Sports writer - Grant writer
When you’re a professional athlete, it can be really difficult to get excited about promotional videos. Especially videos that few fans in attendance will pay attention to (though they should.)
In today’s installment of “Did you just roll out of bed or are you making a promotional video?”, former Boston College sneaky forward Nathan Gerbe stars alongside fellow Buffalo Sabres player Mike Weber to promote the team’s Green Team:
New Boston Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington had his introductory (or re-introductory?) press conference overshadowed Tuesday afternoon by an announcement he made about 45 minutes into the event. In one of his first public acts as GM, he announced that beleaguered pitcher John Lackey would be going under the knife for Tommy John surgery.
My first thought was, “Isn’t that a bit…convenient?”
I do not have the ability to argue that Lackey does not need an ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction (UCL, the medical term for Tommy John surgery.) I am not a member of the medical community. But we have reached the point where it seems like every time a major league pitcher needs to take a “vacation” for a spell, they’re sent down to visit Dr. James Andrews (the nation’s best surgeon for this particular procedure) in Birmingham, Alabama.
This leads me to ask: Is the baseball community overprescribing Tommy John surgery? Continue reading
It’s a football-less Sunday in New England. The New England Patriots are on a bye week, and thus Boston sports fans are looking for something to fill their Sunday. Looking for the reigning Stanley Cup Champion Boston Bruins to fill the void? They’re off today, having played the San Jose Sharks Saturday night.
Why, for the most part, is the New England college hockey scene also quiet today? Why not take advantage of the region being sportless* for the day and showcase some early season action?
Even Boston College, who have created quite the Sunday afternoon game niche at Conte Forum over the past few years, is off today. The only game today is Minnesota hosting Vermont, as the Catamounts try to avoid getting offensively overpowered like they were Friday night. (Dartmouth is hosting Norwich in an exhibition at 7pm, but that doesn’t count.)
The excuse that college hockey schedules are set in a year in advance and thus are inflexible is a weak one. Dates and times are changed several times during the summer and even during the season. A month before this season started, a few games were moved after the second edition of Frozen Fenway was announced. Times are changed during the season to take postseason play by professional teams into account. And if a television broadcast opportunity becomes available, some games will move times to accommodate that.
So the powers that be within Hockey East didn’t take a gander at the NFL and NHL schedules when making this season’s final slate and see a gaping open Sunday? Why not move Boston College’s league tilt against Northeastern from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon? Both the NFL and NHL schedules were known far enough in advance that the change could have been made before tickets were printed and team training schedules were set. Given the Eagles and Huskies proximity to each other, no travel would have to be accounted for. And instead of NESN filling time by broadcasting Fox Sports North’s feed of the Minnesota-Vermont game, they could broadcast a league game between two teams that would draw much higher ratings. (And they could show local commercials, a revenue source they miss out when they simulcast from another channel.)
If Hockey East wants to further promote the idea that they are the “premiere” college hockey league (and the recent addition of Notre Dame was made with that in mind), they need to begin looking for opportunities to expose their sport to new audiences. Waiting for February to catch casual fans with the Beanpot isn’t enough. Channel hopping casual fans could be lured in this afternoon and hooked in for the rest of the season.
The league missed the boat by not having a league game on a Patriots-free Sunday. If they want to grab any more of the very saturated New England sports market, they need to start making the most of rare empty spaces in the seemingly endless sports cycle and promote college hockey in them.
* Sportless – A word I made up. Definition: being without sports. Like being homeless, just must less dire.
While on the commuter rail into work this morning, I asked the following via Twitter:
Has anyone started a Tumblr full of captioned Jim Harbaugh-Jim Schwartz tiff photos yet? We’ll call it, “I Can Has Hard Handshake.”
I was slammed with work all day, but the minute I got home, I knew what had to be done. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present “I Can Has Hard Handshake?”
But wait, there’s more! I’m not exactly great at these (it’s my first time), but I tried my best. Give me at least a B for effort.
By the way, word came out early this evening that the NFL will not fine either coach for their confrontation.
In late September, I put the higher ed administrator hat away for a hot second and geeked out at Blogs With Balls, the seminal national conference on new sports media.
BWB4 appropriately featured panelists from Grantland and an entire panel about Deadspin. I qualified that with “appropriately” because deep down inside, writers at both publications have all have achieved the pinnacle of every insomniac sports blogger – they make a living writing both ridiculous and serious sports nuggets. (Also, they can wear jeans and faux faded vintage sports tees to work.)
In the Deadspin panel, amongst the discussion of Brett Favre and his privates, there was a discussion of Deadspin‘s long form, non-sports specific work. And within that (all too brief) discussion, Deadspin editor AJ Daulerio mentioned that they want to find a place for that “men’s magazine” style of writing. He specifically called out “men’s magazines,” and didn’t just say “long-form.”
During the first week of October, Grantland announced a collaboration with humor publication McSweeney’s to offer a “best of” compilation entitled Grantland Quarterly. The topics covered will span sports, entertainment and social commentary. Readers will be able to subscribe to a year worth of the publication, or order individual copies for $19.95. Each issue will be edited by site founder Bill Simmons and former GQ editor Dan Fierman, and will include a few print-only exclusives. In a quote to the New York Observer, Fierman says,
“If our site has a problem it’s that we move so fast that readers miss stuff,” he said. The print journal serves up the site’s greatest hits in a medium better suited to long-form journalism.”
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