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NFL Draft 2012: Where to Watch and Where to go Online for Information

April 25, 2012 by

The phenomenon that is the NFL Draft starts this Thursday, a prime time extravaganza that makes experts out of casual fans and stars or bums out of the legions of ‘experts’ that not only predict teams picks but also how well that player will fit in and perform for his new employer.

Who will be this year’s great picks, the Peyton Manning and Wes Welker of the draft and who will be this year’s Ryan Leaf and Charles Rogers? Hard to say but just about everybody with a keyboard and an Internet connection seems to have an opinion.

It is probably impossible to list all of the options available to fans to gather information prior to the draft and then assess it after, but we here at Mobile Sports Report thought we would put out a list of some of the more popular and/or interesting places to go for your viewing and information pleasure. We will try and only mention each site or app once, since most cover the gamut of activities that will be occurring this week.

The Usual Suspects
Of course first and foremost is the NFL Network– which since the NFL owns it, will have a solid show on the draft and has been talking about the event for some time. The web site for the network features a counter until the draft starts, a Mock Draft page, Mike Mayock’s predictions, a draft tracker and a contest to predict the picks with the possibility of going to the Super Bowl, and that is just naming some of the information available.

Of course rivaling the NFL Network is ESPN, which is almost All-NFL all the time these days. Aside from broadcasting the draft as well a wide assortment of pages dedicated to the draft on its web site including Mel Kiper’s latest, Todd McShay’s latest and a number of other tidbits. It should be noted that a number of ESPN’s offerings are for subscribers to its Insider service only.

Fox, one of the NFL’s broadcasting partners does not have a national show for the draft, at least one I could find, and its web page is significantly more subdued in its coverage of the draft, although it does provide a good deal of information, just not to the level of ESPN or NFL Network.

The Focused Few
As most any but the most casual fan knows, there is an increasingly large body of sites that follow the NFL full time. The fall everywhere from sites run by major organizations such as Yahoo! to very well done amateur sites. We will cover a few in both areas.

Might as well start with Yahoo! Sports, one of the most popular sports sites on the Internet, if not the most popular. In all areas it has been poaching top talent, but has always had a solid football footing. It allows customization by users so that you can follow your team and has a section on the draft, as well as recent transactions so you can see who is retiring or traded.

Another up and comer is USA Today Sports Media Group, an amalgamation of a number of properties. The USA Today site of course has long been one of the best day after game sections for important stats, both print and online. One of its properties, The Big Lead is worthwhile both for Jason Lisk’s football coverage and analysis but also for the very spirited, and usually informed, conversations that accompany its articles.

The National Football Post strength in my opinion has been its columns, but it has strong NFL connections and follows the sport quite well. To fill out the rest of the top online players there is NBC Sports and as part of it the popular Pro Football Talk site. Other good sites include CBS Sports and SB Nation.

Alternative sources
One area that it makes sense to remember is sites that specialize in Fantasy Football. They need to know how valuable the players available for the draft are expected to be, so that they can (hopefully) make informed recommendations to users of their sites. Head over to someplace such as The Huddle where they have already broken down the draft by position

Over at Fantasy Knuckleheads the site has full mock drafts teams as well as projected round drafts. An interesting feature was a piece on breaking down ESPN’s Mel Kiper’s mock draft. I think that I may revisit it after the draft and so see how both Kiper and the author did in the draft.

How can you not want to look at a site called NFL Draft Geek? Breakdowns on the top skill positions are already up and more are slated to be posted prior to the draft. They obviously have strong opinions on issues and have Baylor’s Robert Griffin III as the #4 best player in the draft, for instance.
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/nfl-draft/2012/2006-draft-six-years-later

I enjoy a good retrospective piece on past season’s drafts. The trouble is often that they often just focus on the past year and it often takes several before you can really get a feel for how a draft works out. Over at Football Outsiders they look back six years, and as always from this site the piece are fact driven.

As a bonus you can see its breakdown on a variety of last year’s statistics and so get a solid feel for what teams need, or what appeared to be weaknesses last year. Another of the more cerebral sites is SmartFootball, and while its impact in following the draft is minimal in some senses, its focus on trends in the NFL helps put drafted players into a larger perspective.

If you end the draft just wondering what ever happened to some player that you liked in school but lost track of in the pros, head over to Pre-Football Reference site to look them up. Among its features are areas that cover teams, years and individual starts.

Filed Under: CBS Sports, ESPN, Football Outsiders, Fox Sports, NFL, NFL Draft, NFL Network, The Big Lead, USA Today, Yahoo Tagged With: ,

Apple Still Red-Hot: Earnings Blow by Estimates as iPhones, iPad Sales Soar

April 24, 2012 by

By almost any metric you can use Apple had a stupendous quarter that ended March 31, 2012 with quarterly revenue of $39.2 billion and a net profit of $11.6 billion. Compare that to the same quarter the previous year’s numbers of revenue of $24.7 billion and net profits of $6 billion.

iPhone sales increased 88% over the same period a year ago, reaching 35.1 million units while iPad sales reached 11.8 million units in the past quarter, up 151% from the previous year. The company noted that it has sold 67 million iPads in two years.

Despite worries that iPad sales would cannibalize computer sales Macintosh computer sales rose 7% to 4 million units while iPod sales representing the one sour note with a drop of 15%, to 7.7 million units. The numbers were all well above Wall Street estimates.

The company promises that it will have a number of products delivered during the remainder of the year. The conference call is pretty interested and the Wall Street Journal has live blogged it so if you want to wander over and see how Apple execs are responding to the markets questions zoom on over.

The next few months ought to see the rumor mill go into overdrive on Apple. Never slow to begin with rumors already abound for next generation iPads and iPhones. People are not even talking about potential new computers that are likely with the new Intel processor family just released this week. It will make for fun trying to sort fact from wishful thinking.

But more that that it shows how well tablets can do when they are done right and expect a further frenzy on the part of developers to deliver an ‘iPad killer.’

Filed Under: Apple, Apps, iPad, iPhone, Tablets Tagged With: , ,

Cubs Announce ‘Social Media Night’ Promotions that, Like the Cubs, Fall Short of Fantastic

April 24, 2012 by

Is giving someone a print magazine as a prize a fitting way to celebrate a “social media night” promotion? It may not exactly resonate with fans who are certified thumb-clickers but who cares when you’re at Wrigley Field?

By announcing a pair of “social media nights” the Chicago Cubs are taking a baby step into the waters of social media — and, in this Cub fan’s opinion, not really “getting it” when it comes to what social media fans might want. On the Cubs’ ticket promotion site it says people who buy the special social media-night tickets will get to come to a pre-game panel discussion on social media that includes… not any members of the Cubs, but instead Chicago Bears kicker Robbie Gould.

Now I get it — the Cubs players will be getting ready for a game that night and might not want to hang out beforehand with twitter-pals. But the other schwag items include a free copy of the Cubs fan magazine (what is this dead tree stuff?) a chit for a Vienna Beef hot dog (always good), a t-shirt (rarely bad) and some “social media series” baseball cards (questionable worth). And… SOME of the cards may be personally autographed! I guess you can’t get any more random than that. But it’s hard to justify plinking down extra dough on the fact that your card *might* be signed by Ryan Dempster. I guess I just don’t see these cards as becoming big eBay items anytime soon.

In my mind, a real social media night would offer something tangible and fan-specific, like the Golden State Warriors’ events where fans stay after a game for a Q&A session with a real player, or get to go on the court to shoot free throws. Or better yet like the Cleveland Indians, who set aside a suite for Twitterers. If the best the Cubs can do is reward social-media fans with a t-shirt, a dog and a Bear, that’s not really a World Series experience. As we say from Chicago, that’s so Cub. And not in a good way.

Filed Under: Baseball, Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians, Major League Baseball, Twitter Tagged With: , , ,

Are Facebook and Microsoft Teaming up Against Google?

April 24, 2012 by

Yesterday Microsoft sold $550 million worth of patents to Facebook. The deal is somewhat surprising since just days earlier Microsoft had spent $1 billion on those and other patents when it purchased them from AOL.

Why not let Facebook simply purchase them from AOL itself? As Facebook’s $1.1 billion purchase of Instagram showed the company does not lack the resources to go out and quickly make a high dollar deal.

Well the devil is in the details and it looks like the two giants are looking to use this deal to help immunize themselves from at least a portion of the patent lawsuit virus that seems to be plaguing hi tech these days.

Facebook gets approximately 645 of the 925 AOL patents that Microsoft acquired, but it also gets a license to the rest of the patents that Microsoft owns and Microsoft has a license to use the patents that it just sold to Facebook.

Microsoft said that this enables it to recoup half of the cost of the deal will still achieving its goal of having unfettered access to the AOL patents. However the New York Times, among others, positions the deal as a tool that will also help the two against Google.

Google increasingly competes with both companies with everything from Google Plus to free apps. With its purchase of Motorola Mobility it will have a significantly enhanced patent portfolio as well. It really looks like the conflict between the Microsoft/Facebook alliance against Google could get heated.

Filed Under: Apps, Facebook, Google, Lawsuit, Microsoft, Motorola Tagged With: , , ,

Denver Broncos the latest to jump onto iPad Playbook

April 24, 2012 by

The Denver Broncos have jettisoned its old time playbooks in favor of the bright new shiny iPad; 120 tablets in all which will feature Verizon Wireless 4G access and with most of the iPads top end models with 64GB, according to the Denver Post.

The team plans to load the iPads not only with the playbook but also with each weeks game plan, scouting reports on upcoming teams and video clips among other digital data. The system will be set up so that as new plays are developed they will be ‘pushed’ onto each tablet.

In the past the team had printed a 500 pound playbook each week of the season that contained much of the information, but the sheer mass made it very difficult to quickly locate different pieces of information.

The program was co designed by the Broncos and a developer named PlayerLync and among the program’s features is the ability to allow players and coaches to annotate and highlight plays as well as provide the team with playbook security by enabling it to erase the entire iPad remotely.

The team will provide the iPads to coaches, players, scouts and other team personnel. It should be noted that while the players and coaches can use the iPads for practice and training purposes the NFL does not allow electronic devices of this type to be on the field during games.

The league has relented somewhat in that in the past these notebooks and tablets had to be off in the locker room 90 minutes prior to kickoff, now that rule has been rescinded.

This is part of a growing trend in the NFL and elsewhere; teams have found that instead of cumbersome paper notebooks, sleek iPads or tablets can not only easily replace them but enhance the value of the digital playbooks by allowing for remote upgrades and player feedback.

At least nine NFL teams now use the iPad, with five, the Dallas Cowboys, St. Louis Rams, Seattle Seahawks, Indianapolis Colts, and Detroit Lions, signing on with Global Apptitude last month. MLB has also been increasingly active in this area as well.

Filed Under: 4G LTE, Apple, Apps, Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Detroit Lions, iPad, Live sports via mobile, NFL, PlayerLync, Tablets Tagged With: , ,

Cleveland Indians Open Suite for in-Game Twitterers

April 23, 2012 by

A special section for Twitter users? Well that is the plan for the Cleveland Indians who already have a strong following in the twittering crowd apparently. The team will now cater to this market segment by creating a social media suite.

The effort actually has been an evolutionary progress, dating back to 2010 according to ESPN, which also once labeled the Indians as baseball’s most Twitter friendly team.

Fans can get invites to the suite, which are available on a game by game basis and then enjoy not only the view from the seats but also chat online from the Wi-Fi enabled suite with friends not in attendance and ones that are present.

This is part of a greater trend in baseball to make the ballpark experience much more social media and online friendly. There are already 4 stadiums that have in-house networks that enable fans to use mobile apps from Facebook to YouTube with a great deal more ease than in the past when network overloading often shut them off from connections.

Anything that helps boost attendance will be appreciated by the team. With a huge amount of rain last month the team suffered from poor per game attendance, but has seen it shoot up by more than 10,000 a game as the weather has dried and warmed. Who knows maybe the twittering masses can help shoot that number even higher.

Filed Under: Baseball, Cleveland Indians, ESPN, Facebook, Major League Baseball, Social Media, Sports Social Media, Twitter Tagged With: , ,
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