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Hope Solo Plays Nasty On Twitter With Double Gold Medalist, NBC Soccer Analyst Brandi Chastain

July 30, 2012 by

It wasn’t too long ago when media organizations were deciding if quoting athletes’ from their Twitter feeds was appropriate. Now the Associated Press, the international news service, has dedicated multiple 600-word articles about athletes criticizing each other on Twitter during the Summer Olympics.

The current Twitter rant is between current U.S. soccer goalkeeper Hope Solo and NBC Sports analyst Brandi Chastain, the retired U.S. women’s soccer double gold medalist.

Hope Solo (L) and Brandi Chastain

Solo blasted Chastain following the Americans’ 3-0 win over Colombia last Saturday, saying the popular former player should “lay off commentating about defending” and goalkeeping “until you get more educated” and “the game has changed from a decade ago.”

Chastain has responded to Solo’s remarks only briefly, saying, according to the AP, she commenting as an “honest and objective journalist at the Olympics.”

NBC, Chastain’s employer, is apparently more sensitive. It believes the Twitter banter was important enough to issue a statement:

“We are thrilled to be able to offer such complete and compelling coverage of the entire Olympic soccer tournament, and Brandi has been doing an outstanding job,” NBC spokesman Adam Freifeld said. “We wish the U.S. women’s team the best of luck.”

When asked about her strong opinion, Soto commented:

“It’s not about what made me unhappy. It’s not about one game. I have my beliefs that the best commentators and the best analysts should be analyzing come Olympics, come World Cups, and it’s only my opinion. You can take it or leave it, to be honest, so it’s my opinion, and I think analysts and commentators should bring energy and excitement and passion for the game, and a lot of knowledge, and I think it’s important to help build the game, and I don’t think Brandi has that.

“It’s just my opinion, and nothing else really matters, to be honest. What matters is tomorrow’s game against North Korea, playing at Old Trafford. The team’s excited. It’s my birthday. I don’t really care to answer any other questions about Brandi.”

The Twitter exchanges also attracted concern and a subsequent meeting among the U.S. team’s coaching staff and team captains to discuss the team’s image. Solo is known for her strong opinions, and she was kicked off the 2007 World Cup team for criticizing former coach Greg Ryan.

The U.S. will play North Korea on Tuesday at Old Trafford, the home playing field famous men’s squad, Manchester United. The stadium hasn’t hosted a women’s match since 1989 and an estimated record-crowd of 35,000 is expected.

James Raia is an editor and publisher in Sacramento, California. Visit his site: www.tourdefrancelife.com

Filed Under: Olympics, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Twitter

Football (The US Version) Applying for Olympic Recognition?

July 30, 2012 by

I caught an interesting piece in ProFootballTalk that said that the International Federation of American Football (IFAF) was applying for Olympic recognition and looking to promote the game on the international stage at some point.

According to a piece at NFL.Com the application will be looked at next year and the article compared how the US once dominated basketball and now others have caught up. Really it often seems that the loss 2004 had other issues that cause the defeat and ultimate disappointing bronze.

I had never really considered football as a sport that fit well in the Olympics format, or one that would do well if selected, and that is not because of the possibility that it is not accepted by other nations. Rather the problem is that it seems to me that with all of the qualifying rounds and matches (assuming they do it like soccer), the sport would continue on from the end of the NFL season until the start of the Olympics.

Then once the Olympics started they would have to play a number of games within a two week period, unless they had already weeded out all of the teams but the final four. That just seems like it would not do for the players with the much higher risk that would entail.

Yet there is a much larger body of people playing football around the world that I had imagined as well. In perusing the IFAF web site I was astounded to see how many national federations there was in the organization. With 62 on six continents it is spread from Kuwait to Uruguay to New Zealand with Europe having by far the most nations represented.

They have an 19 and under league, a women’s league and a seniors league, and have played for at least four championships, one played every four years and the next one scheduled for play in Sweden in 2015.

Apparently football was played once as a spectator sport in the Olympics, back in 1932 at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles seniors from three schools, California, Stanford and USC played a set against seniors from three schools from the East Coast, Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The West won 7-6.

While I have seen many people complain that one reason that the Olympics would never accept football is because of US domination and point to the dropping of baseball as an example, I think that reasoning is at least in part misguided.

Major League Baseball is never going to stop playing for several weeks in the middle of the season to allow its players to go to the games. The lost revenue, the impact on playoff games and a host of other issues would make that move a terrible idea.

If you look at the last 5 Olympics that allowed baseball, the US won the gold once, in 2000, along with two bronze medals while Cuba has won three gold medals and South Korea one. Without the top athletes, which it does not look like they will get, the US probably would not be considered the favorite if other nations managed to get their top people in.

Much the same logic can be applied to the NFL’s reaction. Lose players for a number of weeks at the start of training camp? Well they actually did that last year, and I am pretty sure that no one is happy with that or wants to repeat it.

The only way I could see the US participate is if they took one of the other leagues, the reborn USFL or the UFL and used the championship team from that league. While an all star team might make more sense to some it seems to me that a team that has already played a season together has a better chance of shining in an event such as this.

Filed Under: Baseball, IFAF, Major League Baseball, NFL, NFL Network, Olympics, UFL, USFL Tagged With: , , ,

Mobile Sports Report TechWatch: Microsoft Ticks off OEMs, Apple to Invest in Twitter?

July 30, 2012 by

The China Times, via Endgadget, is reporting the Microsoft is limiting the number of OEMs that can build a tablet that runs the RT version of its upcoming Windows 8 operating system. This is the version that can be run on a tablet built using an ARM-based processor.

According to the piece the lucky few include Asus and Lenovo, which can use Nvidia processors, Texas instrument processors will be in Toshiba products while Samsung and Hewlett-Packard opting into the Qualcomm camp, with HP later dropping out at least in the near term.

Apple looking to invest in Twitter?
The New York Times has reported that Apple is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Twitter, according to unnamed sources familiar with the talks. It appears that the talks are informal at this point so do not cross your fingers just yet if you like the deal. However it could lead to tighter integration between Twitter and Apple’s operating systems, much like what Apple is doing with Facebook.

Google breaks down Motorola Mobility purchase
Ever wonder what $12.5 billion will get you? Well that is the price that Google paid for Motorola and the company has recently explained what each of the major components was valued. The 17,000 patents in its portfolio were worth roughly $5.5 billion. It paid $2.9 bn for the cash acquired, $2.6 bn was goodwill, $670 million was other assets and $730 million was customer relations. You can look here for more details or head over to its 10-Q filings with the SEC.

Microsoft wins around in Germany vs Motorola
Microsoft has won a round when a German court ruled that Motorola Mobility has infringed on a patent that deals with common names for long and short file allocation tables. The two sides have been battling around the globe on the issues of patents and both sides have won, and so of course lost, various patent rulings in the last six months so if this sounds like a repeat, it is close to one.

Microsoft admits hostility over Surface
In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft has said that there could be potential problems with its introduction of a table that would compete with its OEMs that purchase the Windows 8 operating system.

Microsoft said that smartphones and tablets from rivals such as Apple represent a threat to its current business, in part because their increased popularity coupled with declining PC sales makes Microsoft’s existing platforms less appealing to application developers.

Kickstarter favorite Pebble to deliver late
The Pebble smart watch, one of the real success stories in regards to funding via Kickstarter, has said that it will be delivering its product later than it had originally expected, IT Business is reporting. Part of the problem, according to the company, is the very success it had with Kickstarter.

The people that funded the company were to receive watches as part of compensation for their pledge, and originally the company had expected to produce 1,000 watches to meet that demand. Since it went off the rails in terms of funding the company now needs to produce over 68,000 watches for the investors.

Major settlement in patent case brings in major mobile players
The patent holding firm NTP has reached what is possibly an unprecedented settlement with 13 major mobile technology developers over the use of a number of patents that NTP owns. The companies included in the settlement are: Apple, Google, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, HTC, Motorola Mobility (now owned by Google), Palm (now owned by Hewlett-Packard), LG Electronics, Samsung, and Yahoo.

According to a piece in InfoWorld the terms of the deal were not revealed but it did say that all of the tech companies could use a number of NTP’s patents and that NTP will receive a licensing fee from the firms and that in turn it has ended its patent infringement suits against these companies.

Apple vs Samsung starts today in Calif.
The on again off again suit between the two will start in front of US District Court Judge Lucy Koh today as Apple seeks to prove its damage claims against rival Samsung revolving around a number of Apple patents that it claims Samsung has infringed on. The stakes are high as Apple has claimed that it is entitled to $2.525 billion in damages.

Filed Under: Android, Apple, Asus, AT&T, Google, Lawsuit, Mashable, Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung, SEC, Sprint, Surface, T-Mobile, Tablets, The New York Times, Verizon Wireless, Windows 8 Tagged With: , , ,

Olympics Wireless Network Gets Overloaded on Day 1: Organizers Ask Fans Not to Tweet

July 29, 2012 by

Well, despite lots of planning and press releases, it turns out that the folks behind the wireless networks at the London Olympics weren’t prepared for the smartphone revolution. According to a Reuters story today, fans effectively shut down TV coverage from the men’s cycling road race by overwhelming the wireless network with their communications, leading the games organizers to ask fans not to tweet so much.

(As Gizmodo says, good luck with that.)

Of course we here at Mobile Sports Report have been covering the whole Wi-Fi at events topic pretty closely, but from here it looks like we’re about to get a new failure data point, for what happens when big-event organizers underestimate the connectivity needs of the crowd. (Stay tuned this week for an in-depth report on the subject.)

According to the Reuters story, the men’s cycling road race Saturday didn’t get key broadcast information during the race because the hundreds of thousands of fans lining the course apparently gummed up the wireless network. Sunday, the games asked folks to back off on Twitter use:

An International Olympic Committee spokesman said the network problem had been caused by the messages sent by the hundreds of thousands of fans who lined the streets to cheer on the British team.

“Of course, if you want to send something, we are not going to say ‘Don’t, you can’t do it’, and we would certainly never prevent people,” he said. “It’s just – if it’s not an urgent, urgent one, please kind of take it easy.”

We are trying to get a response from networking gear vendor Cisco, which made much about its involvement with service provider BT, formerly known as British Telecom, the main service provider in and around London. While Cisco touted its networking chops before the games, like Michael Phelps the network’s performance so far is something short of gold.

Anyone over there in London have any downtime experiences? Let us know in the comments. More on this as we hear from Cisco.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Cisco, Olympics, Twitter, Wi-Fi Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

NBC Doesn’t Show Lochte-Phelps, Makes Internet Wonder What Olympics They are Watching

July 28, 2012 by

If you were watching the Innerwebs this morning (Calif. time) there was a perceptible buzz of stunned wonder on Twitter, with nobody believing that NBC wasn’t going to show the first showdown between American swimmers Ryan Lochte and Michael Phelps live on TV.

The race was available, but only through NBC’s online and app streams — a decision widely and quickly criticized.

Jason McIntyre from the Big Lead summed it up nicely:

And ESPN’s Scott Van Pelt had a three-tweet take:

Here at MSR headquarters we were ready to watch online but then had to run a quick errand so it was to the NBC Olympics Live Extra app we headed… where the Lochte/Phelps race didn’t even show up until, well, just about before the gun. We didn’t have any problems listening in (I was NOT watching while driving) to hear about Lochte’s gold and Phelps’ fizzle, but according to SB Nation, lots of other folks did.

It’s easy to understand NBC delaying the opening ceremony — even twice — to suck up ad dollars for all those people who aren’t really into sports. But — to skip a race in the middle of a Saturday just seems stupid. We are excited about sports being available online, but to have big matchups online only seems like NBC isn’t paying attention.

Filed Under: Apps, ESPN, Live sports via mobile, Live Sports Video Consumption, NBC Sports, Olympics Tagged With: , , , , ,

When Do Olympic Events Start? Google Will Tell You

July 28, 2012 by

Now that the opening ceremony is out of the way, let the Olympic Games begin. And if you want to know when any event will start, Google is ready to tell you — and will even handily sync it to your local time, all the better for those of us who want to watch things in real time, no matter how far we are from London.

As a cycling fan I knew the men’s road race was nearing its start time over in London but I didn’t know exactly when it kicked off, so off I went to Google — where I found a handy cycling schedule to the right hand side of the screen, telling me that the race started at 2:00 a.m. my time. Entering “swimming” in the Google search bar brought up an equally impressive interactive schedule (screen shot to the left) with all heat race times. I am assuming Google has this info sussed out for all events on all days. A handy and easy thing and a good way for the Googlers to make sure they get more than their share of search revenue during the games, by being the best at pointing people where they want to go.

With NBC promising to stream everything live, Google’s “Watch Online” button will probably get quite a workout. When it comes to the men’s road race Saturday I know Mark Cavendish is the favorite and if it comes to a field sprint he won’t be beaten. But Olympic races never seem to go as planned, and remember Cav ain’t racing here with the full Sky team but only four other teammates, with no radios so it’s not a given that Cav will deliver. Our good friend John Wilcockson earlier this year sussed out the strategies we may see on the London course. I’m going to go with Peter Sagan as my pick, just to seem smart.

Filed Under: Cycling, Google, NBC Sports, Olympics Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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