|
|
| Sacked OR Takled? |
November 10, 2005 |
By Greg Michetti
CFL FANS ANXIOUS TO SCOPE OUT GAME DETAILS USED TO ENDURE A FULL-DAY WAIT FOR OFFICIAL STATS. THE MAXIMUM DELAY NOW: TWO MINUTES.
Last Labour Day at 1:22 p.m. in Calgary’s McMahon Stadium, 11 guys in green and gold uniforms stared at Edmonton Eskimo quarterback Ricky Ray as he called the play in the huddle.
“I-right Wiggle, 34 Switchblade. On two. Ready, break.”
Ten seconds later, the play, a successful pass completion from Ray to wide receiver Jason Tucker for a gain of 16 yards and a first down, was over. Less than two minutes after that, the results of that play and the total game statistics to date were posted on the Internet in a usable XML document.
If you are a press-box media type, you could expect full summaries at the end of each quarter, and if you’re a Fantasy Football fan - meaning you’ve got a few bucks on the outcome of the game - you can view full game details on the Web.
It wasn’t always this way.
“Prior to our involvement with Sun Microsystems, everybody had it different,” said Brent Scrimshaw, senior vice-president of marketing and partnerships at the Canadian Football League.
“Usually, most teams had a couple of guys who had an electronic spreadsheet. The Argos may have been paper-based. The day after the game, the teams would forward a paper copy of the game summaries to the (CFL) league office where it would be into a database. Then the information would be available for press, coaches and other teams. There were lots of disparate systems and lots of re-checking.
“The new system is an amazing change, especially for coaching,” he said.
And the fans love it, too. This real-time availability of statistics and information, where Web surfers can check in on their team at http://www.cfl.ca, is but one ingredient of a very successful marketing plan by the CFL. Over the past few years, the Canadian game has become cool again. CFL popularity is even creeping back in cities like Toronto, where interest in the National Football League has been the dominant factor.
“The CFL has really improved in this area,” said Gord McIntyre, a sports reporter who covers the B.C. Lions for The Province in Vancouver. “They used to be notorious for not having correct information for us to use.”
Tech plays
Now, the information is both official and speedy. There are three laptop users at each game: one handles offence, the second handles defence and the third is called the crew chief console. Just after Ray completed that pass to Tucker, the home-team representatives in the McMahon Stadium press box used laptops to enter the play details in an online page that is saved to a database on a Sun Microsystems server at CFL Central.
The offensive monitor enters information such as the down, whether or not it was a pass or run, who threw it, who received it and how many yards gained. Meanwhile, the defensive laptop operator enters data such as the names of Stampeders players who made the tackle and how many yards were given up.
For verification and accuracy, both the offensive and defensive plays are submitted to the crew chief who handles the third computer. Submissions are reviewed, checked and, if approved, posted to the Web where they are considered official. Total time from when Tucker was tackled to when it hit the Web in XML format: less than two minutes.
“We’ll be speeding this up over time,” said Chris Soneemann, the CFL’s senior project lead at the CFL offices in Toronto. The league and Sun Microsystems are in the third year of this arrangement and it has been extended for at least another year after that.
There’s more. After each quarter, game summaries, which can be saved in PDF format, are printed and delivered to the reporters in the media suites. This can also be e-mailed. And Web-surfing sports fans can follow the play-by-play on the Web at http://liveplay.cflcentral.com, because the data is generated in an XML format (specifically SportML), meaning it can be viewed on any PC.
“I track every play myself,” McIntyre said. “But it sure is nice to have the official version of a play right in front of you. For example, if Dave Dickenson is sacked but I thought he was tackled, it could change the way I write my story.”
Business play
The arrangement is simple: Sun trades hardware, software and Web technology for exposure to CFL fans and Canadian media. Both sides see it as a win-win.
Most Fortune 1000 companies and techies in general know Sun very well, especially in the areas of government, medicine, banking and high-end Web services. In Alberta, Sun is popular with the geoscientists in the province’s white-hot oil and gas sector. Although it was founded in 1982, the company is not that well known to the public and certainly not to the average CFL devotee.
“We do more than just run protein sequencing,” laughed Shirley Horvat, director of marketing for Sun Microsystems of Canada. “Sun and the CFL share similar characteristics. We’re fast, powerful, aggressive and we try to reconnect to the older fans,” she said. Sun has a similar deal with Major League Baseball in the U.S.
The real-time data also works with the highly popular Fantasy Football (http://www.fantasysportsnetwork.com), and both Sun and the CFL know nothing increases a fan’s interest in a game more than a few bucks bet on the outcome. Give non-fans Grey Cup pool tickets and by the end of the first quarter they will be CFL roster experts, especially if they lost a $500 prize because Sean Fleming missed a 17-yard field goal.
Problems? Only one. The image of a cigar-smoking, loose-necktied, Oscar Madison-like figure hovering over a typewriter may actually still exist. It turns out many press-box sports reporters, astonishingly, do not have computers. And even if they do, not all Canadian stadiums are equipped with high-speed Internet connections.
Some things take a bit longer to change than others, but in the meantime, the CFL on Sun is very promising for the wired crowd, which includes most young fans today.
|
|
|
| Top 300 Issue |
 
|
| Gadget of the Week (Canadian) |
|
Parla italiano?
Lingo Voyager 4
If you’re heading out on vacation and you don’t speak the local language, consider picking up a Voyager 4. About the size of a large PDA, it’s a 14-language talking translator that handles English, German, Portuguese, Dutch, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, Arabic and Hebrew.
more>>
|
| Gadget of the Week (Japanese) |
Sounds of Japan
Why record just the visual when you can capture the sounds as well.
more>> |
| Backblog RSS feed |
Click to subscribe  |
|
sponsored by 
