Sports Business Journal January 19-25, 2009

The latest edition of the Sports Business Journal arrived in my inbox a few days ago. I’m just getting around to reading it now and will be live-blogging as I do so to keep the info in my mind for a class discussion on the publication tomorrow.

The NBA is considering allowing spirits (alcoholic beverage) companies to advertise. The industry justifies it as rationalizing lotto and gambling advertising already present in professional sports. I suppose it makes sense, then — if you’re not the athletic type, you might be the gambling/get drunk type, and you might as well have an alcohol commercial to go with your state government lottery tickets.

ESPN is reducing its coverage of Major League Soccer games during primetime since few people ever watched and even fewer are doing so lately. Can’t say I’ve ever even seen soccer on TV.

There is an article on how tennis players are being dropped from corporate sponsorships with large companies like Nike or Reebok and instead accepting offers from growing Chinese athletic apparel companies. It shouldn’t be too long before brands like Anta and Li-Ning will become the athletic equivalent of guitar maker Ibanez — cheap stuff from China sold to the masses while higher end custom models are worn by the actual athletes.

The NHL All-Star game is the most lavish yet, despite the economic woes. Ten million dollars in corporate partners for the game — must be from all that bailout money. Honda will be there with an ice sculpture of a Honda automobile. I suppose this is all good and fun, though, since attendance and ratings for hockey games have actually increased, although TV ratings are down for teams in Detroit, Florida, New York, and a few other areas.

The TV networks are looking for change in baseball, as ratings have been slipping. Let’s see what ideas they have… marketing players more, looking for perfect time slots. There is also talk of including baseball in the Olympic program again, but too bad the MLB doesn’t allow its players to participate in the Olympics.

A new website CollegeGameLink.com has been created to make scheduling college athletics easier. I always wondered how schools and leagues schedule games, from grade schools to professional leagues. They compare this new website to Match.com and seem to encourage scheduling by email. Very convenient.

Watching games in 3-D? Ok, so the cardboard blue and red lenses are gone, replaced by more normal looking sunglasses. But still, who really wants to sit inside in their house wearing dark glasses just to have their eyes hurt and feel confused after watching a game? If I’m going to do that, I’ll just use the glasses as another good excuse not to watch (too dark, hurts eyes, still a boring activity) and sleep through the game.

LPGA stuff… could anything be more boring? Skimmed through, the news is just as slow to me as the sport, although I know a lot of people who enjoy golfing. I’m sure they wouldn’t like any of the things that I like, though. Well, the PGA is going to have mobile fitness trailers at events now — that’s more interesting. It’s sponsored by drug brand names.

Will professional and personal failings kill the credibility of TV analysts? What the hell? Ok, I’ll read this one since it seems a little ludicrous of a question. Well, I guess someone with an 0-16 season does have a credibility gap when commenting on a game. It is easier to criticize stuff than do stuff, though, which seems to be what the article is getting at. Charles Barkley, another analyst, was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence. So he didn’t actually do anything or cause any harm to anyone, but we have to demonize him because he may have done something (suspicion) that could have put people in danger (driving under the influence). I love these government non-crimes where the police flash bright lights at people and walk around with guns threatening violence when nothing has been done to harm another person.

A decent article by Bill Lyons on corporate sponsorships. It was new enough of material that I don’t even have any criticisms for it.

An article on education; it seems some athletes have a tough time graduating from college. I don’t know why the author keeps mentioning Barack Obama, though, as if Obama or any other government official should have any say in who colleges recruit and how they do in education. If a school is terrible at educating, there are institutions that will declare the school’s credits to be worthless. The free market will provide college education and athletics much better than Barack Obama can. I’m not reading the rest of this article. Barack Obama will not save college athletes’ education any more than he will save our economy.

At least this next article on Hope generated by the Super Bowl has some decent info about teams and players making a difference in their own communities. If the other guy had written it, he might have recommended that Barack Obama steal everyone’s salaries and hand them over to the government to provide better education to help more football players graduate. But that’s just my guess.

…more Obama stuff in Brooklyn… I’m starting to tire of this magazine already…

GolfMD.com, TennisMD.com, WebMD.com, all sites to help people identify and fix problems caused by playing sports. Good idea, but too often, joint pain is just a manifestation of a problem elsewhere in the body. If your hip is tight, you might have pain in your knee. Icing your knee will not solve the hip problem. A program of self-myofascial release, mobility drills, full range of motion exercises, and flexibility should be every athlete’s first line of defense against injury. Getting a diagnosis from the internet may not solve all your problems — in fact, these websites are probably more about sending people to doctors than solving sports injuries.

Well, that’s about all that caught my eye in this edition of the Journal. It’s the first one I’ve ever read, so hopefully this live blogging will keep it all fresh in my mind for tomorrow. I doubt I’ll have much to add to the discussion, and I kind of doubt that we’ll even spend much time discussing it at all, but at least I’ll be prepared.

One thing is for certain, though: reading this publication online or through the Zinio Reader is almost impossible. Hopefully there’s some way to print it easily or convert to a PDF and print it from there, because I’m not going to enjoy destroying my eyes reading this digital version for the next 14 weeks…