Hope Springs Eternal

It's clearly a cliche, but the best part about Major League Baseball's Opening Day is that each of the league's thirty teams starts undefeated.  For some, like the Toronto Blue Jays and the Los Angeles Dodgers, expectations are unusually high and confidence is abundant.  For others, like the New York Mets and the Houston Astros, there's a "Hey, you never know!" atmosphere surrounding tomorrow's games - the fact that each and every year, at least one team comes out of nowhere to capture a division crown produces an aura of optimism in every Major League clubhouse.  That optimism - combined with the knowledge that the first baseball games mean that Spring and warm weather are just around the corner - make MLB's Opening Day a sporting event worth its capitalization.

Personally, I've been looking forward to tomorrow night's Atlanta opener against the Philadelphia Phillies - nationally televised on ESPN2 - pretty much since the New York Giants season ended in December.  No offense to the Knicks (and only limited offense intended to the Islanders), but the indoor winter sports lack the significance that I associate with big dates on the MLB and NFL calendars.  This year, my anticipation around Opening Day is especially high.  Coming off of a disappointing exit to the 2012 MLB playoffs (you can read my post on the Infield Fly Rule Game here), the Braves have recovered and reloaded.  In a perfect scenario, guys like Kris Medlen and Mike Minor will build on their late season successes, acquisitions like B.J. and Justin Upton will pay dividends and youngsters like Julio Teheran and Freddie Freeman will continue to grow.  As things currently stand, the Braves seem poised to be an NL pennant contender in 2013 and beyond.

Of course, for most teams Opening Day will soon become little more than the start of a disappointing season that results in losses, injuries and a September finale.  For my Braves, there's a realistic possibility that Justin Upton continues last season's negative statistical trend, Jason Heyward again fails to live up to his tremendous potential and Brandon Beachy is unable to recover from Tommy John surgery.  For every great thing that might happen, there's an equally likely negative scenario that, combined with other rough outcomes, could realistically derail Atlanta's season.  But while these downside scenarios are certainly possible, the beauty of Opening Day is that no one (outside of maybe the occasional self-deprecating Mets fan) spends April 1 thinking about them.  MLB's Opening Day is a day for optimism, hope and "what ifs."

I've already cleared my calendar for tomorrow night so that I can make sure to be settled on my couch at 7 PM when Tim Hudson throws the season's first pitch.  Hopefully all of you will be doing the same, convincing yourselves that tomorrow will be the start of something special for your team.  After all, that's what Opening Day is all about.

Missed Opportunity

The NHL is a league of missed opportunities.  Most recently, the league decided to follow up a Los Angeles Stanley Cup victory - and the chance to boost the popularity of the sport in the country's second-largest market - with a near-season-ending lockout, once again damaging the NHL brand and slowing the momentum created by the Kings.  This is far from the first time the NHL has dropped the ball (or puck) on an opportunity to boost league popularity.  Earlier today, the Calgary Flames traded forward Jarome Iginla to the Pittsburgh Penguins, which got me thinking about one of the league's most underrated and un-talked-about screw-ups.

For those of you that don't watch hockey (or have forgotten), Iginla was one of the NHL's best and most dynamic players during the 2000s.  He led the NHL in points with 96 in 2001-02 (and was league MVP), and topped the 90 point mark again in 2006-07 and 2007-08.  He scored 50 goals in a season twice, led the Flames to the 2004 Stanley Cup Finals (they lost to Tampa Bay in one of the least watched NHL finales in league history) and Team Canada to the 2002 Olympic gold and was incredible to watch.  Perhaps even more important from a marketing potential standpoint, however, is that Iginla is half black - his father was born in Nigeria.  In a league starving for racial diversity, the NHL had a bi-racial MVP and never used that to help market the game to a new (and growing) set of potential hockey fans.

Arguably the NHL's best minority player, Iginla languished in Calgary for 16 seasons.

People criticize the NBA for being overly star-driven and for marketing individuals as much as teams, and some of that criticism is fair.  At the same time, I've felt for a decade now that the NHL was doing itself a major disservice by refusing to use Iginla as a tool to grow the sport of hockey among minorities.  While the NBA has used players like Dirk Nowitzki to tap into Europe and Yao Ming to expand in China, not once have I heard about the NHL leveraging Iginla's notoriety and build its brand with non-white fans.  Part of this can be blamed on the fact that Iginla played for Calgary up until today; perhaps if he was on the Rangers, Kings or Capitals he would have been a bigger star and a role model for potential minority hockey players.  But I find it hard to believe that the NHL couldn't have done more to build Iginla's brand.

The NHL has a loyal fan base made of almost entirely of white males from Canada, the Northeastern U.S. or the Great Lakes region.  While other professional sports leagues have successfully expanded internationally (like the NBA), regionally (like the MLS) and culturally (like the NFL), hockey has remained stagnant and has failed to capitalize on opportunities to tap into new segments of sports fans.  As the USA continues to become more diverse and the percentage of Caucasian Americans continues to decrease, the NHL will likely struggle to grow.  Jarome Iginla could have been a key tool in helping professional hockey expand its reach.  Instead, the former MVP is now a 16-year veteran whose trade to Pittsburgh barely made the ESPN Headlines this afternoon.  Add Iginla's story to the long list of the NHL's missed opportunities.

March Badness

If you root for upsets, then the first second round of the 2013 NCAA tournament was for you.  Ten higher seeds won games on Thursday and Friday, including one 15, one 14, one 13 and three 12s, and trendy Final Four selections like New Mexico and Georgetown were sent home early.  Like most college hoops fans without a team to root for, I love to see all of the upsets - it's a large part of what makes this tournament so exciting.  And while it's true that parity in college basketball in increasing, I'd argue that it's not so much that teams like Harvard or LaSalle are much better this year than 13 and 14 seeds normally are.  Instead, this year's high-seeded victors seemed to take advantage of some ugly basketball by their heavily favored opponents, making this year's major upsets a little less satisfying than the Cornell-esque runs we've seen in the recent past.

That's not to take anything away from the likes of the Crimson, Explorers, the Oregon Ducks, the Ole Miss Rebels or the Cal Bears.  Each of these teams came into tournament weekend ready to play (and, is LaSalle's case, had to meet another tournament worthy team just to get a shot to play on Friday) and got the job done.  But as I watched at least part of each of these upsets, I wasn't particularly impressed with any of these supposed Cinderellas.  While Harvard played solid defense, it was really New Mexico's inability to hit a shot that lead to their demise.  Ole Miss managed to win despite a terrible game from their star guard Marshall Henderson because Wisconsin simply can't score consistently.  The only major upset team that actually looked aggressive, cohesive and threatening was, shockingly, Florida Gulf Coast, who used their athleticism and intensity to beat up on Georgetown.  For their part, though, the Hoyas and Big East Player of the Year Otto Porter Jr. looked dazed and confused from the opening tip to the final whistle.

The Big East sent eight teams to the 2013 NCAA Tournament and is supposedly the strongest conference in the country.  Of those eight, only Syracuse, Louisville and Marquette (barely) survived; in addition to Georgetown, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh and were knocked out by higher seeds the Cincinnati and Villanova were pushed around by beatable opponents.  We spent the year talking about how the Mountain West had the highest RPI of any conference, but of its five tournament teams only Colorado State and San Diego State made it through, while New Mexico and UNLV were upset badly.  Meanwhile, LaSalle had to beat the Mountain West's Boise State just to get a chance to play Kansas State, which suggests that the NCAA tournament selection process isn't as efficient as it needs to be.

If the NCAA is trying to create drama by matching overrated Big East and Mountain West teams against sneakily strong mid-major opponents, they're doing a great job.  In reality, however, this week's upsets are as much about overrated NCAA favorites getting matched up against feistier, psyched-up opponents with nothing to lose.  As much as I'd like to credit teams like Harvard for rising to the occasion, I find it hard to believe that a team that recently lost to Columbia and Princeton is all of a sudden evenly matched against the Lobos, the best team in the supposedly toughest conference in the nation, despite not playing particularly well.  Instead, the Crimson were the beneficiaries of some sloppy seeding by the NCAA and took advantage of it - like any group of smart Ivy Leaguers would do.

Make It Count

In just a few short hours, Selection Sunday will commence and we'll know the names of the 68 schools that will participate in the 2013 NCAA men's college basketball tournament.  The majority of the schools in the bubble, however, are from the NCAA's power six conferences - teams that, after a long regular season filled with RPI top-100 opponents, still have a chance at the Big Dance despite having flamed out of their conference tournaments earlier this weekend.  Living in Manhattan, the home of the Big East tournament, most of the talk and media coverage this weekend has revolved around schools live Georgetown, Notre Dame, Louisville and Syracuse, schools that are locks for the NCAA tournament.  But while most college basketball fans have spent the last couple of days watching the top teams in the country battle for the BCS conference crowns, I'm much more interested in watching the desperate teams fighting for the postseason lives in the smaller conference tourneys.

Don't get me wrong - I've caught parts of a number of BCS conference tournament games this week, and enjoyed some great college basketball from the likes of Georgetown vs. Syracuse, North Carolina vs. Miami and Kansas vs. Kansas State.  And while it's great to watch the best players in the country represent the nation's biggest schools, the downside for the losers of these major conference tournament games is pretty limited.  While there's no doubt that the players for North Carolina wanted to win today's ACC championship game, the Tar Heels ultimate goal for 2013 - as it is every year - is to take home an NCAA national title.  As soon as the final buzzer sounded in Greensboro today, UNC undoubtedly began to look ahead to a Thursday or Friday matchup in Round 2 of the newly-reformatted Big Dance.

As a result, these BCS conference tournament matchups lack the desperation and fight that you can find from the smaller conference playoffs.  Unlike North Carolina, tournament finals losers like Vermont (America East), UC Irvine (Big West) and Morgan State (MEAC) certainly won't be headed to the NCAA tournament next week.  Like most of the country's Division I teams, their chance at the NCAAs depended entirely on their ability to win their conference postseason tournaments - their failure to do so will result in, at best, a trip to the NIT and, at worst, an abrupt end to the 2013 basketball season.  While the quality of basketball in the America East might not be able to match what you find in the Big East, the added passion and emotion generated by the win-or-go-home mentality more than make up for the discrepancies in shooting ability or ball-handling skill.

By this time next week, virtually every mid-major basketball team will be eliminated from the NCAA tournament - most of the small conference schools that have made it this far will serve as little more than second round prey for the nation's traditional basketball powers.  Before we reach that point, I've enjoyed another opportunity to see schools for the Patriot League, the MAC and the SWAC compete on a national stage.  There will be plenty of time to watch Duke, UCLA and Michigan State play throughout the rest of March - hopefully you were able to enjoy some do-or-die mid major basketball before it was too late.

What's Next?

Despite having worked in sports strategy and analytics for five years (with a stop at business school in between), I had never been to the famous MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference before this year.  What was once ~100 sitting in a conference room talking about advances stats metrics has ballooned into a 2,700+ person event attended by everyone from team owners, presidents and GMs to college students and weird people obsessed with the likes of Bill James and John Hollinger.  While the conference was once all about sabermetrics and statistics like WAR and BABIP, now the event is as much about using analytics and technology to provide more value to fans and, in turn, generate more revenue to teams and leagues.  While I learned a lot of helpful professional insights from my two days at the Boston convention center, I wanted to share a few tidbits from the conference on what sports analytics will soon mean to all of us as sports fans.

NBA COO Adam Silver speaks on a panel alongside Patriots owner Jonathan Kraft and ESPN's John Skipper.

• Get ready for in-venue WiFi: If you've gone to a professional sporting event recently, you probably noticed that the cell phone coverage ranged from mediocre to awful - a ton of people confined in relatively small space simultaneously reaching for their phones doesn't lead to fast downloads or good call quality.  Teams and leagues are now investing millions of dollars to build out in-venue WiFi to combat this issue.  This not only means that you'll be able to post videos to Facebook during a game, but also that teams will be able to use the internet to offer you a host of new products.  In-seat concessions ordering from your phone, the ability to upgrade your seats (for a fee) via mobile and near-real-time highlights delivered to your second screen are all on the horizon.

• Customization is coming: If you've ever looked at the back of your ticket stub, you probably noticed an offer to redeem your ticket for something - a six-inch Subway sandwich or 15% off one item at Modell's Sporting Goods, perhaps.  You also probably noticed that the offer you got wasn't for something you actually want.  As teams move to digital ticketing and use technology to learn more about their fans, however, they will have the ability to target specific offers to specific groups of people, increasing the likelihood that you'll get something that has value to you.  Gone are the days of one-size-fits-all promos - while all of the customization might seem a big Big Brother-ish at first, fans will soon come to love having their sporting event experience customized.

• Say goodbye to paper tickets: Every year, ticket cards and mobile ticketing become more and more prevalent in sports.  In an effort to curb brokers and the secondary market, teams are moving towards non-paper tickets to better monitor who actually comes to games (it's not always the person who purchased the ticket from the team, as we know from the rapid growth of StubHub's business) and protect fans from potential fraud.  Whether it's linked to a separate card, a credit card or a mobile application, the days of paper tickets are coming to an end for anything other than souvenir / commemorative purposes.

There's a lot more coming our way over the next few years, but these were a few of the more interesting trends that emerged from the 2013 MIT Sloan conference.  While change is almost always met with resistance at first, I think most fans with quickly come to appreciate all of the changes coming our way.  Each sports fan is unique - it's about time teams started treating us like it. 

Power to the People

Unlike a baseball or a football game, where you really need to be sitting in the stands with the "real people" to properly experience the game, basketball games are typically awesome from inside a luxury suite.  The arenas are much smaller, so well-placed luxury seating (most relatively modern areas have their suites located in between the lower and upper bowls) combined an excellent vantage point with amenities including food, drinks, television and comfortable seats.  When I found out that my first visit to Boston's TD Garden would be in a luxury box for a mid-week game against the Golden State Warriors, I was excited and knew that I'd have a great view of the game (see below).

Boston's TD Garden isn't filled with the corporate-types you find at New York's MSG.

As a New Yorker, I've been trained to hate everything related to Boston sports.  That being said, I have to give it to the Celtics fans - despite the team's relative struggles on the court this season and the loss of the team's most-exciting player (Rajon Rondo) to injury, the TD Garden crowd was every bit as loud and passionate as any mid-week crowd for a Knicks game at MSG.  While the stands during a Knicks game are filled with tie-wearing corporate types coming straight from the office, the Celtics crowd was way more blue-collar.  Even on the suite level, it was hard to find people that looked like they have come to TD Garden directly from work, and I felt out of place in a suit and tie.

The vast majority of fans were wearing Celtics gear and were shockingly vocal, and when the Celtics made a push in the fourth quarter to put the game out of reach, the noise level was quite impressive.  Perhaps I shouldn't have been so surprised - given the tradition and greatness associated with Celtics basketball, it makes sense that the Boston faithful would turn out in droves no matter how well (or poorly) the Celts are playing.  Add in the fact that, even without Rondo, Boston's roster features two of the most popular players in the NBA (Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce), and all of the green-and-white jerseys make a lot more sense.

Overall, I liked TD Garden.  While it was a relatively generic NBA arena, it certainly does the job.  Like many newer NBA arenas, including Brooklyn's Barclays Center, it's very steep, so the upper level seats still feel right on top of the court.  I also liked the way the arena is located directly adjacent to a metro station (much like MSG), providing relatively easy access from anywhere in the city.  While there was nothing especially "Boston-ish" about the building or the luxury seating areas - most the the amenities and offerings seemed pretty generic - TD Garden seemed to be yet another example of a well-designed, highly functioning NBA venue.