Free Rise

In his latest Comedy Central special, Patton Oswalt ponders going back 10 years in time to tell his past self about the wonders of 2009. I’m paraphrasing here:

“What’s that you’re listening to? Oh yeah, our old Walkman. What’s in it?”

“Oh you know, a mix tape with our 25 favorite songs.”

“That was a great tape. I’ll tell you what. Pull out that tape. Break it in half. That’s how big your Walkman is going to be in 2009.”

“Wow. How many songs can that hold?”

“Every song you’ve ever heard, or ever will hear, or will ever be written.”

“What’s that cost? Like a million dollars?”

“No, no, no. They’ll be everywhere. You’ll get them in gift bags and try to re-gift them to your nephew, and even he will be like, ‘Thanks a lot, [expletive].’”

This is more or less how I feel about EA’s TeamBuilder application for NCAA Football 10. I don’t know if I could even describe it to my past-version without him having a full mental breakdown.

When I was a kid, I was a huge football nerd. (OK, I’ve steadfastly failed to mature on this front.) My nerdy pastime was creating fake teams, complete with rosters, stats, uniforms, histories, and mascots. You may ask, “For what purpose, Eric?” And then I would pity you for not have a childhood passion of your own.

Anyway, fast forward 20 years. EA Sports has released NCAA Football 10, which is the first version of the game I’ve bought in years. You’ve always been able to create teams in the game (as well as in the Madden NFL series), but with the TeamBuilder web app, you can now create whole teams from scratch, including uploading custom logos for the helmets.

And I’m majorly geeking out.

While the product itself bears some of the flaws you’d expect for a 1.0 release, TeamBuilder works on many levels for the gamer:

• It creates an emotional attachment to the game. You can put your little Division III art school in the Rose Bowl. You can re-create a historical team (’85 Hurricanes!) you cheered for and play them against the current edition. You can even make yourself (or an idealized, 19-year-old version of yourself) the QB if you want.
• It integrates what the web does best (data manipulation and communication) with what the console does best (game play).
• It socializes the experience. You can make your teams available for anyone to download onto their console, and you can download others’ creations seamlessly. If some other NCAA fan has already done the work for you, you can play with his team, and even tweak it to make it your own.

NCAA 10 is also loaded with other shiny things, including deep integration with ESPN and a mode that ties the game to the real-world NCAA football season. This integration isn’t a gimmick; it’s a key value of the game. And my inner 12-year-old couldn’t be more excited about it.

I’m no statistician, but I love data. And while I spend a little too much of my day with economic and marketing charts, I occasionally enjoy geeking out with other fun data.

And so when the NFL announced that my beloved Miami Dolphins would have the league’s toughest 2009 schedule, I sought reassurance in the numbers.

The NFL is notoriously topsy-turvy. Due to the high turnover of players, coaches, and team surgeons, about half of playoff teams this decade failed to return to the playoffs the following year. Given that, what exactly is a measure of “strength of schedule” as defined by opponents’ prior year won/loss records really worth?

Quite a lot, actually. I looked back at 2008′s strength of schedule rankings, as defined by opponents’ 2007 W/L percentages. Then I compared against how tough those 2008 opponents turned out to be, as defined by Football Outsiders’ amazing DVOA metric of team efficiency.

The sad-sack Browns, Bengals, and Lions ranked 1-2-3 in opponents’ DOA (partially because they never got to play themselves), but the Super Bowl champion Steelers were right there at #4. The Titans and 49ers’ schedules were significantly easier than projected, while the awful Raiders and Chiefs’ schedules were projected to be terrible and turned out average.

Overall, though, the correlation was uncanny.

That, my friends, is an r-squared of .534.

This season, the AFC’s best division in 2008 (the East) is scheduled to play the NFC’s best division in 2008 (the South), so the top eight slots for strength of schedule are held by those eight teams. Unmeasured in this metric are the details of the schedule. In addition to the #1 ranking of opponents’ 2008 W/L record, the Dolphins must play a Sunday west coast road following a Monday night home game (both against 2008 playoff teams), a Thursday night road game (against a 2008 playoff team) following a Sunday home game, a stretch of four road games in five weeks, and two outdoor cold-weather games.

And then there’s that r-squared.

Ah, who cares? This season is going to fun. Bring ‘em on.

GameStop announced delicious earnings growth this morning. During the darkest economic times in a generation, they also announced their intention to open eight new stores every week in 2009.

Wait, aren’t we in a global depression? What is happening? A number of things:

• Games have momentum. No longer the domain of kids, games’ appeal has become nearly universal, especially among men. And like other forms of entertainment, game producers have created titles for particular demographics.
• Games are value purchases in bad times. Even at sixty bucks for a new title, a good game can provide months of entertainment value. I’ve put something close to 60 hours into Grand Theft Auto IV, and I just discovered multiplayer a couple weeks ago. And the more one plays games, the more boring passive entertainment (like TV) seems.
• Games are resellable. This is where GameStop gets its mojo. Walmart and Target may have killed Toys R Us and other monoline-type retailers, but GameStop has the resale business. Game producers hate resales because they cannibalize new sales, but many full-price purchases are undoubtedly influenced by the potential of a future resale.

But why should a purely digital medium require a retail presence at all? Might GameStop be the next Sam Goody?

Definitely. Even as GameStop installs more cash registers, game producers are selling directly to the people, whether via SAAS-models like Xbox Live, downloadable content like GTA’s new “episode” The Lost and the Damned, or add-ons like Rock Band tracks or virtual gifts.

As Darren Gladstone mentions in PC World, even against GameStop’s success, games’ dependence on retail seems fleeting. Why?

• Stronger independently-produced games
• More online games
• Downloadable content replacing sequels
• Flexible pricing schemes

But the main reason why GameStop, and most games retailers, are doomed is that they provide little value to the broadband-enabled customer. Ever been in one? Most are just a few promo displays, a couple maybe-functional demo consoles, and walls and bins of empty boxes. You can’t try the game out; you can’t even see what it looks like.

GameStop does provide a resale channel, which is something that isn’t a (legal) option in the download era. But iTunes aren’t resellable, either. Game producers will defeat resales with convenience and pricing.

In 10 years, we’ll marvel at the days we brought home an object in a box to watch, listen, or play. In the meantime, GameStop has a load of money to make. For a little while.

Greg Cote asks in this morning’s Miami Herald whether the first-place Miami Dolphins are actually that good. They play the New York Jets for the AFC East title on Sunday, and a win would cap off one of the most extraordinary one-year turnarounds in pro sports history.

Cote is smart to ask the question. While the Dolphins are 10-5, the AFC East has enjoyed the benefit of playing both conferences’ craptastic West divisions this season. Even within that lineup of opponents they’ve had generous scheduling, hosting all the west coast teams in Miami and never venturing further than Denver. They even got to play their dreaded late-season Buffalo game inside a dome in Toronto.

Few of the 10 wins have been super-impressive, nothing like the consecutive thrashings that New England put on the Raiders and Cardinals. But the fact of the matter is that the Dolphins won those games, and they’re 10-5. Are 9-6 teams like the Cowboys, Vikings, or Bears better teams? To put together the 10 wins, the Dolphins have demonstrated efficient passing, inventive offense, record-low turnovers, effective blitzing, and a defense that gets mean in the red zone.

Every top team in the league has fatal flaws. The Titans have a sketchy passing game. The Colts can’t run the ball at all. The Steelers can’t block. The Giants’ defense has softened. The Panthers wilt away from their home stadium.

The Dolphins are similarly flawed.

They don’t score enough points. How are the Dolphins #11 in the league in yards, but only #21 in points, while turning over the ball less than any team in history? It’s mind-boggling, but the simple answer is they rank #23 in third down conversions. The Dolphins run too many lovely drives that just peter out.

They can’t score quickly. While Pennington has excelled at clock-devouring fourth-quarter drives, the Dolphins haven’t demonstrated that they can run up fast points when they need them.

They can’t stop big receivers. The Patriots, Texans, Chiefs, Cardinals, and others had great confidence in chucking the ball downfield on the Dolphins’ DBs. Honestly, if I had a Moss or Andre Johnson against the Dolphins, I’m not sure why I’d run any plays other than “Chuck It to the Big Guy” and “Dump It to the TE so they don’t blitz every down.”

I think the Dolphins will beat the Jets on Sunday. The Fish have won 7 of 8, while the Jets have lost 3 of 4. But this rivalry has a wacky intensity (see the Monday Night Miracle, the Fake Spike, the 51-45 Wesley Walker Explosion), where momentum is worth a laugh. But this Dolphins team seems to screw up less than their opponents, and at this point in the season that means a lot.

The ultra-volatile NFL is finally smiling on Miami this year.

That’s right. The Miami Dolphins, a 1-15 nightmare last season – are in first place. They’ve won six out of their last seven, and If they win their last three games, they win the division. The Fish still need to beat the Jets in the Meadowlands on 12/28 (and two games before it) to make it happen.

What is behind America’s greatest pro sports turnaround this season? Where do we start?

Bill Parcells: When Dolfanland heard that the Tuna was coming out of retirement to work the Dolphins front office, we were overjoyed. He fired the flailing failures and brought in stronger minds. In fact, it reminds me of another high-profile transition of power happening right now.

Jeff Ireland: Although bad QBing has been the primary focus of Dolphin failures since Marino retired, the personnel rot went deeper than that. Jimmy Johnson was a great talent evaluator, and it’s telling that the best players on the roster that Ireland inherited were JJ’s draft picks, given that JJ retired 10 years ago. Dolphins drafts ranged from mediocre to disastrous, and the interior lines were given especially short shrift. It’s telling that Ireland found more solid undrafted rookies than Nick Saban or Randy Mueller found in the draft.

Chad Pennington: He is simply the first competent Dolphins QB in a decade, or longer if you count Marino’s career after age 35. Pennington’s arm and aim are amazing. He throws in three dimensions better than any QB I’ve ever seen, lofting balls over zones and spreading the ball to all corners of the field. And he’s vastly outperformed Brett Favre, for whom the Jets jettisoned Pennington.

Davone Bess: He’s the new Wes Welker. The guy’s gone from undrafted Hawaii run-n-shooter, to NFL starter. He runs great routes, he gets open underneath, and he catches everything tossed in his direction. He seems to have a tendency to run backwards after the catch, but you gotta love the little guy. Hopefully they don’t trade him to New England.

Dan Carpenter: Undrafted rookie kicker has been a marvel.

Turnovers: The Dolphins are #1 in the NFL with a +12 turnover margin. They’re on pace to set a record for fewest giveaways in a 16-game season.

Pass rush: Led by Joey Porter and a scheme that often blitzes DBs, the Dolphins are #8 in sacks.

Yeremiah Bell: Unheralded SS has no picks, but makes innumerable big tackles.

Beating crappy teams: The Dolphins have had an enviably easy schedule, having run a circuit through the NFC West and AFC West. But unlike the 2007 version of the team, the Dolphins have won the winnables.

It’s hard to envision this 8-5 team winning a playoff game against the Steelers, Colts, or Patriots. (Maybe the Titans. Something feels one-dimensional about them.) But it’s nice to be caring about December games for the first time in forever.

Go Dolphins.

As San Francisco’s only Florida Marlins fan, I’m often treated as some kind of genetic freak.

For example, in the 2003 NLCS playoffs, when the whole planet was rooting for an ultimately improbable Cubs-Red Sox World Series, I was in Steff’s every weeknight rooting for the Fish to lay waste to the boys from Wrigley. This aroused no small amount of suspicion and loathing from my fellow patrons. The whole world seemingly wanted the Cubbies in the Series. (Thanks, Bartman.)

The Marlins franchise history has been like Norm MacDonald’s characterization of the sport of cliff diving: “There are two levels. Grand Champion of the World, and stuff splattered on a rock.” Indeed, from their first pitch (the ancient Charlie Hough, vs. the Dodgers — I skipped a college class to see it), the Marlins have spent most of their 16-year franchise history flirting with last place, or hoisting a championship trophy.

So when people find out I’m a Marlins fan, they get a little interested, and often they start asking questions. The main one is:

Why doesn’t anyone go to their games?

Great question, and a complicated one. Even this season, with the team hanging close to first place and a pennant well within the realm of possibility in a weak league, the Marlins are last in attendance. But the empty seats aren’t easily explained in the terms of other cities. To understand the answer, you need to understand Miami. Here are my theories.

1. Miami is an LA-style sports town. People don’t really like sports in South Florida. They like winning. When a team is great, you can’t get a ticket. When a team is just good, locals are generally apathetic. When a team is bad, folks disavow it entirely. (“I was always really a Packers fan.”)
2. The Florida Marlins? Calling the team Florida was a lousy branding decision by Wayne Huizenga, whose feared that naming them after the region’s most famous city would weaken the fan base elsewhere in the region. Which of course is totally, utterly wrong, and discredited by the Miami Dolphins’ and Heat’s regional fan bases. Besides, Florida is a giant state, and few people identify themselves as Floridians first. The California Angels figured this out years ago, even though they failed the rebranding execution.
3. The economics of place. The Marlins don’t really have a ballpark. Much like some other attendance-challenged teams (like the Twins and A’s), the Marlins play in a borrowed football stadium. But unlike those other teams, they play in an ’80s-style suburban stadium, with no nearby transportation (Oakland has BART) or urban core (the Twins have Minneapolis). Even in the formless sprawl of South Florida, Dolphin Stadium is not near anyone’s place of work, so a weeknight game guarantees hours of creeping along the Turnpike.

It’s the economics of place that gives the Marlins any hope of attracting fans. Why do the Cubs, who play in a creaky stadium with no championship banners, sell out every game? Why do the Giants, the Orioles, the Indians draw tons of fans even when the teams are lousy?

It’s because those latter clubs figured out that the ballgame itself isn’t interesting enough for most people to put up with any hassle. But if you play the game in a place where people can walk around, can meet up with friends for a beer ahead of time, and can easily get home afterwards, then the game becomes the centerpiece of a night out, and fans will come. If you surround your stadium with a giant parking lot near a freeway, no amount of gimmickry will sell tickets, much less win over fans who will watch your team on TV, buy hats, and participate in fan communities.

Miami will never be a great sports town. But let’s hope those Marlins get their new stadium downtown, among the empty condo buildings and near actual transit. Build it, and they will come. Don’t build it, and people will stay home and watch Telemundo.