...In 1962 the founding fathers of fantasy football created a game that today inspires, infatuates and confounds millions of players. After a seemingly endless night of labor pains, the discomfort soothed by a little alcohol for medicinal purposes, the birth of fantasy football finally took place at a hotel in New York City back in the fall of 1962. History does not record the exact date of birth, but it occurred in obscurity sometime within a dozen days of Halloween that year. America can be forgiven for not noticing at the time, since a little distraction called the Cuban missile crisis had nearly thrust the world into nuclear war in the last week of October. Now approaching its 32nd birthday, fantasy football was born of three fathers -- the founding fathers of a game that slowly matured into the sports colossus that today inspires, infatuates and confounds millions of players. At first glance, 1962 may not seem such a long time ago. American Graffiti offers a snapshot of that era, nostalgically asking the question, "Where were you in '62?" But it was the dark ages in football years. We're not simply talking about a time far enough back that the Raiders still played in Oakland. We're talking about a time so distant, so remote, that the Raiders played in Oakland and were absolutely terrible. Our three founding fathers went on a road trip back East with those terrible 1-13 Raiders, a trip worth remembering only because of the bundle of joy that came bawling into the...
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...One could make the argument that in many cases, America is a country of excess and unchecked consumption of entertainment. Our relationship with the National Football League displays this quite nicely. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 2014 the NFL generated 9.2 billion dollars in revenue, and over 40 percent of Americans consider football their favorite sport. Aided by its natural fit for television, especially because of the one game per week format, the NFL is a weekly ritual for many of us who, as Americans, were simply raised in a household that honored a similar tradition each Sunday of lazily flipping between games, consuming food, and using the superior athleticism of a select few to help us forget that tomorrow was Monday....
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...The Direction of Sports As a sports fan I am concerned about the directions sports have taken. Sports in general have been headed in the wrong direction for some time now. They still have a lot of time to change. They need to act quickly though if they want to solve the problem. Every major sport seems to have a problem. Baseball had their huge problem with steroids, basketball has a reputation of its players being thugs, but football seems to have no major problem. Many of these problems have not only affected the leagues, they have affected the youth all across America. Like the problems the solutions are very diverse. I love all sports, and I would hate to see them become disgraced. Baseball which is my favorite sport has had the most trouble in the past couple of years. Their decline started with the steroid scandal involving Barry Bonds. When a player that big in the game is going after a cherished home run record and there are scandals surrounding it, there is going to be some turmoil. It wasn’t just Barry Bonds fault and the people involved in the scandal, it was also baseball officials fault for not doing anything when they knew about the things going on in baseball. They turned their back to the problem because at the time baseball was doing well and they didn’t want to disrupt that. Baseball was forced to act because of the scandal. They put in a steroid policy that was laughable compared to the steroid policy of the Olympics. Baseball would like...
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...becoming a NFL scout?” He went on to say he volunteered at his first football job for two years, breaking down film and preparing reports on other teams. Shortly after a position came up with the New York Giants and became a Pro-Personnel Assistant. In that job, he scouted...
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...decide. Nine, eight, seven…” These are the thoughts going through Aaron’s mind as he sits in front of his computer contemplating which of the two players is better to draft for his fantasy baseball team. If you have ever fanaticized about what it would be like to manage your own team of professional players and compete with your peers, fantasy sports is the hobby for you. Fantasy sports is a social epidemic that has been on the rise for many years and will continue to inflate for a long period of time. According to encyclopedian.com, a fantasy sport “is a game where fantasy owners build a team that competes against other fantasy owners based on the statistics generated by individual players or teams of a professional sport” (Truesdale). There is also the ability to trade, cut, and sign players, just like a real sports team owner. Some players who are very knowledgeable of the sport play for money, whereas some players like me play for fun on websites that host the game for free. Being part of the fantasy sports league motivated me to closely follow and watch how my drafted players perform. My knowledge of sports now is far greater than when I didn’t participate in fantasy sports. Watching sports news channels and discussing the latest updates with my brothers helped me to be able to manage my fantasy team well. During my free time, I would search for latest gossip on sports on a website called RealGM.com. It told me all the players who were performing well and those who...
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...In connection and individually, how has technology, fantasy sports and social media changed NFL fandom within 10 years? There have been so many advances in technology that the NFL has gained the largest potential through these advances capturing the largest media audience of the biggest three team sports in USA. Technology has helped spread the popularity of the sport by making it possible for the fans to enjoy things such as the NFL draft, fantasy football, and Madden NFL video games. Sky cams, radio transmitters in the helmet’s, and stats analysis online are just some of the few things that are taken for granted. Technology today doesn’t just help the fan see more and understand more about the game but it also helps the staff of the team. The computers, tablets, and ipads are so specialized and refined with stats about teams, players, and trends that you can see breakdowns of players in any given game situation. These stats are not just for fans but they are tool for the coaches as well. Technology has made a better viewing experience. For example, the invisible first down line on the TV and the score displayed at the bottom of the television screen. The amenities weren’t there but have made the experience better. The league has come a long way and has brought advanced technology along. Technology has affected the NFL just as it has in other aspects of our lives through the internet. TV networks now offer so many different programs that you can watch at a click...
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...How to win With each new football season comes a new fantast football season. New senses of hope and joy that this could be the year that you win it all start to set in. The preparation for the draft is as important as the draft itself. The first step to creating a successful fantasy team is to join a league well before the season. This is important because without joining a league it is impossible to make a winning team. Danny joined his league three weeks before his draft date, which will give him ample time to prepare for it. After joining a league the next step is to learn the rules of the league so planning who to draft becomes specified. The rules of the league determine the size of the roster along with the points that are earned each week by the individual players. The categories that the rules cover are normally passing yards, passing touchdowns, rushing yards, rushing touchdowns, receptions, receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, fumbles, and defensive stats like points allowed. In Danny’s league the rules read that he needs one quarterback, two running backs, three wide receivers, one tight end, one kicker, and one defense. The rules state that points will be awarded for passing yards, passing touchdowns, rushing yards, rushing touchdowns, receptions, receiving yards, receiving touchdowns, fumbles, field goals, and defensive stats. The next step is to create a predraft layout of the team that will fill the needs of the rules. When doing this keep in mind the categories...
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...second article this week b) pleasantly surprised at how my picks last week performed (I know I am) or c) both a and b. While sadly I didn’t take down the big prize in last week’s Milly Maker Tournament on Draft Kings I hope maybe one of you out there did. If no one won I hope you at least placed and made some money anyways because in the end as long as your turning a profit that’s all that matters. Fear not, because DK has announced that they will be doing a Milly Maker every single week this season! That means you and I have a crack at that big prize once a week for the next 16 so we better make those chances count. Once again I would like to put clearly so that no one could possibly notice. EVERYTHING FROM HERE ON OUT IS IN REFERENCE TO DRAFT KINGS AND NOT ANY OTHER DAILY FANTASY SITE. While these plays might still be good on other sites I have no idea what the pricing or scoring structures are so they very well might not be. And once more just in case you are either new to this article or forgot from last week. I’m in no way giving you the winning LU for this weekend’s tournaments because if I knew it I sure as hell wouldn’t be sharing it with the rest of the internet. I also do not need to tell you that guys like Antonio Brown and Matt Forte are always in play regardless of their matchup. If these are things you wouldn’t consider “no brainers” then I’m very sorry to say that you know very little about fantasy football and this article is definitely not for you. Sorry I’m...
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...entertainment. Everyone looks forward. So many people have invested themselves into their favorite team by purchasing season tickets, sporting countless items of team gear, devoting many hours to fantasy football, and gambling. It is no secret the level of impact that the NFL has on so many people of all ages and genders. The NFL does a great job marketing their product and brand to everyone across the United States. I personally look forward to see how my Bengals will fair every season. As every season passes, I become more and more encompassed with the National Football League. I find myself becoming more attached to every storyline throughout the entire year. I become more involved with the draft process, the training camp headlines, and free agent acquisitions. The sixteen game NFL schedule doesn’t quench my thirst, and I find myself wishing for more when the season comes to an end. Although the NFL produces a great product every Sunday afternoon, are they taking the necessary steps to protect and assist the people that make it all possible? Like many of the millions of people that tune in for the NFL on Sunday, I used to find myself craving for the next big hit. I loved watching players like Ray Lewis and James Harrison smashing the receiver coming across the middle, or the running back trying to shoot through the line. It upset me when the National Football League Commissioner Roger Goodell came down hard on players for hits that we all look forward to. I...
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............................................................... 18 TIGHT END SEASON PROFILES............................................................................................... 26 KICKER SEASON PROFILES................................................................................................... 29 TEAM DEFENSE SEASON PROFILES......................................................................................... 33 IDP LINEBACKER & D-LINE SEASON PROFILES............................................................................ 37 IDP DEFENSIVE BACK SEASON PROFILES.................................................................................. 39 SLEEPERS & UNDERVALUED PLAYERS..................................................................................... 41 BUSTS & OVERVALUED PLAYERS........................................................................................... 44 IMPACT ROOKIES.............................................................................................................. 46 POSITION BATTLES............................................................................................................ 48 TEAM DEPTH...
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...website of the year Home U.K. U.S. News Sport TV&Showbiz Femail Health Science Money Video Coffee Break Travel Fashion Finder Football Transfer News Cricket F1 Boxing Tennis Rugby Union Rugby League Golf Racing More Sports Fantasy Football Headlines Login DailyMail Tuesday, Aug 12th 2014 4PM 12°C 7PM 11°C 5-Day Forecast SuperBale! Bulked-up Real Madrid star eyes more glory ahead of his homecoming at Cardiff, the city where it all began 25 years ago LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 19: Samuel Eto'o of Chelsea celebrates after scoring his team's third goal and completing his hat trick during the Barclays Premier League match between Chelsea and Manchester United at Stamford Bridge on January 19, 2014 in London, England. (Photo by Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)Liverpool consider shock swoop for former Chelsea star Eto'o as Rodgers looks to bolster striking options REVEALED: Find out who is the Premier League's most popular player when it comes down to shirt sales Man United BAN supporters from bringing in iPads and tablets into Old Trafford ahead of the new season FA facing new Wembley low with just 10,000 tickets sold for Norway friendly Khedira is NOT for sale: Ancelotti insists midfielder is going nowhere as Arsenal and Co are dealt transfer blow Drogba could miss the start of the season after picking up ankle injury Football - Tottenham Hotspur v FC Schalke 04 - Pre Season Friendly - White Hart Lane - 14/15 - 9/8/14 Tottenham Hotspur manager Mauricio Pochettino ...
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...any way to define the legacy of the Eagles $100 million quarterback? By Bill Simmons on November 2, 2012 * PRINT Michael Vick's career is like football Play-Doh — an amorphous hunk that you can shape however you want. You could craft a Vick-centric essay about redemption just as easily as one about squandered potential. You could unleash a "Vick was totally and tragically underrated!" argument with the same gusto as a "Vick was the most overrated football star ever!" rant. You could borrow certain statistics to plead his case as an elite quarterback, and other numbers to bury that same case. You could declare with complete authority that "nobody is ever winning a Super Bowl with Michael Vick," or you could veer the other way and say, "If Michael Vick finds the right team, maybe he could thrive like Steve Young did in San Francisco." Vick didn't need a dogfighting scandal to retire as the most polarizing NFL quarterback ever — it would have happened anyway. Even the process of drafting Vick was polarizing. When Vick declared for 2001's NFL draft after just two Virginia Tech seasons, Peter King wrote a Sports Illustrated piece headlined "Risky Business," with the subhead "Snakebitten San Diego will likely cast its lot with Michael Vick, who's making a perilous leap from college sophomore to No. 1 pick in the NFL draft." It's an uncanny piece to reread, like someone sneaked into SI's Vault and updated the piece to foreshadow what happened. Certain experts like Phil Simms...
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...Jim Albert and Ruud H. Koning (eds.) Statistical Thinking in Sports CRC PRESS Boca Raton Ann Arbor London Tokyo Contents 1 Introduction Jim Albert and Ruud H. Koning 1.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.1 Patterns of world records in sports (2 articles) . . . . . . . 1.1.2 Competition, rankings and betting in soccer (3 articles) . . 1.1.3 An investigation into some popular baseball myths (3 articles) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.1.4 Uncertainty of attendance at sports events (2 articles) . . . 1.1.5 Home advantage, myths in tennis, drafting in hockey pools, American football . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2 Website . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.3 Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Modelling the development of world records in running Gerard H. Kuper and Elmer Sterken 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2 Modelling world records . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.1 Cross-sectional approach . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2 Fitting the individual curves . . . . . . . . 2.3 Selection of the functional form . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1 Candidate functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2 Theoretical selection of curves . . . . . . . 2.3.3 Fitting the models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.4 The Gompertz curve in more detail...
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...had been rejected as unfit for the big leagues, who had turned themselves into one of the most successful franchises in Major League Baseball. But the idea for the book came well before I had good reason to write it—before I had a story to fall in love with. It began, really, with an innocent question: how did one of the poorest teams in baseball, the Oakland Athletics, win so many games? For more than a decade the people who run professional baseball have argued that the game was ceasing to be an athletic competition and becoming a financial one. The gap between rich and poor in baseball was far greater than in any other professional sport, and widening rapidly. At the opening of the 2002 season, the richest team, the New York Yankees, had a payroll of $126 million while the two poorest teams, the Oakland A's and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, had payrolls of less than a third of that, about $40 million. A decade before, the highest payroll team, the New York Mets, had spent about $44 million on baseball players and the lowest payroll team, the Cleveland Indians, a bit more than $8 million. The raw disparities meant that only the rich teams could afford the best players. A poor team could afford only the maimed and the inept, and was almost certain to fail. Or so argued the people who ran baseball. And I was inclined to...
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...U.S. COMPETITIVE BEER LANDSCAPE Prepared for: Boon Rawd Trading International Co., Ltd. INTRODUCTION The following is a brief sampling of the current U.S. beer category creative and media landscape consisting of competitive brands in relation to Singha Beer. This survey focuses on premium, craft, import and recently launched products. Beer brands detailed include, as requested by the Singha team members indicated: Global: Heineken (Charles, Tom), Stella Artois (Tom) Domestic/Craft: Samuel Adams (Tom) Imported: Dos Equis Imported/Recently Launched: Victoria Thai: Chang Beer (Yai, Charles) Japanese: Sapporo (Tom) Chinese: Tsingtao (Yai, Charles, Tom) Singaporean: Tiger (Yai) The studies provide a summary of each major competitive brand’s situation as well as a look at the campaigns that they are currently running both worldwide and in the U.S. Page 2 of 62 U.S. BEER CATEGORY COMPETITIVE BRANDS DETAILED GLOBAL: Heineken (pg. 4) Stella Artois (pg. 8) DOMESTIC/CRAFT (w/ strong food-affiliation): Samuel Adams (pg. 13) IMPORT: Dos Equis (pg. 20) IMPORT/2010 LAUNCH: Victoria (pg. 27) THAI IMPORT: Chang (pg. 33) OTHER ASIAN IMPORTS: Sapporo (pg. 40), Tsingtao (pg. 47), Tiger (pg. 50) Page 3 of 62 HEINEKEN TOTAL JAN-DEC 2010 U.S. MEDIA SPEND: USD. $70,772,299 MEDIA MIX: TV (Network, Cable, Spot), PRINT (Magazine, Newspaper), OUTDOOR, RADIO, ONLINE U.S. BRAND AWARENESS: VERY HIGH U.S. CAMPAIGN AWARENESS: MODERATE Page 4 of 62 HEINEKEN – SITUATION OVERVIEW Towards...
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