Sports

The Simulated Experts’ Fantasy League

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Way back in 2007, during the very first year of Da Blog, I flirted with holding a simulated fantasy league to find out which site had the best experts, even going so far as holding a draft before the combined stress of that and counting up points by hand in Excel (good luck finding a site that will let you run every team in a league – even the one I chose I have to trick) forced me to abandon it right away. However, last year my thoughts turned towards trying again, so that’s what I’m going to do, even though other sites have sprung up to compare fantasy experts, and have gone as far as actually holding a league of the top experts.

Rosters are 16 players, with starters 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 RB/WR, 1 DST, 1 K. (Maximums: 4 QB, 7 RB or WR, 3 TE, DST, or K.) Scoring is as follows, based on the general consensus of the rules of most leagues. I wound up designing the scoring rules for defensive yardage myself, because very few leagues have them by default and those that do have wildly differing philosophies. It would have been most fair to omit them entirely, but I went with realism over standards.

  • 4 points per passing TD
  • 6 points per TD (except QB passing)
  • 2 points per 2-point conversion
  • 1 point per 25 passing yards
  • 1 point per 10 running or receiving yards
  • -2 points per turnover (interceptions or lost fumbles)
  • 1 point per PAT
  • 3 points per field goal
  • 4 points per FG of 40-50 yards
  • 5 points per FG of >50 yards
  • 2 points per defensive turnover
  • 2 points per safety
  • 1 point per sack
  • 10 points for 0 points allowed
  • 7 points for <7 points allowed
  • 4 points for <14 points allowed
  • 1 point for <21 points allowed
  • 0 points for <28 points allowed
  • -1 point for <35 points allowed
  • -4 points for >35 points allowed
  • 10 points for <100 yards allowed
  • 7 points for <200 yards allowed
  • 4 points for <250 yards allowed
  • 1 point for <300 yards allowed
  • 0 points for <400 yards allowed
  • -1 point for <500 yards allowed
  • -4 points for >500 yards allowed

The way the schedule works, each team plays each other once and plays three other teams an additional time, for a total of 14 games. The team with the most overall points through 14 weeks is guaranteed a spot in the playoffs regardless of record. To ensure a balanced schedule, the schedule for weeks 12, 13, and 14 – the three additional games – will not be finalized until after Week 11. The entire schedule isn’t finalized yet. Roster moves are handled largely the same way they were going to be in 2007. The draft is being held Wednesday (I was going to do it sooner but I was waiting to see if Yahoo would have rankings that at least took into account the Chris Johnson signing), with the following first-round order; I restricted myself to sites that posted overall rankings instead of just positional rankings. Keep checking this page and my tweeter as the draft progresses.

  1. Commissioner’s Favorite (NFL.com): Adrian Peterson, RB, Vikings
  2. Worldwide Leaders (ESPN): Chris Johnson, RB, Titans
  3. The SportsLine (CBS): Arian Foster, RB, Texans
  4. Takedown Glaze (Fox): Jamaal Charles, RB, Chiefs (Note: I’m also using these very outdated rankings as the above-linked ones look too weird to be draft rankings as opposed to Week 1 rankings.)
  5. College Busters (Yahoo): Ray Rice, RB, Ravens
  6. Swimsuit Issues (SI): LeSean McCoy, RB, Eagles
  7. Team Infograph (USA Today): Maurice Jones-Drew, RB, Jaguars
  8. Indy Tea Party (FFToolbox.com): Darren McFadden, RB, Raiders
  9. Ron Burgundy All-Stars (KFFL): Andre Johnson, WR, Texans
  10. Politically Incorrect (RealTime Fantasy Sports): Aaron Rodgers, QB, Packers
  11. Wisdom of Crowds (FantasyPros): Rashard Mendenhall, RB, Steelers
  12. Inside Information (Fleaflicker): Calvin Johnson, WR, Lions (more after the jump)

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Handicapping the Thursday Night Football race

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Good news: We’re not getting an 18-game schedule!

If that’s the bad news for the NFL, here’s the good news: They’re going to take Thursday Night Football full-season!

Back in 2006, the NFL surprised many observers by putting a slate of late-season Thursday night games on its own NFL Network, rebuffing offers from other cable networks. Now reports are that the NFL will soon be awarding an early-season slate of Thursday-night games, giving those networks a second chance. And with the sports television wars heating up, the timing couldn’t be better, as the NFL – somewhat unexpectedly – plays host to the second major battle of the Wars with the Olympics in the rear view, one with no true incumbent.

Naturally, all the major cable players are involved, as well as one surprising dark horse; according to reports, Turner and Comcast are the front-runners. The NFL could even hand over control of the NFL Network to the winner. Before we continue, I should mention that I doubt the NFL will sign with any network for more than two years, when their other contracts expire. That means this contract will ultimately be a “trial balloon” of sorts. That said, here are the major players, what they have to gain, what they have going against them, and what their ultimate chances are:

Turner Sports

What they’re fighting for: Turner has the major advantage of not only having cable sports experience, but even being a pre-existing NFL rightsholder, holding half the then-Sunday night package until ESPN decided they wanted the whole thing. They’ve wanted to get back into the game ever since; apparently during the 2005 negotiations, Turner had actually hired some analysts for games before striking out on all the packages. Putting NFL games on TNT would not only give them a shot at redemption, it also would be the best fit from the perspective of the uninformed casual fan wondering why the Thursday night games move to the NFL Network midseason – the NFL would shuffle off TNT just in time for the NBA season to start. Turner also has experience running a league-owned network in NBA TV. Then there’s the prestige factor; Turner would join ESPN as the only entities to have all four of the modern major sports at the same time.

What they have going against them: Turner is already established in the game, which means they don’t have as much to gain as the next contenders…

NBC/Comcast

What they’re fighting for: Simply put, nothing less than firmly establishing their position as the competitor to ESPN they so dearly want to be. You know Comcast is looking longingly at the blueprint ESPN established for their success using NFL games. They’d love to relish the sweet irony of turning that blueprint against them, especially with the ability to tie it in to the NBC Sunday Night package (and make the season-opening game on NBC a natural extention of the Thursday package). In fact, in 2005 Comcast and Versus came closest of any other entity to getting the Thursday night package before the NFL took it to the NFL Network, setting up a lengthy carriage dispute between NFLN and the nation’s largest cable operator.

There’s a meme going around that Comcast tapped themselves out of cash on their Olympic bid, but that doesn’t make much sense to me. As I’ve said before, I don’t buy that two weeks every two years will grow the soon-to-be-NBC-Sports-Network, especially since audiences, even if they hate tape delays, have grown used to watching NBC’s primetime Olympic highlights packages. For Comcast to spend so much money on the Olympics that they’d doom any effort to get another high-profile package seems like a risky all-in bet to me for their ESPN-killer hopes. And they, too, have experience running a league-owned network, even if it’s just the mtn.; NFLN could also look to the Golf Channel to see what Comcast running the show might look like.

What they have going against them: I don’t think Comcast is hurting too much for money in the short term, the NFL’s relationship with Comcast has improved since the NFLN carriage dispute, and NBC Sports Network could probably handle showing games just fine, even if it shows UFL games right now. So what would a problem be? Well, Comcast may ultimately decide that, while the NFL would be nice, it has other options to grow the NBC Sports Network… like Major League Baseball in a year or two. For reasons I’ll get to when we get closer to those negotiations, if Comcast doesn’t win this fight I would consider them the favorites to snag some MLB games, and if Comcast decides they have a better chance of beating Turner or ESPN for MLB rights than beating a crowded field for eight NFL games, they might decide to underbid now.

Fox

What they’re fighting for: Fox has made no secret of their ambitions to return big-time sports to FX. The NFL would not only fit the bill nicely, but would also tie in nicely to Fox’s existing NFL package, and NFLN would be just one more sport-specific network to join the likes of Speed, Fox Soccer Channel, BTN, and Fuel TV.

What they have going against them: Fox’s existing NFL package is all the NFC games the primetime packages don’t snag, while FX would show games from both CBS and Fox, which would be awkward. But a far bigger issue is that, according to reports, cable operators have a clause that protects them from any rate hikes for FX. That means nothing Fox adds to FX’s lineup can increase their revenue from subscriber fees, effectively reducing FX to the level of a broadcast network and preventing them from effectively competing with networks that can hike their fees to cable operators. I would expect Fox to try to change this at the soonest opportunity – whether or not they can is another matter – but until they do any serious effort to turn FX into a sports power is likely to be a nonstarter, including netting them a slate of NFL games. FX will likely have to settle for its new UFC programming to grow their sports brand, along with select college football games.

ESPN

What they’re fighting for: An existing slate of NFL games that would tie in neatly, as well as the most powerful brand in sports. Also, ESPN once floated the idea of increasing NFLN’s distribution by merging it with ESPN Classic, so they’ve flirted with taking over the network before. For the most part, though, ESPN is mostly fighting to keep this slate away from (or make it cost-prohibitive for) their competitors, especially Comcast.

What they have going against them: Besides their utter lack of motivation, ESPN has already committed to college football on Thursdays; their fall slate is already pretty crowded, though ESPN could bump college football to the Deuce. Also, while ESPN may have flirted with NFL Network before, they have never run a network owned by another entity – Longhorn Network, which is less than a week old, is wholly owned by ESPN – and neither ESPNU nor LHN quite prepares them for the challenges they’d face running the NFL Network, owned by them or not.

Spike TV

What they’re fighting for: The big five contenders in the sports TV wars represent only five of the top six biggest media conglomerates in the country. You have to imagine that Viacom – the other half of the split that produced the CBS Corporation – wants to take their own place in the wars. Since the then-National Network picked up WWE programming in 2000, the network now known as Spike TV has used first WWE and later UFC programming to goose its fortunes. Now the UFC has bailed for Fox, and Spike may feel it needs another draw. The NFL would seem to fit the bill nicely.

What they have going against them: I’ll believe that Viacom is serious about competing in the war when I see it. For now, I’ll simply point out that like Turner, Viacom doesn’t have a broadcast TV outlet (not even a potential one like the CW). Like Turner, Viacom could shack up with its former corporate sibling CBS for anything that would seem to need a broadcast outlet. Unlike Turner, Viacom has zero experience broadcasting sports – even their WWE and UFC programming has been produced by those entities themselves – other than TNN’s time showcasing the short-lived XFL, and even less experience running a league-owned network. It’s going to take a lot of doing to convince any league to shack up with someone as unproven as Spike. Comcast managed to convince the NHL to shack up with a little outfit called the Outdoor Life Network; can Spike convince a prominent league to do the same? In any case, Spike isn’t mentioned in the SportsBusiness Daily’s latest reporting on the subject, so they’re probably out of the running by now, if they ever were.

Who will ultimately come out on top? Past history backs up the notion that Comcast and Turner are the favorites, as does motivation. Both factors also suggest Comcast will come out ahead. By all accounts, Versus would have nabbed the Thursday Night Football rights in 2006 if the NFL hadn’t given them to the NFL Network, and Comcast has far more motivation as well, with nothing less than the cornerstone of a new sports empire at stake. If the soon-to-be NBC Sports Network wins this package, it will go down as a turning point in the history of sports television in America, the point that gave birth to an entity with enough firepower to challenge ESPN’s stranglehold over the sports landscape.

Back in July, Ken Fang of the Fang’s Bites blog tabbed Fox as the third favorite over ESPN, citing Fox’s motivation and ESPN’s crowded schedule. I think he underestimates the impact of FX’s inability to raise subscriber rates, as well as ESPN’s desperate desire for Comcast not to get the rights. The last thing ESPN wants is for Comcast to gain a foothold that would allow them to become a true competitor to ESPN. Unless Turner proves virtually untouchable, I would expect ESPN to stay in the race right to the end, at least trying to influence the outcome.

Comcast is the most likely to pick up eight Thursday night NFL games unless Turner and ESPN can hold them off. I don’t know if ESPN can tip the scales from Comcast to Turner, but they can certainly bite the bullet and crowd their Thursday night schedule in the early season if they value not having a lot more to worry about from Comcast for many, many years to come. Many sports fans have been hoping for some sort of real competition to ESPN. Within a month, they may have their answer.

The PGA TOUR re-ups with CBS and NBC

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I almost feel like this was a formality, as it only brings the broadcast rights to expire at the same time as the existing Golf Channel deal. ESPN’s alleged quest to kill sports on ABC probably took that network out of the running, and golf will never, ever be on Fox. But it does take place after the NBC/Comcast merger went through, keeps golf off ABC for the rest of the decade, and apparently broadens the Golf Channel’s role, so however technically, it counts as a win for NBC and CBS.

What’s far more notable is Versus’s new evening programming, which turns out not to be the SportsCenter-killer I was hoping it’d be, but still, baby steps.

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Cleanup on aisle UFC

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Because I don’t want to roll this up into a much longer NFL post…

I posed the question as to who would control the UFC’s broadcasts on Fox as “Gus Johnson or Mike Goldberg?” The answer might be both: because of the sheer volume of UFC programming on Fox and FX, the UFC is thinking about bringing in more commentators to take some of the load off of Goldberg and Joe Rogan, which Johnson’s existing relationships with Strikeforce and Fox would make him a natural fit for. Similarly, while UFC will still be controlling the presentation, they will work closely with Fox to make it as good as it can be.

As for the quality of fights to expect on free TV, the UFC’s rights fee is substantially smaller than that of other sports, so pay-per-view will remain the backbone of the business, implying you won’t see Brock Lesnar v. Fedor Emelianenko on Fox anytime soon. That article makes it feel more like a stepping-stone, putting the product on broadcast TV to increase exposure and respect to the point where the company can afford a real TV deal. However, the UFC will be cutting back on PPVs slightly, all parties made clear that this deal is “just the beginning” and a foundation for future growth, and Dana White told Entertainment Weekly‘s TV blog that “the broadcast fights will be significant matchups, rather than saving all the important bouts for Pay Per View. ‘We want to pull ratings, we want to pull the big numbers,’ White said.” So the Fox fights will be PPV caliber, but will they be top-notch caliber? Rumors that featherweights will be among those featured on the first one-hour Fox show in November have me doubtful about that, at least for the short term, and I don’t know how top-notch the UFC will be able to go in the next seven years on Fox given the rights fee probably isn’t changing.

Still, one thing was already clear: UFC just changed the game in MMA, and may have made themselves completely invulnerable, to the extent they weren’t already, to any attempt to challenge their supremacy.

The UFC’s new TV deal and its impact

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(Note: Upon further review, Conference USA reached its agreement with Fox on January 5th, while the Comcast-NBC merger, which I take as the start point of the wars, wasn’t approved until the 18th. The scoreboard at the bottom of this post counts both MLS and IndyCar.)

This was shaping to be the most critical period, as part of the most pivotal year, in the history of MMA.

UFC’s contract with Spike TV, which carried the sport through its rise from backrooms to the brink of the mainstream, was up for renewal, and all signs were that the UFC would not renew with Spike. The direction it went in now would determine the way the sport took shape now and into the future, as well as set where the cap, if any, was for its future growth. It all depended on Dana White’s vision of the ultimate balance of broadcast, cable, premium, and pay-per-view for the sport going forward.

I couldn’t give a vision of what MMA’s mainstream future might look like without having an expert to tell me what differentiates the economics of fight sports from other sports when it comes to pay-per-view, as well as how boxing’s transition to pay-per-view proceeded. I don’t know to what extent MMA’s mainstream future might involve pay-per-view, or whether the biggest cards would air on broadcast television or PPV, only that boxing has proven it cannot become seen as a mainstream sport with the level of reliance on pay-per-view UFC has now. It needs to have events high-profile enough on broadly viewed television to attract large numbers of people and at the very least promote those PPVs.

Regardless of its current popularity, MMA is in a precarious place in terms of perception. At one point the UFC was apparently in talks to buy Comcast’s struggling G4 network and turn it into a UFC network, and the general perception is that if they can muster enough inventory to fill its hours, they’re best positioned of the entities that haven’t launched a sport-specific network already. But for the moment, the UFC can’t afford to put too much programming on a relatively small specialty network if they want to keep growing the sport and get it to be perceived as mainstream. They need a deal with another entity, and Dana White’s insistence on controlling the presentation has, to this point, held up any deal.

Another reason why this was shaping up to be the most pivotal year in the history of MMA was UFC’s acquisition of its biggest rival, Strikeforce, earlier this year. The deal was the most important of many business shake-ups in the industry over the course of the year that consolidated UFC’s position from being the WWE – the undisputed top rank in the chain of mixed martial arts – to the equivalent of the NFL, practically defining professional mixed martial arts. The merger also made UFC inherit Strikeforce’s business relationship with Showtime, the closest thing to a true cable sports network the CBS Corporation has.

Putting UFC events on premium cable is a logical middle ground between broadly-distributed broadcast and cable, and the cash cow of pay-per-view, and while CBS is acutely interested in growing Showtime and putting it closer to the level of HBO, they might have actually held a considerable amount of leverage, as many of Strikeforce’s fighters apparently actually have contracts with Showtime, not with Strikeforce directly. If the UFC wanted to avoid considerable legal wrangling to maintain control of those fighters and keep Showtime from taking them to whatever other organization comes calling, they may have to get a deal done with Showtime, and CBS might take advantage of that situation by insisting on certain high-level programming and privileges for the CBS network, and even putting a substantial amount of programming on CBS Sports Network to grow that network and branch it out beyond college.

Quite a few shows would still be bad enough fits for either that they’d have to stay on Showtime, though, and in general CBS doesn’t have properties with big enough viewership to continue growing the sport beyond the broadcast network. In any case, given the way the UFC does business they’d probably prefer not to be held hostage with Showtime and go through the legal wrangling anyway, or let those fighters go.

There is precedent for the UFC continuing a relationship it inherited from an organization it acquired, though. It didn’t happen with the relationship with FSN the company inherited from PRIDE, but quite a few UFC cards have aired on Versus since UFC inherited its arrangement with WEC. (These cards have shown that UFC has been willing to compromise with regards to presentation, with pre- and post-shows and Versus’ graphics package, but UFC’s announcers and general broadcast structure and feel.) I originally wanted to hold off on writing this post until after the NFL sorted out its Thursday Night package because I didn’t think the UFC would reach an agreement until after then, and because I felt that would have had a big impact on NBC/Comcast’s chances. If Comcast had lost out on the NFL, I would think the UFC would be substantially more reticent to shack up with a network not guaranteed to have any programming much bigger than the UFC itself. The UFC, including shows like The Ultimate Fighter, would be a good starting point for growing the NBC Sports Network, but the limits of its perception would have limited the effect.

The elephant in the living room, though, might be ESPN, and it is here where we come to the reason why I’m hoping Comcast’s proposed new 6 PM ET news show is the beginning of a serious effort to challenge SportsCenter. Personally, I think ESPN’s penchant for only promoting sports it airs on SportsCenter is substantially overstated. The example usually given is that of the NHL, but I think ESPN gives the NHL coverage consummate with its status as a relatively niche sport, with a few highlights every night. During what is, by a significant margin, the most-watched NHL event of the year, the Stanley Cup Final, ESPN goes as far as to send Steve Levy and Barry Melrose to the games to provide highlights and analysis. (If you ask me, FSN’s old “Final Score” program was at least as guilty of favoritism as SportsCenter, airing as many NHL highlights as NBA highlights – because NHL games provide a lot of programming for their regional sports networks.)

However, that’s not to say ESPN doesn’t provide some favoritism to its own sports, and MMA might be a far better example of this. By some measures, MMA has popularity on par with some of the major sports, but though ESPN does air a Friday night MMA Live show on ESPN2, you’d still never know its popularity from watching SportsCenter. MMA tends to get brief, perfunctory highlights at best, usually of just the main event of any given card, and that edited down to maybe a minute. Under the current status quo, MMA absolutely needs the cooperation of ESPN to be considered a major sport, and perhaps that’s why Dana White flirted with ESPN by putting its UFC Primetime show on ESPN2 earlier this year. If broadcast television was important to White, though, ESPN’s penchant for trying to kill sports on ABC might have substantially hindered a deal. It wouldn’t be a deal-breaker, though, so the main obstacle would be that the UFC needs ESPN far more than ESPN needs the UFC.

If UFC wanted to sign with a single organization and wasn’t concerned about broadcast television, Turner would have also been a good fit, with shows like The Ultimate Fighter on TNT and/or truTV and fight cards on HBO. However, although they do want to grow truTV outside the NCAA Tournament, I think Turner would have only been interested to keep Showtime from gaining momentum.

And in the end, that wouldn’t be necessary, because apparently the two major contenders were Comcast and Fox, and Fox is reportedly set to announce a long-term deal later today, which will include up to four events on broadcast television and shows like The Ultimate Fighter on FX, plus some programming on Fuel TV. Fox has always been the “edgier” of the four major networks, which culturally should make them a great fit for the UFC (which would have been iffier for the more genteel NBC or CBS, though CBS has already aired MMA from the defunct EliteXC and Strikeforce), and UFC programming will help FX establish its bona fides as a sports network – and only TNT and ESPN would attract more cable eyeballs to the UFC, at least short-term.

What’s still to be established is whether the four Fox cards would be marquee events, or things closer to the UFC’s Versus and Fight Night on Spike programming, as well as how the presentation will be controlled (Gus Johnson or Mike Goldberg?). I’ll update this post later with those details. But for the moment, the UFC appears to have taken a gigantic step forward towards being perceived as, and actually becoming, a mainstream sport, as well as setting the direction of MMA for years if not decades to come.

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The latest in the sports television wars

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Two pieces of news broke Wednesday in the sports TV wars:

  • NBC picking up MLS doesn’t mean much for NBC/Comcast, given how low MLS is on the totem pole, but it is very good news for MLS. It wasn’t that long ago that no one would have ever said that about a move to Versus, but this move gives MLS a shot at more featured time slots, a place on a channel that now has double the distribution, a chance to take advantage of any other big pick-ups NBC adds down the line, and a return to broadcast television. The MLS Cup will remain on ESPN for the time being, but MLS’ choice is to stay on ESPN or leave primetime – though they may want to unify their English-language coverage under one banner in three years, and I have a feeling NBC/Comcast may wind up with a better shot at it then than ESPN. It’s also bad news for Fox Soccer, for whom MLS was their main summer attraction. This move had been rumored in the past, especially when MLS went past their schedule announcement without a deal with Fox Soccer this season and considered buying time on Versus.
  • On the other hand, ABC managed to renew their relationship with the IndyCar series, despite some thinking that the whole series might be unified under the NBC banner after Versus took the cable contract some years back. This means ABC will maintain its long association with the Indy 500 that will now extend for more than half a century.

I’m undecided over whether to count MLS on my scorecard – I didn’t count when Fox picked up rights to Conference USA. MLS gets more press, but miniscule ratings. Should I count neither, both, or just one or the other? (I really need to update my Sports TV Contracts list from the first year of Da Blog…)

The latest in baseball, and ESPN’s potential coming sports graphics revolution

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If Turner intends to standardize their graphics packages, I haven’t seen evidence of it in TBS’ baseball coverage or TNT’s NASCAR coverage. However, baseball’s other two TV partners have introduced new graphics that could portend big things, to the point that I really want to get this post out of the way before the NFL preseason starts.

Let’s start by arguably burying the lead a little, and taking a look at how ESPN rolled out its graphics package for NASCAR and tennis. Although they didn’t immediately apply their new package to Nationwide Series races, the new graphics were in full effect for the Indy 500, but didn’t appear on any NASCAR broadcast until last week’s Brickyard 400. At this point I think I’m starting to get resigned to the fact of these jarringly variable sizes of the “pods” for each driver on these motorsports tickers.

Beyond that, I find it suitably spiffy, especially the way the number of laps are displayed before it goes to “to go” mode (“Lap 100|250”), but I don’t think it’s going to remain unchanged for more than a year.

The odd display of player info for golf may be proving to be more standard than I expected, making appearances for every rich guy’s individual sport, meaning tennis and horse racing – though boxing is using a more standard look.


2011 Wimbledon 1st Round – Interview ESPN by jarimi1

2011 Wimbledon 4th Round – Highlight ESPN by jarimi1
As for the actual score graphic, I admit I was expecting something closer to ESPN’s baseball graphic, at least in terms of fonts and popping in and out. But I do think I understand why this graphic is this way, and why it didn’t debut until the French Open.

And it has to do with why ESPN changed its baseball graphic. I was mystified by this move when I first saw it. It ditched the disastrous use of dots to indicate balls, strikes, and outs, but it also made the box bulkier, gave pitch count (along with pitch speed) a permanent place in a tiny strip underneath the bases, darkened the colors, and perhaps most oddly, actually changed the other graphics for player info and announcers to a third style. (And give a big round of applause to MLB Advanced Media for finally making MLB.com highlights embeddable!)

But as the season progressed and we hit the College World Series, something happened. ESPN moved the box to the far right side of the screen in HD (with most SD viewers at this point getting ESPN letterboxed)… and (at least for MLB) didn’t get rid of the box when displaying player info, attaching that info to the box in a manner reminiscent of TNT’s past and present NBA graphics.

And that’s when it hit me. ESPN had planned this move out from the start to steal Turner’s ideas. I had felt the way the old box had to keep popping in and out to allow for player info jarring, and evidently ESPN felt the same way. In fact, I got the feeling that this was only the beginning. Far from being an outlier, I suspect these new MLB graphics will soon become the standard across most of ESPN’s sports. (Yes, this means another year of a different graphic for the NBA Finals, whenever the NBA finally has a season!) ESPN was a pretty firm believer in boxes before adopting the parallelogram when its NFL package moved to Monday; this MLB graphic may herald a return to boxes across sports, especially with Fox also retreating to the box. In fact, I’ve drawn up some mock-ups of what we might expect these boxes to look like:

I would expect the rollout to start at the beginning of the new Monday Night Football season – the introduction of the new MNF logo would seem to be an appropriate occasion to overhaul the other graphics, and in fact the actual “MNF” part of the logo looks to be roughly the same size and shape as the box. It would also minimize the number of games afflicted by the odd variable size of the strip in place late last year. That’s just one of several things to hint at this being the future of all sports on ESPN, from the change in ESPN’s overall NBA scheme (to something with more than a few similarities to this new box) to the bars above and below the score in the box itself that would be an opportune place to put timeout indicators. (ESPN could finally get those things to stop looking tacked-on!) Even the new tennis box has a detached “ESPN” box that isn’t much different from what it would look like in the above mock-ups. ESPN’s MLS and NASCAR coverage has enlarged the size of the player info to look more legible in letterboxed SD (which looks jarring even in letterboxed SD, and especially so on ABC’s Indy 500 coverage where SD isn’t letterboxed yet). Don’t expect that to expand beyond that. (What I do expect to see expand is the style of introducing starting lineups I’ve seen on MLS and baseball coverage.)

(ESPN’s Women’s World Cup coverage, surprisingly, adopted these larger in-game graphics where it used the new studio graphics for the men’s World Cup last year, despite not having any real opportunity to use them on the world feed, and despite not accompanying any real change. And their score graphic was basically the same one they finished the men’s World Cup with, awkward jersey-color indicator and all, just color-corrected to keep trying to match the world feed.)

Fox’s MLB graphic doesn’t solve many of the issues with the NFL graphic, other than the return of abbreviations, and in fact looks generally awkward – the arrows above and below the inning number make it look asymmetric when it’s not applied the way ESPN did, pitch count hasn’t been added unless you consider the constantly-on-screen strike zone on some broadcasts (in a context I’ll get to in a sec), and not only does the count and number of outs look awkward, Fox still hasn’t learned from the times using dots to represent anything has tried and failed before. (And why are there three out dots? The third will NEVER be used…)

However, what is notable about this is that this is not only the new baseball graphic for Fox, but for FSN as well. (One odd side effect is that “Root Sports”, the new name for the regional sports networks Fox sold to DirecTV a while back, is now using graphics originally developed by Fox, and for the most part appears to be the only ones using them.) Until recently, FSN has been rather distant from the rest of the Fox family, but since rebranding them to remove the “Net” from their name and adopting their graphics for baseball on Fox, it’s apparent there is an effort to drag them back into the fold, and Fox’s efforts to improve the Fox Sports brand across all their networks has become more and more apparent, with the new graphics appearing all over the place, whether it’s in races on SPEED or even MLS games on Fox Soccer. I expect FSN to adopt similar graphics for college football, as Fox had NFL-like graphics for the Cotton Bowl – and for both types of basketball, though I can’t imagine what those graphics would look like.

This is shaping up to be a surprisingly modest roundup. The only other network I know of whose graphics we need to look at are Comcast SportsNet and baseball, as they become the last baseball broadcaster to abandon the strip for the two-line box.

The realistic diamond and the placement of pitch speeds there seems a little gimmicky, but otherwise it’s very serviceable and hardly a surprise.

This may have been a relatively short roundup, but I suspect that, between FSN’s college basketball graphics and a potential new graphics package not only for ESPN, but for CBS (fixing their awkward NFL logos and making their shared-with-Turner NCAA tournament graphics less different from their other graphics) and NBC (they have the Super Bowl and are getting ready to rebrand Versus) as well, the next one will be substantially longer…

Wimbledon to ESPN, and what’s beyond

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When it comes to keeping sporting events on broadcast in the US, could Wimbledon be a victim of its own relative popularity?

Compare Wimbledon to the French Open. Both events air at about the same time of year, in about the same time slots, on NBC and ESPN2. But NBC airs Wimbledon coverage on weekdays during the second week, and doesn’t do the same for Roland Garros until the men’s semifinals on the last Friday. The result: American tennis fans harboring seething hatred towards NBC for tape-delaying Wimbledon matches during the second week to air its Today show, which may have cost NBC their part of the Wimbledon contract, despite apparently promising to end those delays down the road. (Reading between the lines, one could surmise that NBC was willing to show matches live, so long as they could do so on their own Versus network once ESPN’s contract ended after 2013. This may have come down to the mere fact that the cable rights weren’t up at the same time.)

Now, tennis has fallen so far in popularity that the fact there is any tennis in the middle of the week at all on broadcast television is clearly a relic of the days when Americans actually cared about tennis. Still, it’s rather odd that the more prestigious and popular Wimbledon will apparently become a cable-only affair, while the less prestigious Roland Garros will continue to have an NBC presence… at least in the short term, because while I don’t know how long NBC’s French Open contract lasts, I wouldn’t be surprised to see it follow Wimbledon to cable, as it barely makes a blip on the sports radar ratings-wise these days.

Interestingly, there will be coverage of Wimbledon on regular ESPN during the second week, including the mens’ and womens’ finals, with ESPN and ESPN2 providing simultaneous coverage of different parts of the same event, which they’ve previously only done for soccer tournaments during the last round of group play. This obvious use of ESPN’s family of networks is why I had been hoping for ESPN to win the NCAA Tournament or Olympic contracts, events popular enough to actually justify such use, but it was not to be. What makes this interesting is that regular ESPN doesn’t cover the US Open, which is more popular stateside, but there is more sports competition that time of year. Also, there is normally some kind of soccer tournament in late June and early July at least every other year; would Wimbledon interfere with coverage of the World Cup or Euro tournament? I might have ordinarily expected ESPN to hand some of the coverage off to Tennis Channel, like they do for the US Open.

Apparently, besides NBC, Fox was considering making a run, but the thought of Fox doing a sport as straight-laced as tennis makes me shudder. However, I’m surprised CBS apparently didn’t make a run. They already carry the US Open and don’t have a morning show worth salvaging. On the other hand, the rest of their daytime is in better shape than NBC’s. But after losing out on the NHL and Olympics, in the end this represents ESPN’s first true head-to-head sports rights victory over NBC since the Comcast merger went through, even if a small one, and the first time anyone other than Fox has ended an incumbency. Because of the problems with NBC’s coverage, however, it’s unclear what it represents for NBC’s long-term prospects against ESPN.

We may find out about that soon enough, though, for far more than a mere blip on the radar like tennis. There’s an unexpected new battleground on the horizon. The NFL may be making plans to take Thursday Night Football full-season as a consolation prize for not getting their 18-game schedule. And that could be, by far, the biggest battleground in sight. More on this one later.

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Let the sports television wars begin!

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Over the last few months, the first shots have been fired in a multi-million-dollar war for control over the sports television landscape.

For the past decade, if not the past two decades, ESPN has controlled this ground, at least on the cable side, leveraging its strong portfolio of rights across multiple sports to build the biggest brand in cable television. Sports is one of the few pieces of programming that attracts the most valuable viewers, and ESPN has used it to become the most profitable division of the Walt Disney Company and one of the most popular, well-known, and notorious brands in America, while extending its reach around the world. And ESPN’s dominance has meant that most sports need to play by ESPN’s rules or risk irrelevance.

Now others are eyeing ESPN’s turf. In fact, four of the other five major media companies have at least partially positioned themselves for their own piece of ESPN’s riches. All had some stake in the game before, but all have also attempted to set themselves up to become much more serious at the sports rights game, and ESPN only raised the stakes when it broached a whole new world in what’s possible on cable when it snagged the rights to the BCS. Comcast fired the first salvo by acquiring NBC Universal, expressing its intent to turn NBC Sports into an entity on par with ESPN. Others have made their own moves to keep up, with Fox expressing its intent to bring more sports back to FX and CBS rebranding the CBS College Sports Network to drop the “College”. Billions of dollars are at stake, and the major media companies want a piece of the action.

Playing this game comes at a price, and increased competition will mean increased rights fees, which is very bad news for sports on broadcast television – cable networks collect money from subscriber fees in addition to advertising, which broadcast hasn’t really branched into, “retransmission consent” fees collected by individual stations notwithstanding – and very good news for sports leagues and conferences. Yet it’s very possible they’ll play a significant portion of the game with none of the suitors, instead choosing to play it with themselves. Over the last decade, the league-owned network has become all the rage. All four traditional major professional leagues have their own networks, as well as two college conferences (with a third soon to join them), and while it’s common for such networks to be run or launched by the media companies (NBA TV is run by Turner, for example, and the Big Ten Network is run by Fox), it’s probably more the norm for leagues to keep their networks to themselves, as with the NFL Network.

There are five contenders to the sports programming prizes, each seeking to obtain as many of them as they can, with the ever-present specter that the leagues granting the prizes may choose none of them and keep them to themselves.

As the incumbent ruler of the roost, ESPN remains the best positioned of the bunch, but time will tell if it can keep its advantage. ESPN has just about everything the other contenders could ask for. “The ESPN family of networks” has no equal among the other contenders, and the jokes about “The Ocho” become less funny every day. ESPN boasts not one but two full-time sports networks seen by the vast majority of the country (the only ones of their kind), including what is for most the sports highlight show, plus a broadcast outlet (available in a pinch even if they sometimes seem to want to kill sports there), a college sports network (with rights most competitors would die for), a sports news network (also the only one of its kind), a Spanish-language network, a 3D network (also the only one of its kind, although other networks have produced 3D broadcasts), and just for good measure, a classic-sports network. Throw in a video-streaming service (further advanced than any other), a radio network, a network for mobile devices, heavy investment in international rights, and a virtual monopoly on college-sports syndication, and ESPN is basically a one-stop shop for anything a league could need.

But now Comcast’s merger with NBC Universal has sent the message that they intend to challenge ESPN for the throne. Certainly they seem to be the next-best positioned, being the only other contender with anything resembling the all-sports network ESPN represents, bringing two with the soon-to-be-rebranded Versus and Universal Sports, not to mention the sport-specific Golf Channel (whose brand is already appearing on golf broadcasts on NBC). The merger coupled all of this with a broadcast presence on NBC, and while they don’t have a Spanish-language sport-specific network, they do have a Spanish-language outlet with Telemundo and mun2. Comcast also has something ESPN doesn’t: a collection of regional sports networks, which builds a strong brand for them in local markets. They also benefit from synergy with their cable operations, something no other contender can boast.

But Versus still has a long way to go before they have the quality of sports contracts ESPN has, NBCSports.com is well behind the other contenders online, NBC itself continues to struggle as a broadcast network, the closest thing they have to a college-sports network is the mtn., and the recent departure of Dick Ebersol cripples Comcast’s ability to pick up strong sports rights without one of the most respected names in sports broadcasting.

Potentially the wild card in this battle is Fox, the only other contender with a strong presence on both broadcast and cable. Fox is also the only other contender with its own collection of regional sports networks, which remains a bigger brand than Comcast’s, as well as FX, Speed, Fox Soccer Channel, the Big Ten Network, and Fox College Sports, all of which Fox has taken steps to unify under the Fox Sports brand as of late. Fox doesn’t have a sport-specific network other than their past efforts to make one out of FSN, but they do match ESPN note-for-note in various areas that other competitors don’t: a sports-specific Spanish-language network, a nightly highlights show on FSN, a radio network (which, unlike ESPN Radio, lacks any rights and might not be pursuing any), and being ESPN’s main competitor for international rights. All this makes Fox almost as well-positioned to challenge ESPN as Comcast is.

Turner is the next-best positioned; in fact, with NASCAR, MLB, NCAA Tournament, and the crown jewel, NBA rights, Turner has the best existing presence on cable of any contender except ESPN, and that has led to the development of some of the better sports streaming capabilities. Already stocked with sports on TBS and TNT, Turner’s taking of a share of the NCAA Tournament led to an expansion of sports onto truTV, and that appears to have gotten the idea into their minds of adding more sports onto that network; they were reportedly considering putting the NHL on that network. But Turner’s big Achilles heel is its lack of any sort of broadcast presence; I doubt the CW, which parent company Time-Warner is a partner in, will ever find sports to be in line with its target audience. (Which is too bad, because sports would be the best way for the CW to truly become a fifth major broadcast network.)

The remaining broadcast network is CBS, but CBS doesn’t have much other than its own broadcast network. They may be looking to change that: CBS took what was once ESPNU’s truest competitor, the CBS College Sports network, and dropped the “College” from its name, making it simply CBS Sports Network. But CBS Sports still has nowhere near the distribution of even Versus or ESPNU, and it’s doubtful that CBS would be able to snare any truly valuable rights for the network. CBS also doesn’t have much of anything else either; they don’t even hold a stake in the Westwood One radio network anymore.

But while CBS brings a strong broadcast presence (at this point, maybe the strongest broadcast brand) but has no presence on cable, Turner has one of the strongest presences on cable, but nothing on broadcast. It’s no surprise that the two companies, already partners on the CW, make natural partners for sports as well, each complementing the other with their strengths, as was demonstrated most readily when they joined forces to cover the NCAA Tournament. For big events that require both a broadcast and a cable presence, the combined forces of CBS and Turner can present a formidable force where neither would even be a contender individually.

These contenders have already started facing off over some significant sports rights, and the battles have already taken on some interesting dimensions, with ESPN picking up surprisingly few wins. Fox fired the first salvo when it picked up cable rights to the Big 12, putting games on FSN and FX for the next 13 years. Things got interesting when ESPN and Fox tag-teamed on rights to the Pac-12, apparently in part to keep Comcast from establishing a foothold in the market. This belatedly gives Fox the beachhead they were seeking in college sports during their time controlling the BCS contract. Comcast then took control by renewing NBC’s and Versus’ existing NHL rights.

However, the big prize was the much-delayed race between Fox, ESPN and Comcast for the rights to the Olympic games, America’s second-most important property. Despite conventional wisdom holding that the loss of Ebersol would hurt Comcast most in Olympic negotiations, on Tuesday NBC kept control over the Olympics through 2020 by paying nearly twice as much as the competitors. The outcome was a bit of a surprise, both that ESPN didn’t pay more after blowing a lot of smoke about making a play for the Games, and that NBC didn’t pay less, especially after losing substantial sums on the most recent contract, speculated to be among the reasons for Ebersol’s departure (in the end, this round wound up being a replay of the last, Ebersol-led bid), and blowing a lot of smoke about fiscal responsibility.

But Comcast apparently decided that a four-Games bid would ultimately cost less for them, and hopes to make more money in part by spreading the wealth to its cable networks, including Versus. However, unlike a lot of “professional” analysts I’ve read, I’m not convinced a two-week event every two years is going to give Versus the push to achieve ESPN-like legitimacy or carriage fees. NBC did indicate a commitment to showing more events live, including all of them by Rio 2016, but it’s possible many of them will only be available online. The biggest downside? ESPN continues to be shut out of the two events that would most take advantage of their family of networks, the NCAA Tournament and the Olympics. The former in particular would have been a great fit given ESPN’s existing commitment to college basketball.

Where will the next battles be? There will certainly be some interest in the Big East, but the next truly big showdown will be over Major League Baseball, whose current contract ends in 2013. That should be as entertaining and gripping as the battles we’ve already seen – they all should. And I’ll be getting the popcorn ready to keep an eye on all of them.

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Catching up with sports graphics in the NFL and more

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Well, if I put this off any longer than I already have, I’ll have to include baseball graphics and that means dealing with MLB Advanced Media not knowing how the Internet works, so:

Back in 2003, Fox introduced something new to their NFL score banner: rather than represent teams with abbreviations, Fox represented them solely with the teams’ logos. I fell in love with it immediately: abbreviations are arbitrary, cooked up solely for the benefit of graphics packages, while the logos introduced a sublime simplicity to Fox’s graphic. I’ve continued to go logo-only in my own fantasies ever since.

Sadly, Fox got cold feet – I guess they got complaints that people who weren’t familiar with NFL logos were getting confused – and dropped the logos during the playoffs, replacing them with these ugly abbreviations that were obviously slapped on in place of something else. In 2004, Fox used abbreviations alongside the logos on what was fundamentally the same graphic, and after that Fox stopped using logos as a permanent element of the graphic entirely. Fox would continue to evoke the logo graphic for years by having team logos appear in place of the abbreviation when the banner first comes onto the screen.

For a while, it seemed as though that would be it for using logos and relegating abbreviations to the dustbin of history (or updates on games you’re not watching). But then a funny thing happened: the NFL Network started using logos alone, and did so in two different incarnations for years. And now, in 2010, apparently the NFL Network’s success has convinced Fox to return to using the logo-only approach. In fact, they arguably take it too far; only the logos are shown even when going to break, providing no opportunity for newcomers to associate a logo with a team.

Fox also shows the potential of designing graphics with the timeout indicators in mind from the start, even to the point of turning the timeout indicators into Christmas lights during the holidays. If I had a problem, it’s with how awkward the graphic is arranged, with the logos on top of the scores and the scores arranged lengthwise.

Ironically, NFL Network decided to incorporate abbreviations into their graphic at the same time. This graphic isn’t much different from graphics I’ve made on my own time, so I can’t complain too much about it, even the excessive space between teams’ scores I’ve called the Portland Trail Blazers out for in the past. One spiffy new feature is that the indicator of which team has the ball also shows the direction the team is moving down the field (though that just makes the on-field down-and-distance indicator that much more redundant). On the downside, the timeout indicators are still on a tab slapped on to the graphic, though it’s a much less jarring tab than on NFL Network’s previous graphic, and down-and-distance and statistics feel almost as slapped on.

Still, with Fox’s new graphic and ESPN’s changes to its existing graphic, all of the NFL’s TV partners now use logos in their graphics, though CBS’s logos still look awkward. ESPN removed the “MNF” from their graphic and instead replaced the “40th Season” in the down-and-distance area with the same “MNF” wordmark. They used the space they saved from removing the “MNF” to add logos to the team names. Later in the season, they increased the font size of the time left, the down and distance, and the stat line, which I found jarring, and its inconsistent application gave away that the graphic wasn’t designed for it.

This move pretty much doomed the fate of the way ESPN’s new scoreline had previously popped itself in, with the “ESPN” sliding into its box and opening up to reveal the rest of the scoreline, which had been complemented with “MNF” doing the same thing. Now the whole scoreline “zooms in” to view. It’s not too bad for MNF, where the scoreline now pops in as a black field saying just “ESPN MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL” and then turns into the rest of the scoreline. But in other sports it just looks amateur. While I prefer turning the colored box into a triangle for college football to what they did during last year’s bowl season, the way the box pops onto the screen leaves a little to be desired.

Other than my continuing issues with the timeout indicators, I don’t really have an issue with ESPN’s new college basketball graphic.

On the other hand, ESPN has become the only NBA TV partner to have timeout indicators on their NBA graphics as well. One wonders if this is their way to continue their streak of having a different graphic for every NBA Finals.

For a while I wondered if Fox was going to go the way of Turner, and have a different graphic for every sport – their old graphic for NASCAR, their new graphic for the NFL, and an FSN-inspired graphic for baseball. I was proven wrong when both Fox and SPEED went with graphics inspired by Fox’s NFL graphics for NASCAR. My biggest problem is that the little pods for the cars in the running order look bulky, and call to mind the problems I’ve long had with ESPN’s current NASCAR graphics, even though Fox doesn’t try to cram intervals or other stats onto the same line.

Turner, meanwhile, introduced a new graphic for its NBA broadcasts, fixing the problems with their last abomination. In fact this version arguably outdoes ESPN on their idea to try to cram all graphics into the same two lines at the bottom of the screen, bringing out the advantages of that approach like nothing I’ve seen before. If I have a quibble, it’s the distracting way team logos appear whenever someone scores, which mirrors a general graphic theme that appears for highlight packages and the like. It’s a neat idea to try to de-genericize the score graphic, but still.

In fact, Turner may be moving towards graphic standardization, if the CBS/Turner graphics for March Madness are anything to go by. These graphics are a rather jarring change from the graphics CBS uses during the regular season (although some of the fonts are reminicent of the graphics package used by CBS before the current one), and contributes to the sense that Turner has taken over the tournament and nicely let CBS play with them. (However, overall the tournament keeps enough of a CBS sense that I really don’t get the synergy with “Inside the NBA” from Kenny and Charles’ presence in the studio that was intended, or from the presence of other TNT NBA personnel calling games, except maybe Reggie Miller alongside Gus Johnson at the regional semifinals.) The graphic is rather odd, but servicable, and my lack of problem with the timeout indicators may be a sign I’m growing resigned to the fact of iffy incorporation of them.

It’ll be interesting to see if similar changes are coming to Turner’s coverage of NASCAR and baseball.

Comcast, meanwhile, whipped out Versus’ new college football graphics, which are about as expected. If you’re going to put timeout indicators on a tab, you could do worse than what Versus did.

Comcast also introduced new graphics for Comcast SportsNet, rolling out a new standard for those networks that uses a shape once favored by ESPN. Thank God, too, because it means the graphics that made TNT’s look good on basketball are gone.

However, the hockey graphic looks a little amateur, especially with the way the team logos can sometimes disappear and reappear.

I’ve already seen the implementation of this graphic for baseball, but I won’t show it to you until I’m ready to deal with that can of worms. How the Comcast-NBC merger affects these graphics remains to be seen, but it has already affected one graphics package. NBC’s golf coverage has adopted the Golf Channel graphics and been rebranded “Golf Channel on NBC”.

They’re at least marginally better than what Golf Channel had before, enough that I can actually buy them being on a broadcast network, though it’s still a jarring change from NBC’s other graphics. It’ll be interesting to see how these look come the US Open.

A word of praise for the Sacramento Kings for trying something different – something I honestly had expected to see first in the NFL. Their new graphic uses team names – and not just team names, but team names taken from the teams’ jerseys. It’s barely noticable, so here’s hoping other networks (probably Fox or Turner) pick up on the trend.

By the way, NBA TV’s graphics are much less FSN-inspired than the last time I checked.

If you’re wondering, FSN is not going to a banner for all sports, instead adopting the most slapped-on timeout indicators possible for football. Check out the on-field down-and-distance that’s basically a cheap version of what Fox used for the NFL last year.

Finally, I don’t get ESPN’s rollout schedule for its new graphics. They still aren’t on tennis or NASCAR (tennis will probably get them for Wimbledon, NASCAR maybe by the time ESPN takes over the Sprint Cup schedule, but NASCAR in particular is still mystifying), but they are on MLS broadcasts and college lacrosse (which uses a variant of the college football graphic – and I should mention that college hockey doesn’t have these yet either). MLS has introduced us to a new variation of the graphic.

At the very end of the video, the graphic pops out of existence in a unique manner, a variant of how it pops in. I’m very impressed; I’d like to see that be the way it pops in and out for other sports. (I’m also seeing a trend reflected in this graphic regarding new implementations of ESPN’s new graphics package, but I’ll save that for next time.)