Category — Sports

Having gone out of style in the 1980s, Table Hockey is attracting a new generation of fans, reports Will Connors in the Wall Street Journal (4/23/12). Table Hockey is where players use metal rods to move flat cutouts of players along slots in the table, manipulating them as levers in hopes of landing pucks in the opponent’s net. It was really popular in the 1970s but lost its mojo with the arrival of “videogames and the internet.” The game had survived, to some degree, among middle-aged men, who are now actively recruiting younger players to their ranks. Their pitch is “the sport’s human touch over videogames and smartphone apps.”

Mark Sokolski, 35, says young players are attracted to Table Hockey’s “real-life camaraderie” compared with the digital alternatives. “In videogames, there is no humanity,” he says. However, he showed no mercy when taking on 14-year-old Carter Campbell at the Canadian Table Hockey Championships earlier this year. “I’m gonna stomp this kid,” Mark said. And he did, 5-3 and 5-1. But, in fact, Mark, a middle-school teacher, had introduced Carter to the game in the classroom. Carter was a natural and soon “was beating all the kids his age, and most adults in town, too, at school and in local tournaments.”

Carter sees Table Hockey as a great equalizer. “I’m clearly not that athletic,” he says. “This is a a sport that I can play and I’m actually good at.” The Canadian event, held annually since 1999, drew a record number of participants — 120. Another tourney, the North American Championships meanwhile “drew players from as far away as Denmark and Norway,” and also broke the record for participation, with 48 players. Girls and women are still a rarity at Table Hockey tournaments, but Sue Elias, who says she’s “over 40″ is unintimidated. “One guy started to bleed during our game, he was trying to beat me so badly,” says Sue, observing . “But,” she adds, “I won.”

The best golf courses, says Bill Coore, are “like a really good essay or poem,” reports John Paul Newport in the Wall Street Journal (4/7/12). “If you get all the nuances the first time through, well then, it wasn’t very good,” he explains. Bill, along with business partner Ben Crenshaw, are “minimalist” golf-course designers. This means that they only work on terrain that lends itself to the game and “move as little dirt as possible in crafting the finished product.” They have designed “many of the most highly regarded US courses built in the last 20 years, such as Sand Hills, which Golfweek rates “No. 1 on its list of modern American courses.”

Eschewing “the kind of intensively manicured, cookie-cutter courses that most people are familiar with,” Bill and Ben instead look for land that is “naturally gifted for golf.” Because they believe that “building golf courses is more art than science,” they also reject the use of computer-aided design in crafting courses. “We’re like the lumbering dinosaurs just prior to extinction, but somehow we get away with it,” says Bill. When scoping out a new course, they begin by looking for “the easiest, most natural ways to move around the land, often guided by the paths that deer and other native animals have created.”

Their main tools are aerial photos, topographical maps, Sharpie pens to mark “interesting spots,” a 12-inch ruler and a 1980s-era range-finder to help determine distances. “It’s a very nebulous process,” says Bill. “Do I see contours that suggest interesting golf shots? Do a few natural locations for greens, or even entire holes, pop out at me?” He and his team, using machetes, chain saws and small earthmovers, shape the terrain “by the seat of their pants,” essentially. “The human capability for imagination is vast, but it’s nowhere near as vast as nature’s in terms of variety, randomness and surprise,” says Bill, who is currently developing the Steamsong golf course in Central Florida. A typical project takes about two years to complete, with the architectural fees running “a million dollars or more.”

The “risk-reward strategies and competitive awareness” of golfers “have real-world implications in business and management,” reports John Paul Newport in the Wall Street Journal (3/24/12). That’s the opinion of Mark Broadie, a Columbia Business School professor, who finds a wealth of insights in golf statistics, as compared to other sports. “It’s harder to tease data out of team sports, because the action is so diffuse,” says Mark. “In golf, it’s one golfer, one ball, one shot. It’s very clean.”

Other researchers love to study golfers because they “stand in one place while they do their thing, and initiate the action on cue rather than react to an object or person coming at them, as in most other sports. Thus they can be wired to the hilt and every little motion and brain wave pondered.” For example, golfers can be outfitted with a helmet equipped “with an external camera and other peripherals” so scientists can track their eye movements as they putt. This has helped Joan Vickers, a Canadian professor, study the “quiet eye” technique.

Joan has determined that the best golfers “control their gaze” and her research reveals “how the neural processes associated with the quiet eye help the brain organize itself to make a good stroke while simultaneously overriding competing neural processes responsible for distractions and anxiety.” These and other findings were recently presented at the World Scientific Congress of Golf, in Phoenix. Other research explored how people process golf lessons into motor skills and a statistical study showing that the Official World Golf Rankings “are significantly biased against members of the PGA Tour.” (link)

A 25-year "stathead" has developed a program to help high school basketball coaches win more games, reports Matthew Futterman in the Wall Street Journal (3/21/12). Vasu Kulkarni never made the basketball team himself, but he understood three things. The first was that high-school coaches were known to exchange game tapes of upcoming opponents, and then burn the midnight oil analyzing the tapes. Second, Vasu knew that because of "cheap, high-quality digital video cameras," just about every game was recorded by parents or coaches. Finally, he knew that there was a global supply of "staheads" like himself who could analyze the game tapes and provide analysis.

So, Vasu launched Krossover, and in two seasons has attracted some "475 schools across the country," each of which pays "as much as $2,000 … to take their digital game film and break it down into some of the most advanced metrics that youth basketball has ever seen." With fees "usually footed by parents and booster clubs through fundraisers … Krossover sends back analyzed game film usually within 24 hours, plus breakdowns on a set number of films of their opponents … When the report comes back, often the morning after a game, coaches can click on a player’s number and view video of every play he was involved in, as well as intimate measures of his performance."

"It’s just a massive time-saver," says Patrick Gell, head coach of of a boy’s basketball team in Fresno, California. Tammy Lusinger, head coach of a girl’s team in Texas, says Krossover enabled her to recognize that one of her favorite plays had only a five-percent success rate. Vasu has now raised $3.5 million in new funding, and expects to sign up "as many as 1,000 new basketball clients for next season." He has also developed a program for lacrosse that’s attracted 70 colleges. A football program is set to roll out over spring. Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball, thinks Vasu is onto something. "It’s not as if coaches will fail to find other ways to be charmingly irrational," he says. "And it will create status for nerds in a world run by jocks.”

Nike thinks it has changed the footwear game with a shoe that is constructed like a sock, reports Matt Townsend in Bloomberg Businessweek (3/16/12). Nike is introducing its concept with “a 5.6-ounce running shoe called the Flyknit, made from synthetic yarn ingeniously woven together by a knitting machine.” The entire upper — except for the tongue — is knitted in a single piece. This promises both comfort and perhaps fewer injuries to runners because it is lightweight, as well as greater profits to Nike. The process is so efficient that Nike can contemplate making the Flyknit in the US, and not depend as much on cheaper labor in Asia.

Indeed, the new approach requires 35 fewer pieces than does a conventional shoe, dramatically reducing production costs. It’s not that the shoes would be less expensive to make in the US (they will still cost more) “but the cost difference could be made up by spending less on shipping and being faster at filling demand or jumping on a hot trend … The Flyknit process also fits into Nike’s sustainability push because the amount of material wasted manufacturing each pair weighs only as much as a sheet of paper … Nike says the Flyknit produces 66 percent less waste than the Air Pegasus+28.”

Less shipping is greener too, of course. The flexibility of the more automated production process “also could lead to a day when a person can visit a Nike store and have their foot scanned for a customized fit … far more customized than allowed by NikeID,” which allows only customization by color or fabrics. Running is Nike’s “biggest category, generating $2.8 billion in annual global sales, about 50 percent more than basketball and soccer … Lightweight shoes accounted for 30 percent of the $6.5 billion US running shoe market last year and were responsible for all of its 14 percent growth, according to SportsOneSource. The Flyknit will hit stores in July and cost $150.

Mixed martial arts is the fourth most popular pay-per-view sport among men 18 to 34, reports Douglas Quenqua in the New York Times (3/15/12). Mixed martial arts is "where a fighter can use any style of combat — jujitsu, karate, boxing, wrestling — to subdue an opponent. Fighters wear minimally padded gloves and matches are held in cages so no one can fall out. The result is an often bloody, bone-breaking affair that, according to fans, leaves no question of who is the better combatant." Among guys under 35, it "has come to represent everything that boxing once did to their fathers and grandfathers: the ultimate measure of manhood, endurance and guts."

For them, it’s right up there with baseball, basketball and football, according to Scarborough Sports Marketing. For everyone else, "it ranks below horse racing and figure skating." Mixed martial arts first arrived in the US, from Brazil, in 1993. Its popularity began to grow in the late 90s with the release of Fight Club, a Brad Pitt film in which it is central to the storyline. At first it was outlawed by many states and "cable networks refused to carry the graphic fights, which for years were conducted almost entirely without rules. Such attempts to ban the sport only "fueled its rise," however.

Since it wasn’t possible to watch mixed martial arts on television, young men traded videotapes, giving "the sport the feel of a grass-roots movement." A network of fans trading tapes soon spread across the internet. Today, the sport is legal in "nearly every state that sanctions boxing" and "watching a mixed martial arts fight is as easy as setting your DVR." Tim Parrott, whose 10-year-old son is a fan, has no problem with the sport’s unvarnished violence. "These are the new superheroes for kids," he says. "People don’t wake up today and want to be Sugar Ray Leonard. They want to be Georges St. Pierre." Prof. Robert Thompson of Syracuse University says the sport has surprising appeal among his students. "This is not something that smart young people look down their noses at," he says.

Brad Keselowski may not be a top-ten Nascar driver, but he leads the pack on Twitter, reports Richard Sandomir in the New York Times (2/29/12). The reason is simple: @keselowski is the first driver to use Twitter during a race — not while driving, of course, but in between, when the race is stopped. The effect is quite dramatic. During the Daytona 500, while the race was suspended because “part of the track was ablaze with burning jet fuel,” Brad snapped a photo from a safe distance and posted it on Twitter, along with the message, “Fire! My view.” His message “was re-tweeted 5,000 times.” Later, “when he crashed on Lap 187,” Brad “posted from the ruins of his car,” along with the message: “Nothing we could do there. Never saw the wreck till we were windshield deep.”

By the time the race was over, Brad had more than tripled his number of Twitter followers, “to more than 200,000.” Over the course of a single race, Brad Keselowski had “become the symbol of Nascar’s newly aggressive push into social media as a way to attract and interact with young fans.” He did so without violating any rules and Nascar seems pretty happy about the whole thing. “He distinguished himself in being the poster child for an engaging athlete — the type of athlete that the fans really connect to in a multitude of ways,” says Nascar spokesman David Higdon. “He’s a digital native … This is an extension of his personality.”

Previously, Brad staged a “contest that culminated in having 5,000 of his fans’ Twitter handles affixed to the bed of his truck for the Nascar Campaign World truck series race … Ten more were prominently displayed on the sides of the truck.” Other sports leagues have yet to embrace social media so enthusiastically: “Major League Baseball enforces a no-tweet zone from 30 minutes before the game until it is over” while the NFL bans “messaging from 90 minutes before kickoff until players have finished their post-game interviews.” Naturally, Omid Ashtari of Twitter thinks this is a mistake: “One of the things we preach to leagues is you need to share insider perspectives and angles that fans don’t see on TV,” he says. In the meantime, Nascar says it will allow Brad to keep his iPhone with him during future races.

Timothy Bradley Jr. is a “meat and potatoes” kind of guy who thinks a vegan diet makes him a better boxer, reports Jason Gay in the Wall Street Journal (2/27/12). “Dude, I swear, it’s the most unbelievable feeling ever,” says Timothy, who is set to face Manny Pacquiao in a title fight on June 9. “The reason I love it so much is that I feel connected to the world,” he continues. “My thoughts are clearer, crisp. I am sharp. Everything is working perfectly — I feel clean. It’s a weird feeling man. It’s just a weird feeling.”

A vegan diet has been part of Timothy’s training regimen since 2008, and perhaps helps explain his undefeated, 28-0 won-lost record. For the three months leading up to a fight, he becomes a regular at the Palm Greens Cafe in Palm Springs, which created an organic smoothie — Bradley’s Ultra Green — in his honor. It “includes spinach, kale, mint, ginger, probiotic, bananas, aloe vera, apple juice and Spirulina.” He also digs into plenty of quinoa, avocados and tofu.

Timothy is currently the light welterweight champion — his bout versus Manny Pacquiao is for the welterweight title. He thinks his relative youth also gives him an edge: “It’s new blood going against old blood,” he says. “I’m in my prime, man.” However, he sticks to the vegan thing — no animal products of any kind — only while he’s in training. Otherwise, his wife, Monica, says she eats more vegetables than he does. “That’s true,” says Timothy. “I don’t think I can go vegan year round. But for fights, I have to do it.”

Nike’s shift "into the digital realm … marks the biggest change in Beaverton since the creation of Just Do It, reports Scott Cendrowski in Fortune (2/27/12). "There’s barely any media advertising these days for Nike," says brand consultant Brian Collins. Indeed, Nike’s spending on print and television advertising "dropped by 40% in just three years, even as its total marketing budget has steadily climbed upward to hit a record $2.4 billion last year." Nike has also reduced its "reliance on top-down campaigns" featuring mega-stars or signature shoes.

Instead, Nike’s focus is on "a whole new repertoire of interactive elements that let Nike communicate directly with its consumers." Leading the way is Nike Digital Sport, a new division launched in 2010 that "aims to develop devices and technologies that allow users to track their personal statistics in any sport in which they participate." Most prominent is the Nike+ running sensor, developed with Apple, that not only lets users track their performance but also provides Nike with data that helps it "forge a tighter relationship with them than ever before."

Users upload their data to nikeplus where they can "store and analyze the data, get training tips and share workouts with friends." This also allows Nike to "study its customers’ behaviors and patterns." Nike Digital Sport is now working across all divisions to bring its brand of "chip-enabled customer loyalty" to "all of Nike’s major sports." As a followup, Nike is introducing FuelBand, a wristband that "calculates its user’s exertion levels" throughout the day. David Carter of USC’s Sports Business Institute is a fan of Nike’s digital ventures, saying the company has its "finger on the pulse of what its customer is looking for."

“Athletes with circus in their soul and trampolines on the wall hope to establish a sport that rewards the imagination,” reports Erik Olsen in the New York Times (1/30/12). These athletes call themselves "bouncers" and specialize in the wall trampoline, where they "hurl themselves off a wall … land on a trampoline, snap back toward the wall and send themselves outward again." The sport has its roots in circus arts — it is taught at the Quebec Circus School – but its bouncers hope to elevate it into an X Games sport, perhaps held "in conjunction with skateboarding contests" that brim with a similar kind of "freestyle energy."

"It’s about learning where you are in space," says Cypher Zero, owner of New York Circus Arts. "If you don’t know how to fly, you’re maybe not in the right discipline." The other challenge is that the wall trampoline has no rules, unlike the "specific moves and guidelines" that constrain the traditional trampoline. "In traditional trampoline, it’s almost like you need to be in the army to perform because it’s so strict," says bouncer Oli Lemieux. "This is much more freestyle. That’s why I like it." However, bouncer Julien Roberge "acknowledges that there must be an organized way to judge an event."

Julien and trampolinist Ignacio Adarve have taken a stab at judging criteria. "It’s actually very subjective for the judge," says Julien. "If you do something that looks cool and people like it, then that’s awesome. You can win with a great new move." He would like to see "three judges, one each for difficulty, style and height, with the style judge giving out the highest number of points." Julien thinks this will help promote innovation. So far, the sport is mainly popular in Canada, although the Circus School in Florida and the Werks Shop in Las Vegas, teach it.