Heron is interesting only as a subject of conversation, a story.
And this brings me to the new obsessive radio talk channel in Boston on 98.5 FM. The anchors Felger & Massarotti zeroed in on the question of the high ratings for the Yankees playoff baseball games in Boston – “do people watch baseball because they hate Yankees and hope to see them lose?” And the overwhelming response to the radio station- indeed people hate Yankees more than they love Red Sox and it seems that as much as people would like Red Sox to win they would be equally excited to see Yankees lose [sorry, not this year]. Again this seems like a familiar metaphor.
Next is the wake Up Call: CNN’s Election Coverage Finishes Fourth. So I am thinking people often have an explanation that seems perfectly plausible for years or more. Everyone, even at the CNN was convinced that Fox’s superior rating during the eight years of the Bush administration could be explained by the access to the ruling party. In other words the ratings had nothing to do with the actual broadcasts. Fore years the producers and the fans had a perfect excuse.
Finally there is a new research showing that 8% of Internet Users Account for 85% of all [ads] Clicks. Across all media products there are your core users, inevitably and surprisingly, the number lingers only around 5%. These are your blog commentators, your regular readers, people who actually buy after they walk into a store. There is always a tiny minority that actually gets it.
And almost forgot about this. Jason Kotte links to the exchange between Michael Turner and Brian Joseph Davis – Books have stalled:
“[The book] is stalled out, in terms of technology, at 1500 AD, and sociologically at around 1930.”
Meaning:
“Literature in book form, and discussion around it, was the mark of education, of the gentry and petit bourgeois. Literature in book form never really found a place in mass produced, post WW2 middle class culture.” ["TV and radio took over as the cultural currency around then."]
Photo via flickr/stefbra. Poland, Lodz, Tramwajowa Street
Before I go into this story, can you really make up the first and the last names, unbelievable!? Some doctors speculate that Caster Semenya is not a hermaphrodite but likely has a AIS or Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome.
In other words Caster Semenya is genetic male with XY chrmozomes but has external female genitalia. Dr. Mark Porter explains in the Times:
“Gender should be determined at the point of fertilisation. All ova carry an X chromosome, while only half of male sperm carry an X, the rest carrying a Y chromosome. If an X-carrying sperm reaches the ovum first, the resulting child will be XX and female. If a Y chromosome wins the race, the child will be XY and a boy. But it is not that simple.
The default gender for all developing babies is female and the Y chromosome alters this by increasing production of male hormones (androgens), which masculinise the child — the ovaries migrate through the abdominal wall to become the testes, the labia fuse to form the scrotum, the clitoris grows to become the penis and the child becomes a boy. But what if things don’t go to plan?
Several medical conditions can blur the boundaries between male and female, but perhaps the most graphic example is Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS), where the embryo carries male chromosomes (XY) but develops into a child that is outwardly female.
It all starts off well. The Y chromosome turns the default female ovaries into androgen-producing testes, but the rest of the embryonic tissues don’t respond to the hormones and continue along the female path. The result is often an outwardly female baby but with male chromosomes and internal testes instead of ovaries.
She — for that is how the child is perceived and brought up — will not start to stand out until puberty. Although she looks like a girl in all ways (including breasts), she is a male internally, so “she” has testes instead of ovaries, no womb and is missing the upper two thirds of the vagina. So she will have no periods, can never conceive and may have difficulty with sexual intercourse.”
Now really interesting fact is that androgynous women who were genetic males, presumably the case of Caster Semenya, cleared to compete with women in the Olympics.
The Since of Sports blog published the diagrams:
“The diagram [above] summarizes the results from the Olympic Games from 1972 up to 1996, before the IOC stoppped genetic screening of athletes. What you are seeing is the number of female athletes who “failed” the genetic test which looks for the presence of a gene (called SRY) that is normally found on the Y-chromosome (in other words, these are women with a Y-chromosome). Of particular interest is the 1996 Olympics, where 8 women were identified as “genetic males”, but all 8 were allowed to compete. These 8 would have presented with the same results as Caster Semenya supposedly has – no uterus, no ovaries, and (possibly) internal testes.”
They got some balls in Atlanta and Albertville. If you are a woman athlete how does it make you feel to compete against a man with a vagina?
Mark Cuban wanted to hire students to do some promo crap about his NBA team Dallas Mavericks without paying them, so the interns can gain the “valuable experience”. He run this by his HR person who promptly discovered that this is illegal, see the sources on Mark’s blog. This is crazy. Mark Cuban is the billionaire owner of one of the most successful NBA franchises, and all around investor. He can’t pay students to do some photos? Hey Cuban, here is what you pay to your players, why don’t you ask them to do some Photoshop for you, they can gain the valuable experience and benefit from it after they retire from basketball.
I have opened my summer workout routine of climbing the seats of the Harvard Stadium. When the place is empty is has this unusual feel to it, you are apart from the world. The massive, first ever reinforced concrete structure of that scale is a beautiful curvaceous shelter of the Roman imperial proportions. I took some photos.
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How come I never heard this when it counted?
