Scribe @trungthoughts-blog - Tumblr Blog

Insight from "The Verge's" 'Inside the studio where ESPN is betting billions on the future of sports'

Image from The Verge, "All Sports Everything."

Yesterday The Verge published "All Sports Everything," a feature written by David Pierce taking readers inside the Bristol, Connecticut campus and home of ESPN. From tours of the campus' buildings and studios to interviews with the network's executives and SportsCenter anchors, the article illustrated what the future of sports television might look like, and how the sports and entertainment giant has prepared itself for whenever that time comes. Whatever that future will eventually consist of - 4K television, 8K television, if 3D television ever takes off, evolving consumer viewing habits - ESPN is sure that they've equipped themselves to meet the sports fans' increasingly complex demands. From "All Sports Everything," here are three sports television insights that stood out to me:

1. On SportsCenter's role: When fans tune into SportsCenter, they've already seen the top plays and have heard all of the breaking news of the day thanks to the up-to-the-minute reporting culture provided by social platforms like Twitter and Vine. ESPN gets this, and how they've positioned SportsCenter in response is a place where fans come to see not just what they've missed that day (if anything), but just as importantly as David Pierce writes, "how they’re supposed to feel about it."

2. The state of sports television: A large part of the evolution of sports television can be summarized in this quote:

"Covering the game is the easy part, they all tell me. It’s what ESPN has done for decades, and does better than anyone. ESPN’s concern is making great television. And, increasingly, with making great Snapchat, and great Instagram, and great Twitter, and great Xbox."

3. The one, simple insight behind ESPN: Sports is one of the remaining events on television that people need to experience live (and as stated in point number two, not just television but Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and so on). Perhaps the following line from Rob King, ESPN senior vice president of news and SportsCenter, can wrap up best the simple idea and foundation of why ESPN exists today, and going beyond into the future: "The best time to be a sports fan is when the crazy things happen."

#espn studio #espn bristol #espn future sports television #espn the verge #rob king espn #Odell Beckham Jr.#sportscenter #sports #media

Sunday Reads, January 11th, 2015

Readers are finding new life and commentary in URL's. One deep look at Rap Genius before they start to annotate the world. How to fall in love with anyone. The Internet troll's lawyer. The history of cartoons and controversy. Green Bank, the American town with no wi-fi or cellphones. The misunderstood media narrative of struggling cities, and Detroit. What use do companies have for our mundane trackable data? OMG, stop undersharing on Facebook! And ICYMI.

Trend Report: The Silicon Valley Food Movement

Is Perfect Food making a run at big food brands? In my first trend report, I take a look at what’s been manifesting from the Silicon Valley Food Movement.

#reports #silicon valley food movement #just mayo #hampton creek #unreal meat

Sunday Reads, January 4th, 2015

The New Yorker profiles the King of Clickbait (you won't believe what happened next!). Brands killed bae. The Instagram family. Our new desire for "real" (like100 real?) in the stuff we buy. #plussizeplease. Even mannequins are now reinventing themselves for the 21st century. Writing a sitcom. Tom Brady's daily routine is already mapped out for the next three years, and by the way, here's hiscollege resume.

Sunday Reads, December 21st, 2014

There were a lot of big December stories piling up that needed catching up on this week. Some were serious, others fraudulent and embarrassing. Let's start with the fraudulent and embarrassing. In New York Magazine's annual "Reasons to Love New York" year-end listicle, NY Mag reporter Jessica Pressler wrote about 17 year-old high school student Mohammed Islam from Stuyvesant High School who made over $72 million from trading stocks. Later in the week, just to you know, come clean, Mr. Islam confessed to the New York Observer that he made up the story entirely. How much did he actually make off the stock market? Zero. NY Mag initially admitted only to its mistake in the headline used for the story but has since issued a full apology. Mr. Islam's lawyer wants you to take it easy on the kid though, "he’s obviously got to deal with his family, so that’s something that’s taking precedence." Yeah. Meanwhile the reporter and writer of the story was set to start her new job at Bloomberg News writing on the "culture of wealth and money," butBloomberg has since rescinded the offer. Oh New York, we definitely love you. The New Republic's 100th year anniversary party has been crashed by Silicon Valley bros, but I'll officially stick to what the New Yorker has called it: a collapse. The onslaught of TNR staffers who left the publication shortly after editor Franklin Foer and long-time literary editor Leon Wieseltier resigned in early December, was in light of a new tech-inspired vision for the 100 year-old American magazine institution. It turns out that Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and who bought TNR in 2012 with a promise to invest in long-form content, got bored with journalism and wanted to transform the publication into a "vertically integrated digital-media company." Hughes brought in formerYahoo News general manager Guy Vidra as the new CEO in September to undertake this reinvention, who, during his infamous staffer introduction presentation in TNR's Washington offices, reportedly instructed the staff that "we just need to break shit" while calling TNR a "storied brand." Lol. (It looks like the Silicon Valley approach isn't too well received in the NBA either). In the end, though, was this all too big of a deal over something not that big of a deal?

And then there was the Rolling Stone feature on Jackie, the account of a University of Virginia student who was allegedly gang raped at Phi Kappa Psi, a UVA fraternity house. The story which at first spurred an outrage across the nation turned out to becontested and doubted on many key fronts and Rolling Stone quickly distanced itself. Underneath the barrage of opinion pieces and reportage surfacing in the past month is the acknowledgement of how complex the issues surrounding rape and sexual violence are, specifically evident when asked if journalism is equipped to cover rape and sexual violence.

Back to the regular weekly reads: Hollytube and Vinewood. The music industry's not relying on gut instinct anymore. Your friends on social media have probably all disappeared to online group chats. How much you actually make frombeing a Lyft driver. Serial was a master class in investigative journalism. Louis C.K. talks to an old friend on WTF Podcast for two hours and it's Slate's pick for the best podcast episode ever. 2014 was the year sexual assault finally became a national conversation. Should CBC erase Q's archives of Jian Ghomeshi's interviews? "Tumblr is kind of like a gateway drug for activism." 21st century journalism distribution through the eyes of BuzzFeed. Fact checking. Headlines. Omg is theremoney in news now?? The NFL's best talent scout is unemployed and living on a farm. The strange, ongoing outbreak of mumps in the NHL. Behind the the #WojBombs. And oh God, it's mom.

Cheet Sheet: Multichannel Networks

Photo credit: Eric Fleischaue

Are social media stars taking over Hollywood? I compiled a cheat sheet for multichannel networks consisting of YouTube and Vine entertainment production companies.

#reports

Cheat Sheet: Celebrity-Owned Startups

Photo credit: goop.com

Celebrities have moved away from endorsing a product to being a product. Here’s a cheat sheet on Celebrity-Owned Startups.

#reports

Sunday Reads, December 14th, 2014

Did the Internet turn us all into criminals? How Napster spawned the culture of free, but it doesn't really mean that Spotify is the answer. Online citizen journalism is now dangerously becoming online citizen policing. Adnan Syed's family is interviewed for the first time, reminding us that Serial is real (our social media friends at Best Buy should probably have a read). Still obsessed with Serial and True Detective? Probably not anymore. It turns out getting the "I Can't Breathe" t-shirt movement in the NBA started was a pretty complex 24-hour operation. A writer tried to lose a guy in 10 days, a real writer this time. I'm advocating for this New Yorker profile of P.K. Subban to be Canada's new version of "The Hockey Sweater." These prisoners are learning to code before they even know what it's like to use the Internet. How the rise of the Internet age of everything-cats killed this 49 year-old cat magazine. There's been a wave of reporting on the rise of e-sports in the recent months: The New Yorker published a feature in November on Canadian phenom Scarlett and the "Rise of the Professional Athlete," Wired reported on plans for U.K.'s first e-sports arena, and now, e-sports is coming to a university athletic department near you. Should incredible pilot-taken Instagram photos from cockpits be admired or feared? 2014 was the future. By the way, did you know there is a literary scandal going on with Malcolm Gladwell? Yikes.

Show Them the Money: Sunday Reads, November 23, 2014

Show them the money. Inside the world of computer programming rock stars and their agents.

The insider's insider of Silicon Valley.

What it's like to go through television pitch season.

Payphones in New York City will become wi-fi hot spots and phone charging stations.

Getting Gooped-Up. The rise of Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop and celebrity-born companies.

Will radio save science journalism?

Learning not to judge a person by their name?

Image source: Chris Buck, The New Yorker

#sunday reads

The Tastes of a New Generation

The outpour of public support in favour of Hampton Creek's Just Mayo product following the "big mayo wars" news that grabbed headlines last week started to show that companies and products that aimed to create change beneficial to health, animals, and the environment are the brands that people are most willing to get actively behind in supporting. Are millennials changing how they spend their money as a result of this driving trend?

Research in 2013 from the Boston Consulting Group showed that millennials are increasingly supporting socially responsible companies that they can connect with, and as a result, categories such as fresh fruits and vegetables, organic food, natural products, environmentally-friendly cleaning products, and fresh meat are among the top five areas where millennials are looking to spend more money on in the next year, whereas categories such as handbags, luxury brands, and restaurants were areas most likely to experience decreased spending.

On October 31st, 2014, Unilever filed a lawsuit against Hampton Creek for false advertising and unfair competition for Hampton Creek's 'Just Mayo' product, a direct competitor to Unilever's Hellmann's and Best Foods brand of mayonnaise. The U.K.-based food corporation claimed that Hampton Creek, a startup company that focuses on creating egg-based products without eggs, is misleading consumers by using packaging and wording referring to "mayonnaise" which by FDA standards includes egg products. As a result, the complaint claims, Just Mayo is stealing market share from Hellmann's and has caused irreparable harm to Unilever and the product category.

TrungThoughts will be releasing a trend report on the rise of the Silicon Valley food movement in late November. Follow @trungho for updates.

#culture

"MailKimp" - Sunday Reads, November 16th, 2014

The new world of the singular television viewing experience for millennials.

"Technophilic and commitment-phobic millennials?" What's behind the anxiety of taking a relationship beyond the digital stage.

Dropping the guilt about "wasting" time on the Internet with this course from the University of Pennsylvania.

A confession from a bartender on what it's like to observe your awkward Tinder dates.

Who did it? Adnan, Jay, or MailKimp? And I'm not really buying this theory on "'Serial' and White Reporter Privilege."

The Big Mayo wars: Unilver has no answer to Just Mayo, and their lawsuit explains their panic.

Looking at Soylent and "opting out of food" as the next phase of our species' food evolution?

Ryan Anderson's uphill battle to move forward after the NBA star's girlfriend Gia Allemand's suicide.

A new basketball movement in Toronto.

#sunday reads

Bill Walton Shines Light on CIS Final 8 Kickoff and Toronto Basketball

With 468 NBA games and 87 NCAA games, along with two NBA championships and two NCAA championships under his belt and now a television sportscaster, Bill Walton has found himself at the tip-off fairly often in his 43-year basketball career. But if there’s one more tip-off that he thinks he should be a part of, it’s at the center court of the 2015 Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) National Basketball Championships.

On Thursday November 13th, Ryerson University held its 2015 Arcelormittal Dofasco CIS Men’s Basketball Final 8 kick-off event at the Mattamy Athletic Centre (formerly Maple Leaf Gardens), in front of members of the media and the Ryerson community, holding remarks and speeches from Sheldon Levy (president of Ryerson University), Michael Coteau (Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport), Roy Rana (Ryerson Rams men's basketball head coach), and Bill Walton.

But the event was more than just about counting down 119 days until the tip-off of the first ever CIS Final 8 Championships being held in Toronto. In many ways, it was the beginning of a special kind of basketball in Canada.

Throughout Bill Walton’s thirty-plus minute keynote speech, weaving in and out from his childhood basketball experiences, how his current stay in Toronto was going (the "beautiful pianist performance" in the Pantages Hotel, meeting Sheldon Levy’s son, his tears during “O Canada” at the Ryerson Rams’ home opener the night prior), and inspirational one-liners (“believe me, nobody makes it to the top by themselves”) the NBA legend always found a way to get one point across: the CIS Final 8 Championships in Toronto is special. And this was a sentiment that was shared throughout all speeches.

Roy Rana, Ryerson’s Men’s Basketball head coach, has been, in as he describes it, “the fabric of the sport in this city for a long time,” as a head coach of the high-school powerhouse Eastern Commerce, and his coaching roles with Canada Basketball, and with the buzz surrounding this basketball season with Canada’s national basketball tournament finally being held in the downtown vicinity of Toronto, it finally feels like Canadian university basketball is moving forward.

“I almost felt like CIS basketball was a foreign institution to Toronto high school basketball,” Rana said in a recent interview with Sportnet’s Michael Grange. “I didn’t think at the time we had a program that was reflective of inner city Toronto basketball.”

With the Toronto Raptors success in cultivating a basketball movement in the past year, the opportunity to supplant CIS basketball to a rising generation of basketball fans as an inner city jewel is the vision that’s brought the likes of Sheldon Levy, Paul Jones, Roy Rana, Michael Tahoe, and Bill Walton to the stage last Thursday.

March 12-15th will be the first time that the CIS Final 8 is being held in Toronto since the tournament launched in 1963, and like many, Bill Walton just wants to be there at the beginning, where it all started.

#sports #canadian interuniversity sport #cis final 8 #bill walton

U.S. College Arenas vs Canadian (OUA) Arenas

Google Spread Sheet: U.S. College Arenas vs Canadian University Arenas (Please note the OUA and US tabs at the bottom)

One of the most noticeable differences when comparing U.S. college sports to Canadian university sports (in this case, basketball) are the arenas where athletic events take place.

College arenas in the U.S., which are mostly owned by their respective universities, typically seem like full-sized professional arenas - ranging in the 15,000-capacity territory, with Syracuse's Carrier Dome topping the list with approximately 35,000 fans for basketball games. Canadian university arenas on the other hand, typically range on average between 1,000 to 2,000, with Waterloo's Physical Activities Complex listed at a 5,000 capacity. But does any of that have to do with the campus population size alone? Do U.S. college sports have more fans simply because they have a higher student population?

I decided to compile a Google spreadsheet to get a better idea: U.S. College Arenas vs Canadian University Arenas

#sports #cis

Sunday Reads, Weekly Roundup, November 9th, 2014

Chris Rock's one shot from standup to the leading man.

One week using a flip phone, because it "...represents the ultimate luxury: inaccessibility.” Also, I've confirmed that I'm actually not cool enough to leave my smartphone behind. The struggle.

The rising world of professional note-taking.

I went on a reading-spree on the topic the challenges of friendships in adulthood this week, starting with friendship diversity. It then led to the importance of courting friends. Then about married friends who like Tinder. B.F.F.'s or K.O.F.'s (kind-of-friends) in your thirties? And then, finally, "one high-profile friend-couple" talks about how one courted the other, and their now special friendship.

"39 Million people listened to a podcast in the last month."

Speaking of podcasts, you've probably heard of Serial by now, the spinoff from This American Life that's currently re-investigating a 15 year-old high school murder case. Here's a handy guide on how to fulfill your Serial fix for the six days in-between episodes. And some appropriate music to go with it.

25 is the new 21?

Photo credit: Michael A. Keller, New York Magazine

#sunday reads

Visit Original Link

Bill Bayno joins Bob McCown in studio on October 28th for a one-hour feature interview.

In my last post on Blog Don't Lie, I mentioned Toronto Raptors assistant head coach Bill Bayno who was one of the instructors at the 2014 Coaches Open House on October 19th at the Air Canada Centre.

Bayno struck me with his knowledge, charismatic but calm personality, and ability to communicate in different ways with different types of people. About a week after, I was listening to Prime Time Sports and coincidentally Bill Bayno was on the program, not just for a segment but for an entire hour. Listening to Bayno and McCown talk basketball, and more specifically, Bayno's life story, was one of those "this is amazing to be just listening to these people talk" type of scenarios.

Bill Bayno's story was also featured here on NBA.com during his time with the Portland Trail Blazers.

#bill bayno toronto raptors #bill bayno prime time sports #bill bayno bob mccown #bill bayno player development #bill bayno assistant coach #bill bayno portland trail blazers #sports

Coaches Open House 2014

In a typical how-dedicated-are-you sports fashion, the Coaches Open House hosted by the Toronto Raptors was held at 8AM on a Sunday morning this past weekend at the Air Canada Centre (ACC), welcoming about 300 coaches on hand for a morning of speeches, drill demonstrations, and Q&A.

Arriving right at 8AM, the lineup had already formed a full circle outside of Gate 1 in the ACC for all registered coaches, as the line ran all the way back to meet the doors on the south side of the building leading to Union Station, and curving back up near Gate 1 again.

Raptors radio and television personalities Paul Jones and Sherman Hamilton opened up the morning with welcoming addresses and soon enough, the audience was soaked with topics on the science, nutrition, treatment, and strength and conditioning aspects of training (specifically for youth development) from Raptors assistant coach Alex McKechnie and head athletic trainer Scott McCullough.

The morning was full of great one-liners from the coaches like, "Every defensive drill is an offensive drill," or "Outside of a layup and a free throw, the corner three is the highest percentage shot." But the sessions were also interactive, as a group of high school basketball players (grade 10-11) ran through warm up exercises and then various offensive, defensive, and rebounding drills ran by assistant coaches Tom Sterner, Jesse Mermuys, Bill Bayno, and Jama Mahlalela.

These high school basketball players were talented and athletic, but they were there soaking in the drills to learn as much as they were there to play the role of demonstrators to the audience. During a rebounding drill, Bayno chimed in when the 'big men' weren't aggressive enough to fight for loose balls, "If that ball had $1,000 would you have gotten it?! That's probably how much a rebound is worth in the NBA, maybe even more! If it had Beyoncé's number saying 'call me' on it would you have gotten it?!"

19-year NBA coaching veteran Tom Sterner chased the players around, got them to scream at the top of their lungs to communicate, and repeated the drills over and over again until they became more aggressive, rotated to the right positions, and yelled the right words ("Corner! Corner! Corner! Nail! Nail! Nail!").

If there was one aspect of being a coach that stuck with me most, it was exactly that - their ability to teach (Tom Sterner has a B.S. in Elementary Education and Teaching) and the extreme energy and passion that they brought to the drills. Chasing players around and screaming the way your elderly neighbour always possessively chases a squirrel off of their yard, despite the hand of the clock sitting at around 8AM on a Sunday.

After the Coaches Open House session was over, the Raptors held an Open Practice for fans to watch, and it was a treat to not just watch the 2014-15 Raptors take the floor for the first time, but to see the ins and outs of a typical 2-hour NBA practice.

Assistant coach Tom Sterner demonstrating a defensive movement drill.

A sample of Tom Sterner's energy as a coach during the Coaches Open House - one of his values/methods to instill aggressiveness in defense in basketball players. Video via "Everything Raptors" on YouTube.

One of the offensive drills the Raptors use. The USB provided for the coaches in attendance were filled with all sorts of drills from the Raptors, Canada Basketball, and Ontario Basketball.

#Coaches Open House 2014 #sports #toronto raptors open practice

OUA MBB/WBB 2014-15 Schedule Spreadsheet

For more convenient overall scheduling analysis, I’ve compiled the OUA MBB and WBB 2014-15 schedule into one Excel spreadsheet (Google Docs):

OUA MBB 2014-15 Schedule

OUA WBB 2014-15 Schedule

#sports #cis #oua

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

Scribe