The Sports Info Business

Many people were not surprised that Lakers head coach Mike Brown was fired.  Many, including myself are surprised that it happened after only five games into a new basketball season.

Today, the Los Angeles Lakers general Manager Mitch Kupchak released the following statement related to Brown:

“This was a difficult and painful decision to make,” said Kupchak. “Mike was very hard-working and dedicated, but we felt it was in the best interest of the team to make a change at this time. We appreciate Mike’s efforts and contributions and wish him and his family the best of luck.”

The following statement was issued today from Mike Brown:

“I have great respect for the Buss family and the Lakers’ storied tradition and I thank them for the opportunity they afforded me. I have a deep appreciation for the coaches and players that I worked with this past year and I wish the organization nothing but success as they move forward.”

Assistant Coach Bernie Bickerstaff will take over as interim head coach for tonight’s game against the Golden State Warriors and a search for a new head coach will begin immediately.

With expectations so high after signing Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, a 1-4 episode is unacceptable.  But fire the coach a few games into the season?  It sounds like pulling the plug on a new TV show before it finds an audience.  How does a stable and winning team like the Lakers pull this off?

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I was approached by a company who is promoting custom Frisbees as an option, to include  it in my blog.  Well, I don’t throw a Frisbee well, have played ultimate Frisbee growing up and loved it, but I would certainly play it on this beach below (your truly took the photograph).

©Charles Harris Photography

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This weekend, Peter Carroll and MLB.com the Seattle Seahawks battle the Mark Sanchez and the New York Jets.  It is a 4:05 p.m. Eastern starts, 1:05 p.m. on the west coast.  Its coach vs former Quarterback for this mini USC alumni reunion in Seattle.  While Sanchez has thrown for more yards so far then Seattle Russell Wilson, I think the Seahawks will get the win.  The game will be shown on CBS and Direct TV.

At what point do we raise the white flag and proclaim that there is too much information to process?

The thought process for this blog started with a single Keynote slide.  For the last two weeks, I’ve had a one-page slide sitting on my desktop with details how many different ways which friends, family, colleagues and new contacts can reach me.

During my childhood, I remember we had two staples: the home phone and our mailbox.  As an adult, communication grew more complex.  We were offered choices between new business toys like fax machines and pagers.  When cell phones and email hit main stream, the world changed forever.

Consider this:

Today, we have more ways to communicate than I can count on both hands, yet, I see and hear about more miscommunication and lack of communication than ever before.  While I do not plan on deleting what I started, I hope you will play along with me as I recount the ways in which people can reach me today.

Let’s start with the phone.  Once reachable only at home, now we can find anyone, anywhere, from airlines to bathroom stalls.  Privacy?  Forgetaboutit.  I remember reading a sad story of a family burying someone who passed away and as the dirt was being shoveled over the grave, a cell phone from under the ground started ringing.  You won’t find a home phone to reach me, but certainly a cell phone, work phone, a Google talk number and texting on my smart phone are options to communicate.

The mailbox is a second method.  Home, work and a PO Box.  Three simple outlets, and while the frequency of important information has fallen, the pure spam of direct mail has not.

Email is a third option.  Personal and work email is on the check list as is a dedicated email for consulting work.  Let me knot forget a teaching email for my graduate school adjunct work and there’s always the dummy email account to check once every blue boon.  If you don’t use a dummy account, it is terrific when you need to register for something online yet do not want to give away your personal information.

The overload effect enters into the picture when it comes to social networking and social media.  In no particular order here is my personal list.  There’s my personal Facebook page, the work related Facebook pages I need to monitor and then I cannot forget the sportsinfo101.com Facebook page; Twitter – A personal account and of course my corporate Twitter account.  My LinkedIn profile and the corporate LinkedIn page for my company that needs updating and monitoring;  Finally there is Youtube Channels, Instagram, Pinterest, tumblr and Mobli to name a few more  Whew. 

Finally, there are two blogs to write, monitor and respond to.  This one on sportsinfo101.com and a photo blog I recently started, that compliments my photography website site.

Tired yet?  I am.  That’s 26 different channel, minimum and I may have missed one or two.

I will certainly admit that not everyone is as connected with new social platforms like I am.  Yet, when you take stock in how the world has changed, I ask again, when is it too much?  At what point do we say enough and just go back to basics?

Welcome to the first full weekend of college football, 2012 style.

For those that enjoy the sport, fall is the best time of year.  The temperatures, hopefully, wil begin cooling in the next 30 days and trees will begin changing colors.

One of the big games during the opening weekend has to be the University of Alabama vs the University of Michigan.  ABC thought it was a big enough game to feature the two teams tonight, starting at 8 p.m. Eastern time, 5 p.m, on the West Coast.  With all of the football writers providing previews of what is taking place on the field, I thought I would review what the two teams are doing on the web, ahead of today’s contest.

First off, I went to the Alabama’s athletic website and this is the landing page that popped up.

In the past, we have looked at how many of the professional teams have used technology and the online platforms so today it was time to compare some of the college programs.

First, let’s look at the University of Alabama.

Alabama has many touch points above the fold on this landing page, including links to a football sponsor, a link continuing to the main athletics website, an embedded ABC commercial previewing the game as well as links to ESPN in Dallas and the school’s blog.  What the school missed is in the upper half of the page, you do not see the Facebook nor the Twitter links for the school.  If you scroll down the page just a bit more, they social media platforms become apparent.

Michigan’s site takes a very different approach.  The splash page was much smaller and the goal is clearly on customer acquisition and online interaction.  Two photos allow you to either link to the Wolverines football page or the on lie Facebook application.  Three links at the bottom encourage visitors to tag photos with #GoBlue on Instagram, heeling to generate school related content, follow the sport on Twitter or join its Facebook Fan page.

I understand both approaches.  One is geared towards the overall brand while the other is on acquiring new users. 

The Alabama Athletics Facebook page has more than 700,00 people engaged on it and the University did a great job by adding a phone number for tickets, a link to its Twitter account and also links for photos and rewards.

This page is specific to Michigan football and it has a larger audience than the Alabama page (both links to Facebook were reached via the school’s websites).  However, Michigan does not provide the same resources as the Alabama site does.

About a week ago, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Boston Red Sox rocked the sports world with a nine player trade that involved star players, prospects and a lot of cash.  Much has been written about it already and there are many others who work in the business that can provide better insight on the length of contracts and money involved.

Since the trade went down last weekend, I wanted to compare the 2012 opening day roster with the team it put on the field after the trade was completed.  As you can see by the graphic below, there has been a lot of change since the season began.  That made me think, How Important IS team chemistry when significantly changing the dynamics in the heat of a pennant race?

Click on the image to see a more detailed view of the players and moves

As a team owner, general manager or Dodger fan, the Dodgers makeover is impressive.  Not many would question acquiring players such as Hanley Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez, Josh Beckett and Carl Crawford to help your team.

However, at what price can you pay when altering team chemistry?

Let’s look at the changes, which do not include Crawford since he is injured and not on the active 25 man roster.

– The team’s roster has changed 36% since opening day (9 players).

– Five new pitchers have joined the roster since opening day (42% change).

– Half of the team’s infielders have changed since the start of the 2012 season.

Going into tonight’t game, the Dodgers have played a total of six games since the trade and are just 2-4 and have scored two runs or less in three of the six games.  Concerned?  Dodger skipper Don Mattingly called for a 15 minute team meeting to address the players.  As of this writing, the Dodgers trail the San Francisco Giants by 4.5 games in the NL West with 30 games left.  Yes, they are only 1.5 games  behind the Braves and Cardinals for the Wild Car spot.

Time will tell if the players mesh, deliver and send the team to the playoffs.  Great move or missed opportunity?  Best trade in decades for the Dodgers or a big bust?  Stay tuned.

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Blog update:  I have stopped posting open sports management job openings here as there is an issue with content, jobs and overall page rank.  If you like sportsinfo101.com on Facebook, you can see job openings I find posted there. 

When you look at a Twitter account these days, like most people, we tend to see what kind of following the person or business has, right?  How influential are they when it comes talking about their product, their pricing or their passion.

Did you know that you can easily buy friends and appear more influential than you really are?  Perceptions, unfortunately are everything in this world and I want to expose you to the dark side of buying friends in social media.  I have learned in the tech press that you can now check the status of these fake friends within your own account, which I will address below.

A quick search on Google today will provide you with several companies claiming that you can “add” thousands of Twitter and Facebook followers for as low as $50.  Sounds like a Ginsu knives commercial from the 1970′s.  If you don’t believe me, go to Google and look up buying friends for Facebook and Twitter.  I have seen services in the last few months that have made this offer but have never actually down it.  I listened to my gut feeling and stayed away from this.

If you are at all interested in protecting your online reputation, which most should be interested, then you may want to use this free too to learn how many of your twitter follows are fake, how many are inactive and how many are good.  Now, others can see how authentic you are as well.

Obviously, no one is worried about a good ranking and it appears the inactive accounts are from people that either have become distracted, bored or forgotten about their accounts.  It is the percentage of fake accounts that might become alarming to those that are not buying their popularity.

So, in the interest of knowing where I stand, I typed in one of my twitter handles, the sportsinfo101.com real account.  It is managed by me, produced by me and last I pinched, I am still real so I am not fake and either is my account.  Here is what I found:

If you’d like to give this a try for yourself, you can either go http://statuspeople.com/ or just click here and give it a test drive.

The only downside of this app is that, although I learned that, according to status people 2% of my friends are fake, there was no way to view and evaluate the 2%.  Maybe next version of their program.

The news quickly spread this morning regarding sanctions imposed on the Penn State football team.

By the time I publish this blog post, you probably have already heard some of all of the sanctions imposed on the school.

The sanctions include:

* A 60 million dollar fine

* A four year ban on bowl games

* All wins by the football program, from 1998 though 2011, have been vacated.

* The loss of 40 scholarships over the next four years

Current players on Penn State, as a result of the sanctions, are free to immediately transfer to any school.

Media reports say that the school will not appeal what was handed down by the NCAA today.

A few thoughts about this story.  One time.

How can the NCAA impose the death penalty on SMU football while allowing this program to continue playing?  I am at a loss for words.  I do not mean to compare apples to oranges, but can someone please explain to me why the Nittany Lions will kick off its 2012 season on September 1 vs Ohio University?

Second point:  Meant for the new leaders at the Penn State Athletics department.  When something so significant like this comes down, I think you may want to change the home page of your Web Site, as shown below.  Other than the prepared statements posted, everything appears to be business as usual on the site, including the football countdown clock in the upper right hand corner of the screen shot I took.  The department has had enough time to prepare for this day and it should have altered the look and feel out of respect.  This is a small but significant message that nothing has changed.  Games are not being played right now.  A perfect time to send the right message to the world.

Third point:  So many people have been impacted but this.  Current students, alumni, staff and professors, athletics department coaches and staff.  None of these workers get to transfer or vacate anything.  They still must show up each and every day, facing the media circus short term and scrutiny that will attach itself to this school for the next few decades.

Fourth and Most Important point:  The sanctions above do not matter to me.  I could care less about the loss of money, scholarships or bowl games.  Football became bigger than human life to leaders entrusted to run a very profitable educational institution.  As a father, I cannot fathom the horrid nightmares and impact the children/young adults/adults might still be going through each day/night.  Their innocence cannot be bought nor brought back.

You will forgive me but I did not get the name of one of the men, who during today’s press conference, said the following statement:  ”Football will never again be placed ahead of educating nurturing and protecting young people.”

Really?  Check the news.  According to the Sporting News, “The total payout for the new playoff, beginning with the 2014 season, could be as much as $600 million a year.”

I pray that college university presidents, football coaches and athletic directors will show  more integrity and better leadership moving forward.

Amen.

This weekend, the graduate students from the Long Beach State Sports Management Program will be presenting to me, their semester end wrap up.  Before they graduate, and as part of this internship program, I have added a component that requires them to hand in a business portfolio of everything they have accomplished in the past 18 months.

Why demand this from students who are in the midst of finishing up their final classes and a major project, their Capstone presentation?

Well, without it, the internships they have worked at  for the past 18 months otherwise might turn into a blur of a memory, except for a few small lines noted within their respective resumes.  While the goal of the last internship is, of course, is to help set up the student for a job offer, at the very least the internship experience should provide students with valuable business lessons which they can apply to future positions.

In today’s digital world, many of us know one of the most important places to place your resume for visibility is LinkedIn.  That said, i would ask, how many of you have a business portfolio that is up to date?  What would you show a prospective employer in terms of your recent or most applicable business accomplishments?

What I have asked for in this portfolio is for students to provide visual examples of what they have accomplished during their 18 months — a resume listing of where they have worked, but how have they added value to their workplace.  What made them more valuable?  What did they create, develop, sell, and improve in their respective workplaces?

We should all be asking ourselves the same questions.  As I recently learned, two senior level sports executives and long time friends of mine recently lost their jobs for different reasons.  It may have nothing to do with how productive they were or were not.  The question I would ask is, beyond updating their resume, have they built a better business portfolio to show their next employer?

Staying up to date on your accomplishments throughout your career will pay off in the long run.

A View of Chase Field from my seats

On this Memorial Day weekend, I had the opportunity to give the gift of baseball to my father.  Celebrating his 70th birthday, I was able to secure a few tickets to the Friday night game between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Milwaukee Brewers.  There is nothing better than enjoying a baseball game with family and friends and I was fortunate to be sitting in the lower bowl, about 28 rows behind the visitors dugout.

The ballgame itself was not very memorable for two sub- .500 teams, playing in late May.  The Diamondbacks came into the series 20-25 while Milwaukee sported a 18-26 record.

It was also a bit special for me as it was the first time I was visiting this ballpark.  During my days working for the Dodgers, I routinely traveled with the club on the road, visiting every national league baseball town.  Since the DBacks did not enter the league until 1998, I was already pursuing new interests outside of baseball and did not have the opportunity to experience a game here.

But, here I was, enjoying my first baseball game of the season.  Naturally, my mind immediately wandered down the list of players, coaches and executives of the Diamondbacks and the Brewers, wondering how I was connected to both teams.  First there was Arizona — The President and CEO Derek Hall was the man who replaced me when I left the Dodgers in 1994.  Josh Rawitch was next, the Diamondbacks Senior Vice President, who helped arrange the outing for me.  Both, class individuals who were raised and learned the game the Dodgers way.  The coaches included Kirk Gibson (the DBacks manager who had a stellar baseball career and often linked to his historic 1988 world series home run for the Dodgers, three years before I arrived on the scene), and DBacks first base coach Eric Young, who played for the Dodgers in 1992, my second with the team.

On the other side of the field was my good buddy and current Milwaukee Manager Ron Roenicke, currently in his second year as skipper for the Brew Crew.  Ron was a coach during my entire Dodger tenure and we spent a lot of time together talking baseball and life, between pitches, on planes and over meals.  We texted each each other on game day, but unfortunately, I was not able to chat with him as game time neared.

As a baseball fan, here are a few thoughts regarding my experience of visiting Chase Field.

* The ballpark is located on 401 East Jefferson Street in Phoenix, a block or two from where the Phoenix Suns play and next to the Phoenix Visitors and Convention Center.  After parking, walking up to the ballpark felt like a downtown experience, but once I got to the entrence, it was a strange feeling to be entering a domed stadium.

* The inside of the facility was well air conditioned throguhout.  In Phoenix, this is the only was to beat the heat.  From the moment I entered the building, I thought the roof was already open.  The building was designed to let a god amount of natural light through and the outfield was dotted with sun rays.  it was only when I could look up at that I noticed the roof was closed.

* The building is spacious and the plaza allowed fans the depth to walk between sections easily.

* The section devoted to the fan experience was vast, from the kids Sandlot area on the upper level, to the pool in the right center field area to the TGIF restaurant that overlooked left field.

* I was amzed by the number of TV’s placed through the lower section of the stadium.  If a fan was not looking directly at the playing field, it was hard to miss a pitch no matter where you were standing — unless you were in the men’s room of course.

* The main scoreboard had a very detailed approach tot he game, providing what seemed like unlimited fan information, including a translation for the announcer’s words on the screen.  I can only imagine this was for the hearing impaired, another nice touch.

* It was 90 degrees-plus at game time, yet the team opened the roof for the game.  The air conditioning continued to blow on fans throughout the night (would hate to see that monthly bill) and I felt very comfortable the entire evening.  Loved watching the roof open.

 * About the only thing I could not find, from an information perspective, was the pitcher’s pitch count and the speed of individual pitches.

So, the Stanley Cup Finals are set with the New Jersey Devils taking on the Los Angeles Kings.  Congrats to both teams and their respective front offices.

East Coast vs West Coast will go at it starting on Wednesday.  It is an eight seed vs a six seed.  It is also the first time these two teams are meeting in the finals, yet something seems awfully familiar.

The Kings, who last went to the finals in 1993, are looking to hoist their first cup while the Devils are looking for a return to the top for the first time since 2003.

That year, 2003, was a bittersweet year for me.  Then working for the Mighty Ducks, now renamed the Anaheim Ducks, we made an amazing playoff run to get to the Stanley Cup Finals.  While most predicted we would not get past the first round against the Detroit Red Wings, the series sweep and run towards the championship continues to hold special memories for me and my colleagues.

It was in the finals that year, that we, the Ducks, came within one game of being named champions.  I have never watched replays of that final game.  Nine years later, it still hurts.

In an ironic twist, one of my colleagues and close friends, Michael Williams, is returning to the finals.  Once the Director of Sales and marketing for the Ducks, he is now, wait for it, the Chief marketing Officer for the NJ Devils.  Williams is still looking for his first championship ring.  After leaving the Ducks ahead of Disney’s sale to the Samueli family, Michael, went on to work as an executive for the San Francisco 49ers, before landing on the East Coast with his current job.

Now, as a Devil, he is hoping the other side of the coin will land with a championship as New Jersey takes on the other Southern California team, the LA Kings.

What would you be willing to do to get a job these days?  Last week, I heard one of the best stories about what someone would do to get their first job in the sports field.  It could have been a scene right out of a Hollywood movie.  This was not one of those blog posts on the Internet that may or may not have been true.  The student told me this story while attending the Long Beach State Sports management roundtable.  If you do not know, I lead this event as the internship coordinator for the Long Beach State Sports Management program.

Quick background:  The roundtable is an effort offered to new students.  They are welcomed one evening very early in the 18-month program and introduced to 10 sports related companies.  Last week, we welcomed organizations like The X Games, The Rose Bowl Stadium, the LA Galaxy, USA Volleyball, Special Olympics of Southern California and on and on.  Each student is required to gain work experience via an internship.  This requirement includes 100 hours minimum during the first semester and two hundred hours each of the other two semesters.

Well, I was floored when this new student told me what she did to gain an internship.  If I remember the story correctly, she was standing in the hallway and heard that there was an opportunity with an organization, but was not dressed appropriately to speak with this hiring manager about working there.  Now, she did something that I would never have thought nor ever could have pulled off.  This woman, found someone who was about the same size, asked her to switch clothes for an impromptu interview and the stranger agreed to do it.

It was only an hour she told her.  Well, long story short, the creative woman got the offer and is currently working there.

Once in a while, she told me, she sees this woman around.  They smile, but it is an awkward smile, and then each moved on without really saying a word.

Amazing.

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