The Forum gets it right
The State Class B basketball tournament is one of the marque events in the state and congrats to The Forum for recognizing that.
I've been very impressed with their coverage of the tournament so far. The Forum had excellent preview stories in Thursday's paper, good game recaps in today's paper, a live scoreboard on in-forum.com along with live game blogs. They've also put together some very good feature stories capturing the essence of what Class B basketball means to various communities. I don't think a fan could ask for much more in terms of coverage.
Some links to pass along:
Interesting article by Helmut Schmidt about how the State Class B can bring a small community like Lamoure to a standstill on game day.
A very entertaining piece by Amy Nelson of espn.com regarding North Dakota native Travis Hafner. Highlight of the piece comes towards the end regarding Hafner's likeness to a character from "No Country for Old Men"
For Twins fans like me who find themselves overly optimistic about the new season, here's an article to dampen our spirits. Patrick Reusee of the Star Tribune predicts the Twins win less than 75 games this season...ouch.
If you're in the F-M area today head on out to the Fargodome for some exciting Class B basketball. The winner's bracket starts at 6:30 p.m. with Lamoure vs. Turtle Lake-Mercer with Grafton vs. Watford City to follow. All four teams were ranked in the top 7 of the final Class B basketball poll. The games will also be broadcast on KVLY TV.
Posted by: Mark Potts on 3/14/2008 at 11:51 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
Oral Roberts going dancing
Oral Roberts took down IUPUI for the Summit League title last night, 71-64. Moses Ehambe made seven 3-pointers for the Golden Eagles. It's Oral Roberts' third straight championship and appearance in the NCAA Tournament.
Joe Lunardi over at Espn.com currently projects the Golden Eagles as a #13 seed for the tournament. Let's hope they make some noise in the tourney and gain respect for the Summit League. A win or two would go a long ways towards the conference champion (maybe NDSU) receiving a higher seed next year.
Posted by: Mark Potts on 3/12/2008 at 10:13 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink
It's madness baby!
March Madness is officially here! Championship Week is upon us and Selection Sunday is less than a week away. It doesn't get any better for basketball fans.
Check out Espn tonight at 6 p.m. for the Summit League title game. NDSU conference foes IUPUI and Oral Roberts will battle for an NCAA Tournament birth. The game promises to be a classic as the two teams split very close regular season games. I'll pick IUPUI in a close one. Expect George Hill to take over the game and make the difference down the stretch.
The championship game will be a good indication of what's ahead for the Bison when they become tourney eligible next year. There's a distinctly different atmosphere between playing a regular season game and playing for a shot at the Big Dance. IUPUI graduates only one key player and will return George Hill, the best player in the Summit League. So NDSU will most likely have to go through Hill and Jaguars if they wish to make the field of 65 next season.
Posted by: Mark Potts on 3/11/2008 at 2:08 PM | Comments (0) | Permalink
YouTube: A sports fan paradise
YouTube has become a worldwide phenomenon for many reasons. For sports fans it has become a place to relive memories, prove the officials actually were wrong and view sports clips from around the world.
Some of my first sports memories are from the late great Kirby Puckett in the 1991 World Series. I've watched this slideshow tribute to him at least 20 times since he died. Without YouTube I wouldn't have the pleasure of reliving some of my first memories on a daily basis.
Is there a historic play you've never seen and always wondered what the fuss was about? That used to be me with the famous "Shot Heard Round the World." Thanks to YouTube, I've lived that play. I was there (at least it felt like I was.)
Over on Bisonville.com, and other college sports message boards, highlight packages on YouTube of potential recruits make the rounds. It's extremely exciting for fans to preview athletes coming to their school. It wets the appetite until they arrive on campus.
Not only is it great for college fans, but it's also a great marketing tool for the athletes. Under-the-radar athletes can make themselves known to the right people by their YouTube highlights. The grandfather of a nine-year-old soccer player made a highlight package and put it on YouTube. Now the kid has been signed into the Manchester United soccer academy, one of the best soccer programs in the world.
We live today in an Internet world where endless information is at your fingertips. YouTube is just the tip of the iceberg for sports fans. Baseball-reference.com, basketball-reference.com and pro-football-reference.com are sites I use constantly. They're great tools for settling that sports trivia bet you and your buddies made.
With the convergence of media and some ambitious people, the possibilities are endless. Who knows, maybe down the road there will be a database on the Web with every recap ever written for every professional game ever played. Just imagine, you can already view the video, but now you could also read first-hand accounts of the "Shot Heard Round the World" just by a click of your mouse.
Posted by: Mark Potts on 2/25/2008 at 11:58 PM | Comments (1) | Permalink
It's a fantasy world
Fantasy football was a little known phenomenon 15 years ago. But thanks to the Internet millions of people now play fantasy football worldwide. Not just football though, fantasy baseball, basketball, golf, hockey and even auto racing are now available to anyone looking to waste a few hours of free time.
There are only two words needed to explain this boom in fantasy sports: the Internet. The Internet coupled with the evolution of 24-hour sports channels created endless space for sports media to fill. Sometime around the year 2000 it became commonplace to fill this space with the slowly growing market of fantasy sports. Once fantasy made mainstream, there was no stopping the growth.
I joined my first fantasy football league about 10 years ago, before the fantasy explosion. My uncle ran the league himself. We would phone in or email lineups to him and he would manually keep track of our rosters and calculate scores when the games were over. I don't know how he ever put up with it.
Today, I run that same league, but I maybe put in one-quarter of the effort he did. Our league is now run primarily by Yahoo.com. Once we hold our draft and input the lineups into the program, I don't have to worry about a thing for the rest of the season. Participants can log in and manage their team over the Internet. No more manually calculating scores either. Once I input our league scoring chart a program automatically calculates the scores. Instead of worrying about running the league I'm free to spend 10 hours a week tweaking my lineup or scanning the waiver-wire for the next hot pickup.
There is endless information out on the Internet for people in fantasy leagues. A basic search for "fantasy football" on google.com turns up an astonishing 24.7 million results. Most sites are free to play and give free advice, but like everything else fantasy football has become a moneymaker for many people.
Most sites with free leagues also have pay leagues. A typical entry is around $40-$50. A payout or prize is awarded to top finishers but mainly you're paying for extra features. Real-time stats, draft kits and insider information are all perks of a pay league. Some even include Sunday morning video podcasts where they give you the latest information on who you should start and who you should sit.
This boom in fantasy sports and the subsequent money to be made are all possible thanks to the convergence of technology and media on the Internet. Having everything at the tap of your keyboard has made fantasy football an easy obsession. There's no work involved, just surfing the Internet. Watch all your players with the nfl.com season package. Read updates on how your players are doing from newspapers halfway across the country. Throw questions out in fantasy football message boards and receive hundreds of answers from guys just like you. Email potential trades to other owners. Listen to podcasts for advice from so-called experts. Anything you want or need related to the NFL is now at your fingertips.
The Internet has made fantasy football an "easy" hobby and thus the reason for the recent explosion of fantasy leagues.
Posted by: Mark Potts on 2/12/2008 at 2:22 AM | Comments (0) | Permalink