April 16, 2009
Northwestern Examiner: Wildcats win one at the Cell
There haven’t been many highlights for Northwestern’s baseball team this season, but Wednesday night could make up for a lot of the disappointment.
The Wildcats (9-23) defeated Notre Dame (20-13) at U.S. Cellular Field 5-1, behind Eric Jokisch’s strong arm and clutch hitting.
“I can't tell you how proud I am of this team," NU head coach Paul Stevens told reporters following the win. "They've battled all year and have faced a lot of adversity. Today that persistence paid off.”
Unfortunately, it was difficult to see. Despite playing at the major league park, the game was not picked as a featured contest for the Big Ten Network. That’s probably because the network felt Northwestern would be overmatched by the hard hitting Irish.
Not to fear though. The Northwestern News Network chose to cover the game live on their Web site, streaming the feed over the internet.
Read the remainder of this article at Examiner.com
Posted by bmiraski at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)
April 6, 2009
MRISports: Projecting the Tournament: Finals Edition
For as poorly as the MRI did at predicting the NIT, it did amazingly well at predicting the NCAA tournament so far.
With one game to go (that the computer cannot win), the MRI was at the 73rd percentile at ESPN, having been helped by a number of upsets along the way. The computer needed the help because it landed just one of its Final Four teams predicted prior to the tournament beginning.
Its solid standing is better than a number of the personalities who get paid the big bucks to spout on about sports on a daily basis at ESPN. The computer is ahead of everyone at PTI, a solid three-quarters of Around the Horn, and is hanging in there against the Editorial staff.
Not bad.
Read the remainder of this article at MRISports.com
Posted by bmiraski at 3:20 PM | Comments (0)
April 3, 2009
Penn State: The Improbable NIT winner
Penn State finished off Baylor last night 69-65 to take the NIT title. While some may mock the winner of this secondary tournament -- calling then No. 66 even though this title brings with it more prestige than dropping a first round NCAA game in an upset -- the NIT has been a stepping stone for many teams moving into the next season.
I wrote about this at Examiner, but here is a list of the teams that have turned recent NIT success into NCAA tournament glory the next season:
Ohio State turned last year’s championship into a No. 8 seed in this year’s NCAA tournament.West Virginia, the 2007 champion, reached the Sweet Sixteen in 2008. The runner-up, Clemson, was No. 5 seed but ran into a hot Villanova team.
Two-time defending champ South Carolina started the 2007 season 10-3 before getting rolled by a hot SEC conference that ultimately produced NCAA champ Florida.
Ok, so Ohio State's tournament run didn't end with fireworks and parades, but they made the field. That should give Penn State a lot of hope going into next year, even with the loss of Jamelle Cornley.
Perhaps the most interesting thing about Penn State's run to the title is how improbable the whole thing was.
Read the remainder of this story here.
Posted by bmiraski at 3:16 PM | Comments (0)
February 11, 2009
Northwestern Examiner: An early look at the 2009 football schedule
Adam Rittenberg of ESPN has posted a first look at the Northwestern Wildcats’ football schedule for next year, a slate of games that should have Northwestern looking at another bowl appearance.
That’s the good news.
The bad news is that a 9-4 record may not be within reach according to Rittenberg.
Non-conference: Miami (Ohio), Towson, Syracuse, Eastern Michigan
“All four teams had losing records in 2008, and all four welcome new coaches for this fall. Northwestern will be favored in every game and has a good chance of running the table for the second straight season after failing to do so from 1964-2007.”
I would agree with Rittenberg on his analysis, but with new coaches are taking the helm at these schools, sometimes that has the effect of gelling a team that was just a little bit away from getting it together.
Now, none of these teams were that close.
Read the rest of this story at Examiner.com.
Posted by bmiraski at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)
July 13, 2008
Pit Wars
The latest in Miraski sports writing is available over at Blogcritics.
Ever wonder what life is like in the pits at a NASCAR race? I was on hand to see from a few feet away.
Posted by bmiraski at 8:30 PM | Comments (0)
July 2, 2008
ESPN and Sports Journalism
What follows is a repost of an assignment I wrote for my Sports Journalism class on the state of sports media. I thought I would share it here, although I am sure it could be expanded and made a little less stream of consciousness.
What is wrong with Sports Journalism? Everything and nothing at the same time.
The downfall of sports journalism, in its own way, is the thing that made sports journalism take off: ESPN. The self-proclaimed World Wide Leader has both given fans access to things we would never have had 28 years ago, or even 15 years ago, but it has taken it to the extreme where every iota of a person’s life is analyzed to the extent where you say, “Why do I need to know this?”
That is not to say that ESPN doesn’t do great work at times. Until Sunday night NFL games moved to NBC, the broadcast team in the booth was the best in the business. Sportscenter, before it devolved into a wholly sponsored 90-minutes and a dunk parade, was one of the best outlets for sports news. And E:60, the new long-form journalism being done by the company is some of the best work I have seen, from some of the best writers at the company.
And ESPN gets online. They do well on the web, they have intriguing content written well, and they understand new media and podcasts – the college basketball and football podcasts are both spectacular and much more informative pieces of analysis than anything they put on television.
Maybe that is the issue though. The television medium is where ESPN is doing its worst work. Its best material is online, beating CBS and SI handily. I can’t say I get through the magazine anymore, but it was some good work when it first started, although the flashiness now is more than I can take.
Sports journalism has become a web experience. Game data is available in such a plentiful state, that there is no need to wait until the morning paper to get scores or game reports any longer. Fan sites and blogs get more hits than local newspapers about what is going on across the country (although many of the former are dependent on the latter for their livelihood). If you can’t get something up and out on the web quickly, no one is going to read it. Provide a forum for fans to post their chatter, and you will pull in views and generate buzz.
However, that is the dark side of sports reporting as it stands. Blogs, for all the good ones out there, are still dominated by a few mega blogs, which all link to each other, and promote some content which is no better than the gossip pages in People Magazine. I don’t care if Matt Leinart is out with five USC coeds, as long as he does it on his own time, and it doesn’t affect his performance on Sunday. Pure and simple. I know that there has always been coverage of players and their girlfriends, but it has been taken to a new level by the internet and some of the “reporting” that takes place on blogs.
So where are we headed? I don’t think that blogs are going away anytime soon, although the departure of Will Leitch from Deadspin will change the face of the well-established leader in the blog field (ironically, the one thing that ESPN doesn’t do well, outside of Bill Simmons, who I don’t like and don’t care to read). So the challenge becomes how you take the blog format and add real reporting to it.
It is something that is probably easier said than done.
To get real reporting, many blog writers would need access they don’t have: to press rooms, to interviews, to players and coaches outside of their MySpace and Facebook profiles. As with anything, that requires pull, something that most of the bloggers do not have but established media does have. That means no access.
Or does it? I contend that they could still pick up a phone, which is a common criticism of the reporting. Pick up a phone, call a team, call a school, call a coach, and see if you can get an interview. See if one of the players will talk to you. Sure you might have to use sources from attendees at a club if something went on inside, but it doesn’t hurt to try and get the official line from the school.
Most of all, stop making things up. The satire of some blogs goes so far over the top, you lose all meaning. By all means, write a good and interesting column, but lay off the made up storylines, and the fake interview room scenarios. They work in small bites, not when you constantly write them week after week.
The web is the current and the future of sports reporting and it needs to improve standards to be more like established media. The established media needs to learn how to do the web, or present content in more interesting ways.
The other day, I came across a great video piece on ESPN about rabbit chasing in Florida: a great piece which I have never seen on television, only on the web. The problem that ESPN would have with a piece like this on the big screen is that it would be over played. You would see it seven times on Sportscenter, it would be put into pre-game coverage, it would be played during halftime of a game with some of the players featured in it. It gets over-exposure.
On the web, the piece stands alone as a great look at a side of the high school game you couldn’t know unless you were from there, and covered the teams and the players. These are the stories that create sports fans.
ESPN found a way to make poker interesting on television and it created an empire. It could continue to do the same thing with sports reporting without going over the top like it does at times (Around the Horn, ESPN First Take (formerly Cold Pizza), 1st and Ten all come to mind at first blush). They have the ability to pull in those from new media (and they have) who do it well and make the industry on the web something to cheer about.
However, they can’t do it if they don’t pay attention to the content that gets placed on its television networks, the bread and butter of its business. It is no secret why Sportscenter commercials did well back in the day. They were only shown on ESPN and yet were some of the most popular ads on all of television.
It was advertising for a great product, one that has consistently gone downhill since its heyday in the late 90’s and early 00’s.
Print, broadcast and web have a lot to learn from the past and the current to continue to generate content which makes people tune in and keep reading. There is no magic cure to what ails current sports journalism, but there needs to be the willingness for the established media and the new media to work together to get it done, something I haven’t seen happen yet.
Maybe when it does, it will be even more unstoppable than today.
Posted by bmiraski at 4:38 PM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2008
You are not an athlete
A blogger for the Sporting News recently underwent a work-out similar to what most college football athletes suffer as they go through the combine.
Suffer being the important word there.
Just reading the descriptions of some of the drills make me tired and feeling the aches and pains that my 31-year-old body isn't old enough to feel yet.
I know I would have been in just as bad a position if I had gone through what this guy has, and this is only the first half of the post.
Stay tuned for more on him tomorrow, if he makes it through.
Posted by bmiraski at 12:47 PM | Comments (0)
June 16, 2008
Turning Heads
Another image from a Flickr friend but appropriate. What is turning heads?
Tiger Woods winning on the 91st hole of the U.S. Open.
Kudos to Rocco Mediate who had the nerves to hold his own one-on-one with the man who will some day just be known as "The Greatest."
Tiger is the man.
Posted by bmiraski at 3:31 PM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2008
Gimme, gimme, gimme
There is no item more speculated about than the inner workings of a baseball team.
What do they make? How much do they really bring in? What makes most of their owners richer than Exxon Mobil (ok, maybe not that rich)?
A few lucky people are getting to look at the Chicago Cubs' books because they are on the approved list to buy the team.
I love how Major League Baseball gets to approve who gets to be a member of its little elite club, but that is a topic for another time, probably after the team is sold.
Right now, I just want to get my hands on those books.
If any of the nine prospective owners wants to call me and give me a little inside information, please do.
Posted by bmiraski at 3:52 PM | Comments (0)
Euro 2008 - a winner for sponsors
I have spent a number of hours on my break watching the opening rounds of Euro 2008, the soccer tournament pitting 16 of the best national teams in Europe.
Ringed around the pitch (that's the field for those Americans unwilling to understand proper football terminology) are ads for addidas, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Mastercard and others.
According to a Forbes article published about a week ago, those ads are likely to be big winners for the companies who place them.
They are going to need to pay off because the amount they have paid is overwhelming.
So far UEFA, the European soccer's governing body, has seen huge revenues from the games. Sponsors and broadcasters are providing sales of $2.0 billion, 35.0% more than the previous 2004 tournament in Portugal.
What does that number mean? The Superbowl is the U.S. longtime standard for advertising sales, where 30-second spots go for near $3 million.
Yet, in 2007, according to the TNS Media Intelligence numbers, the Superbowl only brought in $151.5 million in ad revenue. Sure, it is a one time, 3-plus-hour event versus an almost month-long contest with multiple matches, but it is the event in the U.S. (2008 numbers weren't available)
Or is it.
Based on the same numbers, the final three games of the NCAA basketball tournament in 2007 produced more ad revenue ($168.4 million). Yes, it is three games compared to one, but it was three games where the final result was almost a guarantee given the strength of the Florida team that season.
In terms of just rights and sponsorship, a previous Forbes article rated the Superbowl as the most valuable sporting event, at $379 million. That might be a more equal comparison for the $2.0 billion number.
However, the $2.0 billion taken in by UEFA is still a staggering $105 million per day of the tournament, nothing to sneeze at when some of the largest countries in the world don't take part, and one of those, the U.S., normally couldn't care less about soccer.
Congrats go out to UEFA.
Posted by bmiraski at 2:54 PM | Comments (0)
Bears will have running troubles
Here I am with sports again...
In the wake of the Cedric Benson dismissal, Vaughn McClure has an interesting article in the Tribune today outling the top four free agent backs that the Bears could look at as a replacement.
Based on the commentary from an NFL executive, it doesn't look pretty out there.
Knowing the Bears, that won't stop them from taking one of these overrated and overpriced players and keeping Adrian Peterson, who proved he could run last season, on the sidelines.
Posted by bmiraski at 1:14 PM | Comments (0)
"Eight Men Out" Author dies
According to the Associated Press, Eliot Asinof, the author of "Eight Men Out
The Ancramdale resident died at a hospital in Hudson of complications from pneumonia, said his son, Martin Asinof.
Asinof was best known for "Eight Men Out," his 1963 retelling of the "Black Sox" scandal in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox threw the 1919 World Series. He spent more than three years exhaustively researching the book, his son said.
While I have not read the book, it was made into one of the best, if not the best baseball movie of all-time.
For a man who didn't exactly make headlines with his own name, he sure was linked to some very famous people.
According to the article, Asinof dated Rita Moreno and was married to Jocelyn Brando, the sister of the Godfather, Marlon Brando. Jocelyn is the mother of his son.
Sadly, this also means that there is one less person on Shoeless Joe Jackson's side fighting for his induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Posted by bmiraski at 11:31 AM | Comments (0)
June 9, 2008
Bears release Benson
They should have never drafted him in the first place but that is another matter.
The Bears have finally dumped Benson after he continued to act like a spolied sports star and this time went driving a car drunk.
Thankfully, NFL teams seem to be less tolerant of these acts now, most likely because their own skin and money is on the line when one of their players act out.
Maybe we should give the commish a thank you for cracking down the right way on what was wrong with his sport.
Posted by bmiraski at 4:58 PM | Comments (0)
June 5, 2008
Leitch leaves Deadspin
For some (read Buzz Bissinger), Will Leitch embodies everything that is wrong with blog journalism, if that isn't an oxymoron.
For some, Will Leitch is everything that blog journalism is supposed to be.
If you haven't seen the Bob Costas roundtable on the state of sports media, find it. I agree with a lot of what Buzz said, although the way he said it probably wasn't the best. The few videos of it that existed on YouTube have been removed.
Pesky copyright violations.
Well, Leitch is apparenlty going somewhat mainstream as a contributing editor at New York magazine. You can read his first goodbye post at Deadspin.
So there is an editor job at Deadspin open.
Brian McCabe, who often appears on Chicagocubsonline.com, asked me if I wanted the job.
"Yes and no," I said.
"Why no?" he asked.
"No, because I don't agree with a lot of what they post. Then again, yes, because I would love to have a post of mine that had..." *looks at screen* "...7821 hits on one of my stories," I replied.
"In a hour," Brian said.
Damn.
The article is now up to 10,234 hits.
Posted by bmiraski at 2:39 PM | Comments (0)
Don't rat out your clients
The moral of this story is:
If you are thinking about ratting out people you sold steroids to, don't.
Why?
1. They are artifically huge and can beat you up.
2. They likely have guns.
Sure we don't know if this was a homicide or a murder-suicide, but this is really scary shady.
Posted by bmiraski at 2:19 PM | Comments (0)
Polish News Rocks
I am not going to write about sports on this site.
I am not going to write about sports on this site.
I am not going to write about sports on this site.
Ok, screw it. Polish papers are a little excited about the Euro Cup starting this weekend -- the perfect chance for revenge against the Germans for all those years of pain.
Just witness the front cover of their sports section featuring the Polish soccer coach holding the heads of Michael Ballack and German coach Jaochim Low.
We need more great photoshop work like this in the U.S. How great would a doctored photo of Obama holding Hillary's severed head have been on Wednesday morning? (obviously just kidding. I don't think the whole Obama/Osama thing needs anymore press.)
Editors take note.
Posted by bmiraski at 11:08 AM | Comments (0)