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Fans Choose A New Football Team's Plays With Their Smartphones (slate.com)
A new arena-league football team plays on a 50-yard field and uses a mobile app that allows fans to vote on the team's next play. An anonymous reader writes:
Slate describes a receiver tackled for a short gain after the audience instructed the quarterback to throw a quick pass -- as "shouts and cheers exploded from the stands, with phones raised triumphantly in the air." The quarterback is informed of the chosen plays through an earphone in his helmet, and after one touchdown, one of the players even thanked a fan in the seats for picking a good play. "Then noses immediately returned to screens...the coach and QB were antsy, peering upward, waiting for the fans' next call as the play clock ticked down again..." The team eventually lost 78-47, but to at least make things more interactive, the players all have their Twitter handles sewn on the backs of their jerseys.
Fans can also be "virtual general managers" for a small fee, dialing in to a weekly phone call to give feedback to the team's president, and fans also selected the team's head coach from online resumes and some YouTube videos of interviews. In fact, the article says the fans even picked the team's name, with the name "Screaming Eagles" finally winning out over "Teamy McTeamface" and "Spaghetti Monsters."
Fans can also be "virtual general managers" for a small fee, dialing in to a weekly phone call to give feedback to the team's president, and fans also selected the team's head coach from online resumes and some YouTube videos of interviews. In fact, the article says the fans even picked the team's name, with the name "Screaming Eagles" finally winning out over "Teamy McTeamface" and "Spaghetti Monsters."
Kudos for getting the fans involved, but I'm waiting for this in ice hockey -- "Throw your gloves down! Pull his jersey off! Punch him in the shoulder pads!"
This is why the ability to direct activities should require users to have a stake in the team or at least in the outcome of the game.
Invite large numbers of random people with no stake to vote on things, and you will inevitably get Teamy McTeamface.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
Somebody found a way to get money from millions of armchair coaches.
I applaud you, Sir.
CEOs aren't really overpaid. The amount they get paid seems large compared to normal employees, but it still pales in comparison to the money the actual owners make on it. I mean the CEO is a hired manager to be a replacement for the leadership of the owner(s) (for convenience reasons and because possibly the ownership is shared between multiple parties, some of whom may not possess the skills to lead the company). As such, the CEO needs many of the skills the founders possessed, and therefore its justified to set the salary closer to that amount. Especially, one has always to consider what happens if the CEO instead of leading the company starts their own. So unless you dislike the very foundations of how capitalism works, which I hope you do not, CEOs are paid fairly.
the mob and betting! seems like a way for games to be fixed.
Something for people watching American football to do in between the vast amounts of waiting to see people actually playing football.
Apparently the latest Superbowl had only 16 minutes of the ball being in play.
I used to enjoy watching the game - and I see this as an Australian who never grew up watching it. I am not sure if I just finally lost patience with the downtime or if it actually changed and they started ad-stuffing like crazy.