Man vs. machine

If you can’t beat them, perhaps you should join them.  Chess player Garry Kasparov still may not be so convinced after losing to IBM’s Deep Blue in 1997, but now there is no avoiding the fact that tech geeks are trying to find ways to replace humans with computers.  Those possibilities include:

Computer as scout and statistician: The NBA uses it, and now college hoops will too.  That service is Synergy Sports Technology, which provides detailed information on players’ performances but takes the extra step of linking all the information to digital video.  You can read more about the product at the company’s shockingly bare Web site at http://www.synergysportstech.com/.  Should someone tell the Patriots?

Computer as fantasy sports guru: No, the Logistic Regression Markov Chain is not a strand of Kasparov’s DNA.  It’s a calculation system designed by three engineering professors at Georgia Tech that has correctly picked 30 of the 36 Final Four teams in the past nine years of NCAA Basketball Tournaments.  The Chain processes data in three different ways stemming from basic scoreboard stats, but the difference between the three is how the margin of victory is calculated into the equation.  If you click on the aforementioned link, look who they just so happen to have as Nos. 1 and 2: tonight’s championship opponents, Kansas and Memphis…

Computer as fitness trainer: As if tennis, golf, bowling and other sports games for the Wii aren’t enough, Nintendo launches Wii Fit in the U.S. on May 21.  It looks like a white plastic board, but it’s actually a wireless device that you stand upon while doing yoga, aerobics and other exercises.  The device then detects your movements and senses whether you are off-balance.  The London Telegraph is not convinced about Wii Fit at all, simply because it feels less like a game, and more like an exercise in mental stamina and patience (mainly in how to work with the unit).  Still, it might convince a couch potato like me to give it a whirl.  Here’s a cheeky video about how it works:

More Facebook Fun: Pete Carroll’s triumphant return, NCAA brackets and you

Much has happened since Sportsbiztech broke the news that USC football coach Pete Carroll’s profile had been mysteriously removed from the social networking black hole that is Facebook.

(I boldly state “broke the news” based on the not-so-scientific analysis that, after I blogged, a search for Coach’s name and “Facebook” in Google showed nothing but “Coach joined Facebook” types of entries on the first couple of pages with the exception of mine. I’ll delete that reference if related posts in the blogosphere show an earlier timestamp…)

What happened with Coach Carroll’s profile, it turns out, happened to be a Facebook snafu rather than a legal or privacy issue. 2007 alumnus Ben Malcolmson – who corrected me when I erroneously thought he was still a student (sorry, Ben) – clarified the situation in an e-mail. Malcolmson, who maintains Coach’s Facebook page and writes the USCRipsIt blog, said, “The Facebook page was incorrectly disabled but is now back up. Facebook believed it was a false page, but the air has been cleared.”

Interesting! Instead of a case of stolen identity, Facebook denies the REAL identity of the human being who has now amassed, at latest count, 2,481 friends. (When I joined two weeks ago, I was somewhere in the mid-900s.)

Malcolmson goes on to say that “USC does not have an official policy for its athletes, though many coaches urge their own players to not use Facebook too extensively, if at all. The issues that arise from photos from a party or the like can only mean problems for a student-athlete representing a university, especially an underage student-athlete.”

So, case closed on that puzzling occurrence, and thanks to Ben for clearing the air. Now folks are treated to Coach Carroll’s updates once again, including his latest that reads:

“Pete Carroll is thinking…”BEAT THE WILDCATS.”"

This brings me to the second part of my post. Coach Carroll is referring to USC’s first-round opponent, Kansas State, in the NCAA Tournament. That’s right, it’s time for March Madness, where (mostly) American college basketball fans go crazy filling out brackets, trying to figure out whether to go with underdogs or the top seeds for their Final Four. My bracket was a breeze thanks to CBS Sports’ official application on Facebook, which you can go to at http://apps.facebook.com/cbssports. Never was filling out a bracket so simple – no pencils or unwanted advice needed – and I can follow my friends’ picks online. Unfortunately for Coach, I didn’t pick USC, whose squad will soon include rapper Lil’ Romeo. I was boring and chose a front-runner. Hint: Change one letter in USC’s acronym.

And the “You” portion of this post’s headline? Well, I’d encourage YOU to follow my lead in creating a bracket, but a report published in the Chicago Tribune last week states that the FBI has actually looked into the CBS Sports/Facebook partnership. That’s because in the U.S., Internet gaming is illegal. The article cites all sorts of reactions from Vegas online gaming lawyers to CBS execs to even the European Union.

So much for avoiding the law in this post. YOU, then, have two options: Move to Europe, or just become a March Madness commentator on YouCastr.

Whither Pete Carroll, oh Former Facebook Friend?

Sadly, this day has come. That’s right, today marks the day when a horrified Sportsbiztech scribe has discovered that my total number of Facebook friends has decreased by one. And my guess as to who the culprit was proved to be correct: USC football coach Pete Carroll.

You see, Coach Carroll started a Facebook page last month. Soon, hundreds of Facebookers from students to alums to curious folks like me asked to be his friend. Now suddenly, overnight, all mentions of Coach have been removed from my news feeds. I was about to take this personally — perhaps I had been discovered, since I did not attend USC and have never lived in California! — until I realized that search results for his name no longer put his name and picture at the top of the list, or anywhere on it. The URL to his profile now just redirects to www.facebook.com. It’s a shame because I genuinely did want to receive updates on Coach’s “A Better L.A.” cause and his thoughts on March Madness, which he expressed some excitement about just yesterday.

So what exactly happened? Did Coach run into some of the same privacy and security issues that I mentioned in one of my previous blog entries? It will be interesting to find out…

Mar. 15 update: I have contacted USC’s football department as well as the student who maintained Coach Carroll’s Facebook page. If I hear anything, you’ll read it here first…

Mar. 18 update: Still no word from either USC or the student, perhaps because the school is currently on spring break.

Mar. 18 update No. 2: HE’S BACK!  Just as mysterious as his disappearance, Coach Carroll is now back on Facebook and loving March Madness (according to his status message).  But why the abbreviated Spring Break, Coach?

Interview with Kelly Kennedy, Right Fit Sports & Athlete’s Advantage

Last month I interviewed A.J. Hodel, who runs the Athletic Scholarship Corporation Web site that helps Ohio student-athletes find suitable college sports programs. This month Kelly Kennedy talks to Sportsbiztech about Right Fit Sports (www.rightfitsports.com), a recruitment Web site for which she serves as a regional manager. Also the president of her own recruiting service Athlete’s Advantage, Kennedy has an MBA in sports marketing from the University of Oregon and was the head women’s basketball coach at the University of Akron from 2002-2006.

“I wanted to help athletes to be sure they are “chasing” the right level and help them find a good fit athletically and academically,” Kennedy said. “I then teamed up with Right Fit Sports, which is an outstanding tool for athletes to use to navigate the entire college search and recruiting process.”

More than a recruitment site with student-athlete profiles, Right Fit Sports includes an extensive national database detailing the sports programs offered at each school. For example, the Fashion Institute of Technology is better known for graduating fashion designers, but the school happens to offer intercollegiate and intramural opportunities in basketball, tennis and volleyball.

Get out of my Facebook, unless you’re Pete Carroll

Facebook, described on its very own site as “a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them,” is crawling with all types of people. Surely, Sportsbiztech mused, one of these types includes sports figures?

A Google search for various combinations of the words “athletes,” “sports,” “Facebook” and “official” did not reveal of a list of known names or profiles. Instead, the results were a bit more alarming, with the majority of content involving issues such as security, harassment and other concerns, particularly at the collegiate level.

While student-athletes can create online fan communities by adding “friends” whom they have never met, they have to be equally wary of posting contact information or pictures that can leak their way into a public forum, especially if the leaking is done by students at rival schools. (A hypothetical example: Athlete/student who is a minor goes to a party, is photographed downing a pint of beer and posts picture on Facebook. Rival fan enlarges said picture, mounts it on a poster board and brings it to the next game to publicly taunt said athlete/student/minor.) Coaches and university officials are concerned that, even though Facebook is behind a registration firewall, merely having a profile page would make create far too many opportunities for a student-athlete to damage his or her reputation, as well as that of the school’s. Some schools, like Florida State and Kentucky, have banned their athletes from having Facebook profiles.

Even Bill Gates, though not an athlete at last check but the Champion of Microsoft, had to shut his Facebook account down a few weeks ago, although not due to security reasons. (Receiving more than 8,000 friend requests a day was apparently too much for him to handle. Word has it that he has shifted his sights to LinkedIn. )

That doesn’t mean that everyone is steering clear of Facebook. USC football coach Pete Carroll recently created a page, according to the Los Angeles Times. While one of his interests is “coaching,” another is “playing basketball.” Hmmm.

Mar. 6 update: On his Facebook page, Pete Carroll posts notes and promotes his “A Better L.A.” cause. (He also likes Kanye West, by the way.) Thanks to one of his Facebook friends for posting the link to this blog entry on his profile. Underneath that post, a reporter from Sports Illustrated requested a wall-to-wall interview with Coach Carroll…who actually responded!