Leatherneck Nation

I have been very disappointed with the hoops highlight clips that the Athletic Department is posting. If you watch these, you walk away with zero clues as to how the game unfolded. While I can see the need for a lot of "sugarcoating" at the junior high and high school levels of in-house athletic reporting, there is absolutely no room for it at the D1 college level. College sports is a business and should be treated that way. Anyone who participates in or follows sports or the stock market knows that things in life don't always go your way. The coaches making the big bucks know it. The players leaving their heart and soul on the court know it. The fans in attendance know it as well. So why hide it from those fans who simply reach out to your college athletics web site for a little post-game enlightenment. I just don't see the need for this total "one-sidedness" in putting together a highlight clip. For those of you who think that these clips are potential recruiting tools for future students and athletes, then I tell you that you are recruiting very scared of something.

The rant complete, I am sure we are not alone in doing it this way. I am also sure there is at least one school on the planet doing it the right way. In fact, I happened to stumble on that school this very afternoon as I went to the UVA athletic site to catch some highlights of their game with Duke the other night. Yes indeed, those Cavaliers got it right. The last shot that went in was a Duke one:

http://virginiasportstv.com/mensbasketball/1Q3e

Folks, I feel so strongly about this issue that I may withhold renewal of my Leatherneck Club membership until it is addressed.

Nuff said for this evening!

New day, more time to explore:

Just for the hell of it, I went over to the Jackrabbit site this morning to see what they show in the way of game highlights. NDSU ladies surprised them earlier this year. For that game, the Jacks mixed in numerous Bison scoring plays to tell it the way it was (click on Game Highlights):

http://www.gojacks.com/mediaPortal/play ... M_ID=15000

The way we handle this stuff is totally unacceptable to me. To NOT have our last (and most critical) possession after the timeout in the latest NDSU game highlight clip is amateurish to the max but there was no sugar so not surprised.

It is time to pull off the "blinders" and go to work!

Wow, those early morning Jay Bilas' tweets are starting to rub off on me.

I guess they are showing Western game highlights instead of just game highlights! Give them a call and let them know in the SID office how strongly you feel about this. I would much rather have the choice of re-watching the entire game then having to depend on the highlights anyway. JC Fuller basically had the ball pushed back into his face on Sunday. Jabari had the same drive on Friday but kicked it out to Garrett instead. Guess it just the difference in player making the play. I don't mean to make lite of your concerns but I think a song from Todd Rundgren might help this situation!!!! Now remember I am just pulling your leg. jc

Neckfansince71 wrote:I guess they are showing Western game highlights instead of just game highlights! Give them a call and let them know in the SID office how strongly you feel about this. I would much rather have the choice of re-watching the entire game then having to depend on the highlights anyway. JC Fuller basically had the ball pushed back into his face on Sunday. Jabari had the same drive on Friday but kicked it out to Garrett instead. Guess it just the difference in player making the play. I don't mean to make lite of your concerns but I think a song from Todd Rundgren might help this situation!!!! Now remember I am just pulling your leg. jc

LOL. I'll do that or send a letter expressing my concerns. Full games are nice but a lot of room for improvement there too. No easy way to fast forward or reverse past the dead ball times. I have some ideas how to improve that as well so I will include those and see what they can do. Let me just say the porn industry is light years ahead of us.

Here is a good (especially if you like classical music) example of what I have in mind for a nice full game video replay system inside the jwplayer that SideArm uses:

http://www.learningapi.com/jw-player-pl ... mple-page/

We could keep it very simple and just generate slide bookmarks for the media timeout points during a game or go hog wild and generate them for all plays based on the play-by-play statistics that are available for each game (click on Play-By-Play):

http://www.goleathernecks.com/boxscore. ... ll&id=4696

I don't think it would take much programming to do this and we might be able to sell it back to SideArm for a few dollars if it works well. If it does work, we could get to the second half "00:06 WIU TURNOVER by FULLER,JC" point on the video in lickity-split fashion.

How cool is that?

I showed Tommy the phone sidearm app after the first game with the video board. He indicated more was coming, but part of it was a wireless issue and that all was currently coming from the wires the TV crew uses. Let's say they can't figure out the wireless, they could still have a camera pretty much fixed on a phone shot and keep the ongoing play-by-play stats on part of the screen in conjunction with the video of the game.

Not sure about basketball, but I just watched Iowa's highlights of their win over #2 ranked Minnesota in wrestling and they only showed Iowa wrestlers that won. I didn't see anything wrong with that.

meganeck wrote:Not sure about basketball, but I just watched Iowa's highlights of their win over #2 ranked Minnesota in wrestling and they only showed Iowa wrestlers that won. I didn't see anything wrong with that.

I watched it too and thought it was very good. Got a lot of useful info out of that clip and I came in knowing nothing about wrestling. I now know there is a move called a "whipover". Wrestling is a little different because it is a bunch of individual matches so you probably can't cover all of them in a lot of detail so in a limited time frame, you probably only do show your own triumphs yet they made mention of the several weight classes which did not go their way. A+ in my book.

When I watch our highlights, I come away knowing only three things:
1) We made lots of baskets.
2) The PA announcer has a wonderful set of vocal cords.
3) The final score

C- and I woke up on the good side of the bed today.