The Portland Timbers just put out a 3D design of what PGE Park will look like after the renovations to make it soccer-specific. It’s pretty awesome as you can see below.
That’s not the only awesome part though. They’ve also partnered with io-media to create a really cool application where you can see the view of the field from every seat. And here’s the best part, they put a little easter egg on the scoreboard for Timbers fans at the expense of their biggest rivals, the Seattle Sounders.
It’s little things like this that make me smile when I’m busting away at code all day.
Start with an amazing Tim Howard outlet throw, add in a great Landon Donovan run, a layoff to a streaking Jozy Altidore, low driven cross to Clint Dempsey, a stellar save by the Algerian keeper (who was their best player all day), and then top it all off with Landon crashing in for the rebound and slotting away the goal to move the US on to the next round of the World Cup.
This was incredible, one of the top sports moments of my life. The US outplaying Algeria for 90 minutes, coming so close so many times, then having that dread set in that we wouldn’t be able to make it out of the group stages. All of it washed away in a brilliant counterattack marked by outstanding efforts from everyone involved.
I don’t think that this will propel the US to a World Cup in any way, but I have to believe that the tension of the match, the fight in the players, the passion of the crowds, and the euphoria of the win will help show a few borderline fans why the rest of the world loves this sport so much.
As for the $140k part, here’s the explanation from the MLS Insider blog.
If Donovan didn’t score the goal, the players would each walk away with $101,925.65. But because of the goal by Donovan, and if the players do not advance further, they each get $241,490.86….A DIFFERENCE OF $139,565.21!!! Somebody better buy the man a steak!!!
For comparison’s sake, here are the yearly salaries of the four MLS players on the US roster (full list available here)
Jonathan Bornstein – $100,000
Edson Buddle – $178,448
Landon Donovan – $2,050,000
Robbie Findley – $73,566
Outside of Landon (who has officially banished the Landycakes nickname with his performance this World Cup) that’s a pretty stellar raise for everyone, especially Robbie Findley who just quadrupled his yearly earn. Good for all of you guys, you deserved it.
As for the reaction around the country, here are some videos that I will never get tired of watching:
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
Baton Rouge, LA
Lincoln, NE
Kansas City, MO
New York, NY
Las Vegas, NV
San Diego, CA
Anyone else from other cities who has some, let me know in the comments and I’ll put ‘em up! I can’t get enough of this.
StarStreet Sports is the latest company to throw their hat into the “stock market for sports” ring. Brad Feld has a post up with a little information on this TechStars company and a piece they did for CNN recently. Between my love of sports and background of gambling to pay my way through undergrad there is obviously some interest here. In fact, I’ve written about the idea of finding new ways to monetize sports fans a coupletimes.
My favorite part of the Feld post isn’t really the content, it’s the comments. The StarStreet founder shows up to answer some of the standard concerns that I think anyone who follows this niche would have after watching ProTrade and OneSeason fail.
First concern: How do you convince people to invest when there is no hard asset behind it?
This is a huge issue and one that none of the earlier companies solved. You can’t have tangible value behind the “stock” because the team isn’t actually selling shares of itself. You can’t have contracts that pay out after certain events, a la Intrade, because that falls in to the dreaded gambling category (Intrade is based in Ireland, which is how they do it).
Now, I assume that StarStreet would argue that there is tangible value through the payout they give at retirement. When a player retires, their current sell price would be paid out to all shareholders, and that would act as the main point of value creation. That’s a very interesting wrinkle and something that is a HUGE improvement over OneSeason’s continued trading on retired players.
There is apparently more about their pricing strategy, which goes beyond the simple supply-and-demand strategy, explained on their website. Unfortunately that page seems to be down at the moment so I can’t see exactly what the difference is outside of the fact that it’s a zero-sum pricing mechanism.
Second concern: What do you do when the leagues team up against you?
The professional sports leagues in America hate being associated with gambling, or at least have to pretend like do. The NFL and NCAA came out strongly against Deleware’s new law last year where they used an old loophole to legalize “sports lotteries” on these two sports. Other leagues didn’t say anything, but they also were not affected by the legislation. Because Deleware did not have basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, etc gambling before the 1992 gambling bill those sports were not eligible for the grandfather clause.
If the leagues see a service like this as gambling they are likely to force the removal of any and all use of team and athlete names, which makes the site seem much less professional and obviously unsanctioned. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this is one reason why they started their beta with the World Cup. People can’t really regulate the use of country names.
Still, while these are just two of the many issues that will make a venture like this difficult, the StarStreet founder seems pretty convinced that what he’s doing can work, and that’s one of the big first steps. There’s no doubt that we have a lot of rabid sports fans in this country, but the question still remains: are they willing to put their money where their mouth is?
I’ve been keeping busy lately with side projects as I continue networking and trying to find the perfect job. Obviously one of my passions is soccer and one of the least appreciated parts of American soccer (and that’s saying something) is the US Open Cup. This is the longest continually running soccer competition in the world with a trophy awarded every year going back to 1914.
While it’s not the most well respected competition out there, the people at www.thecup.us do a wonderful job reporting on it and working hard to raise awareness. I had made contact with Josh, the senior editor there, and actually worked to help retool their bracket. You can see my work here: http://thecup.us/2010-lamar-hunt-u-s-open-cup-bracket/
Obviously I’m no web design guru, but I think it’s pretty decent and has a lot of opportunity to provide some dynamic content that their excel spreadsheet image couldn’t. Plus it’s cool to get to help out with something that I like so much.
Another little project that may be turning more serious is some work I’ve done with a couple Georgia Tech people. It’s the output of a few professors from Purdue and Georgia Tech who run the VIP Program at their respective schools. What this does is allow students to work on multi-year projects that deal with professors’ research and also gives them practical experience that many have leveraged to get jobs at great competitive companies like Google and Microsoft.
Last semester a friend of mine at the GT MBA program did a study on the feasability of commercializing some of this technology. We’re still in the research stage, albeit the final parts of it, but it looks like this may be something that they could move forward with. If that is the case, it would be a really cool opportunity to work with a group that is trying to improve the in-stadium experience for fans who are increasingly choosing to watch games in front of their 60 inch HDTV’s with DVR rather than go spend 3 hours seeing it live.
I’m a huge soccer fan. I’m probably in the top 0.03% of MLS fans, so much so that I created an Elo Rating system for MLS teams. I made the ESPN broadcast and US Soccer highlight reel while sitting front row with 27,000 of my closest friends in Nashville at the US/Trinidad World Cup Qualifier (5:30 in the video, that’s us leading the U-S-A chant). I took a Wednesday off work last summer to go watch USA beat Spain and then watch Steve Nash’s Showdown in Chinatown. I traveled on a couple trains from NYC to Philly for the Gold Cup semifinal against Panama.
So it should go without saying that I’m super pumped about the World Cup starting in a couple weeks. If you’re looking forward to it as well, then I think you should find the 50 minutes you’ll need to watch this documentary, One Goal USA. It’s one of the best sports documentaries I’ve ever seen, and way beyond anything soccer-related out there. The first part starts with the US’s game in the Confederations Cup against Spain and follows the team and the fans through games at Mexico, vs. El Salvador, at Trinidad and Tobago, at Honduras and vs. Costa Rica.
Huge thanks to Ashwin Chaudhary, Jon Korn, Steve Mack, Ken Eaken, and Raj Makhija for making this amazing film. Also, big shout out to Brent Gamit and Jason Endres, who feature prominently in the movie and made my soccer watching experience in NYC all that much better.
Once Charlie Davies went over to FC Sochaux I figured I’d utilize my little French reading ability to check up on his progress at www.fcsochaux.fr
That worked pretty well for me, but I know there were plenty of English speaking fans who couldn’t decipher the website, and were therefore at the mercy of the American press, who doesn’t care, and online translators, which don’t work well, to try and get their Chuck D news. I had actually emailed the people at the website asking if they were going to come out with an English version (yeah elementary French knowledge!) and they confirmed that they were working on one.
However, after Davies got injured I had little reason to go back to the page very often and, when I did, I must have missed the new UK/American flags at the top that allow me to switch it to English. Very well done Sochaux!
But, even more impressive, check out the subtle difference of the right sidebar between the French and English pages.
French
English
The English version not only has a video tribute to Charlie, because we care about him obviously, but they use a picture of him in the ad to get you to go over to the team store, rather than a generic jersey in the French page. Very well done. If it didn’t cost like $50 to get something shipped over here, I’d probably buy something like this or this just for their effort.
As I said, I plan to read 50 books this year and this was #1. Technically I did start the book before January 1, but it’s 700 freakin pages and I still read 300-something this year, so I’m counting it.
Simmons does a handful of cool things in this book which centers around his quest to rank the 96 best players of all time in order to fill out his hypothetical Hall of Fame. The writeups for each player are enjoyable and well researched, so if you can get past the fact that he’s still a Celtics homer you should enjoy it. Other fun wrinkles: the top 10 “what-ifs” of all time (What if Dr. J had never gone to the ABA?), the top 10 teams of all time (’96 Bulls got jobbed), his “wine-cellar team” (12 best players’ single years to making an unbeatable basketball team), and a fascinating few pages covering an interview with Bill Walton that makes me wish he was my grandfather.
Yeah it’s long, but it’s one of the best books out there if you want to learn more about professional basketball in America, and want to do it with some humor.
If you like basketball and have a few months to kill, definitely check it out.
Playoff seeds are written next to the 8 teams that made it.
Freakin tragic that Dallas couldn’t keep their hot streak going for one more game to qualify for the playoffs. They had such an amazing second half, and would’ve been amazingly dangerous to whoever had to play them.
Overall happy with how things turned out. LA gets penalized here for winning close games and going 5-3-2 in their final 10 games. Seattle, on the other hand, gets a big boost by winning their last 3 on the way in, including victories at Columbus and Kansas City. Yes, even when the opponent is bad, wins on the road are impressive.
In a weird twist, possibly the best matchup of the playoffs is going to be in this first round between Seattle and Houston. Unfortunately, it won’t mean as much as if they were to meet later on, but fortunately this is the only playoff round with home and away games, so we’ll get to see them square off twice.
LA/Chivas should be a lot of fun too, just to see the derby as a playoff match. If LA wins, that’ll make for a great Western Conference final as well.
On the East side of things, blech. I would probably rather gouge my eyes out than watch two New England/Fire games, and the Crew is going to patiently dismantle RSL in a way that is awesome if you’re a fan of the technical strategy they can employ but kinda boring when you want to see teams open up play.
I’ll go ahead and pretty much guarantee a Crew/Fire conference final, if only because it may be the soccer equivalent of those old Heat/Knicks playoffs series and I really want to see these two fan bases against each other.
