Kevin Owens knows a thing or two about playing basketball overseas. The 7-footer (who recently hung up the hightops) caught up with fellow Euro-vet Brandon Jennings. Jennings recently partnered with MISSION Athletecare™ in promoting their groundbreaking and game-changing Court Grip™ technology, “a proprietary, patent-pending formula that is scientifically engineered to enhance traction and combat the negative effects of dusty, worn-out courts.” Fitting since such courts seem to be the only place these days locked out NBAers can catch a pickup game.
7. Andrew Bucholtz (Yahoo! Canada), Emma Carmichael (Deadspin), Ty Duffy (The Big Lead) and Sebastian Pruiti (SB Nation and NBAPlaybook.com): The fourth annual Blogs with Balls conference was held last month in New York City (recommended to anyone in sports interested in social media) and the four names above came up most frequently when the subject was up-and-coming talented sports bloggers/thinkers/tweetswriters. If you are active on Twitter, each are recommended. Get on the bandwagon now.
Charles Barkley Muppet, Amy K. Nelson, Matt Ufford
Honoring the Best in Sports Media.
NEW YORK – More than 15 of the best and brightest in sports media were honored at the First Annual Untitled Sports Media Awards Project this Saturday, part of BWB4. Presented by TURF (Tailgaters Urging Responsibility and Fun), USMAP is the first awards project to honor every facet of the always-changing sports media landscape – including TV and radio personalities, mainstream and online writers, podcasters and event tweeters.
Headlining the list of winners were some huge icons in our industry and some up-and-coming names we will certainly be hearing more from in the future. The winners included: Joe Posnanski (Sports Illustrated), Spencer Hall (SB Nation), Greg Wyshynski (Yahoo!), JE Skeets and Tas Melas (The Basketball Jones), Charles Barkley (TNT), Vin Scully, Cris Collinsworth (NBC), Peter Gammons (MLBN), Mark Cuban, Richard Deitsch (Sports Illustrated), Darren Rovell (CNBC), Matt Yoder (Awful Announcing) NFL RedZone and websites like Yahoo! Sports and the DC Sports Bog.
Thousands of nominations were collected in the 15 categories across sports media. A select nomination committee of sports media writers and bloggers parsed through the hundreds of unique nominations in each category to compile a list of finalists for each award.
Then the public helped decide who was the best.
The awards were based on tens of thousands of public votes, as well as rankings from a committee of close to 100 invited media insiders. Those scores were combined to determine the winners for each unique category.
Each winner received a special “trophy” presented by BWB4 (including founders Don Povia, Kyle Bunch and Chris Lucas) and the presenting sponsor TURF. This year’s USMAP “trophy” came in the form of a customized Muppet, personally designed to look like each winner by Dan Levy and his four-year old daughter Zoe and hand-built at FAO Schwarz in New York. Coincidentally, the event was held on the 75th anniversary of Jim Henson’s birthday.
For more information on BWB4 and the Untitled Sports Media Awards Project, visit blogswithballs.com or follow the Twitter hashtags #BwB4 or #USMAP.
For more information on TURF, visit Facebook.com/TurfZone.
LIST OF USMAP NOMINEES AND WINNERS
RISING STAR IN MEDIA
JE Skeets/Tas Melas
Michelle Beadle
Josh Elliott
Bomani Jones
Jonah Keri
Greg Wyshynski (WINNER)
BEST SPORTS SITE – WRITING QUALITY
Deadspin
Every Day Should Be Saturday
Grantland
Run of Play
SI.com
Yahoo! Sports (WINNER)
BEST SPORTS SITE – NEWS BREAKING
The Big Lead
Deadspin
ESPN
Pro Football Talk
Sports By Brooks
SI.com
Yahoo! Sports (WINNER)
BEST TEAM OR REGIONAL SPORTS SITE
The 700 Level
Bleacher Nation
DC Sports Bog (WINNER)
The Jets Blog
MGoBlog
Sactown Royalty
Tomahawk Nation
BEST SPORTSWRITER
Tommy Craggs, Deadspin
Spencer Hall, EDSBS & SB Nation
Drew Magary, KSK & Deadspin
Joe Posnanski, Sports Illustrated (WINNER)
Bethlethem Shoals, The Classical & B/R
Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo!
Joe Posnanski Muppet (Middle) reads speech prepared by Joe Posnanski (not pictures) with CBSSports.com's Will Brinson and SI's Richard Deisch
BEST SPORTSWRITER – HUMOR
AJ Daulerio, Deadspin
DJ Gallo, The Sports Pickle
Spencer Hall, EDSBS& SBNation (WINNER)
Trey Kerby, The Basketball Jones
Drew Magary, KSK & Deaspin
Matt Sebek, Joe Sports Fan
BEST YOUNG SPORTSWRITER (25/UNDER)
Andrew Bucholtz, Yahoo! Canada
Andy Hutchins, SB Nation
Rob Mahoney, ESPN TrueHoop, New York Times, NBC, SI and More
Sebastian Pruiti, NBA Playbook
Josiah Schlatter, NBC Off the Bench
Matt Yoder, Awful Announcing (WINNER)
BEST OLD SPORTSWRITER (65/OVER)
Roger Angell
Frank Deford
Peter Gammons (WINNER)
Dan Jenkins
William Nack
Bob Ryan
BEST PLAY BY PLAY ANNOUNCER
Marv Albert
Ian Darke
Gus Johnson
Al Michaels
Dan Shulman
Vin Scully (WINNER)
BEST IN-GAME ANALYST
Jay Bilas
Cris Collinsworth (WINNER)
David Feherty
Walt Clyde Frazier
Bill Raftery
Jeff Van Gundy
STUDIO PERSONALITY
Michelle Beadle
Charles Barkley (WINNER)
Rich Eisen
Bob Costas
Ernie Johnson
Dan Patrick
JE Skeets
BEST PODCAST
The Basketball Jones (WINNER)
The BS Report
Dan Patrick Show
House of Punte
Rich Eisen Podcast
The Solid Verbal
BEST SPORTS MEDIA TWEETER
Jay Bilas
Richard Deitsch (WINNER)
Spencer Hall
Old Hoss Radbourn
Darren Rovell (WINNER)
JE Skeets
Darren "Muppet" Rovell (l) with Darren "Ace" Rovell (r).
Today, SPORTS ILLUSTRATED unveiled Sports Illustrated Football Rivals one of SI’s most ambitious app productions. The app explores 10 great football rivalries through SI’s unmatched editorial coverage — with video and audio enhancements—delivering the seminal games, deciding plays and dominant performances within a dynamic, easy-to-use interface featuring 3D interactivity. The free app, presented by Coke Zero, is available for the iPad, iPhone and Android Smartphones and can be downloaded at www.si.com/rivals.
While we try to fathom the unfathomable, we’d still like to extend our best wishes to longtime friend of BWB, Alana Nguyen, who will now be taking up residence at SFGate.com, the Bay Area’s online home of the San Francisco Chronicle.
BLOOMBERG Sports LAUNCHES IMPROVED FANTASY FOOTBALL Tools
NFL Veteran, fantasy football aficionado Maurice Jones-Drew, announcer/analyst Anita Marks added as spokespeople For “Decision Maker” product team
New York, August 30 – Bloomberg Sports today announced the launch of their newly enhanced and improved Decision Maker 2011, a web-based and mobile interactive fantasy football application that uses Bloomberg’s state-of-the art advanced analytic tools to advise fantasy football players on their best starting lineup each week. The company also announced that Jacksonville Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew – well known for his fantasy football expertise – will be working with Bloomberg Sportsto highlight the analytical strengths of the Decision Maker tools. In addition, WFAN sports radio personality Anita Marks, who is part of the NY Giants broadcast team and also hosts fantasy football shows on SiriusXM, will also be working as spokesperson for Bloomberg Sports.
“Decision Maker was very popular last year because it offered quick, fact-driven sit-start answers, and gave a deeper analysis for players who wanted it. And of course our unique volatility assessment – with its risk/reward score — was a big hit,” said Bill Squadron, head of Bloomberg Sports. “We spent the off season working on some additional features that we think fantasy players are going to enjoy, especially the ability to vote on match-ups themselves.”
This season’s product includes all the features that users came to depend on last season, plus two new additions. The new features include a crowd polling tool that will allow users to vote on the most compelling weekly match-ups and then see the aggregated results of all Decision Maker users. The product will also provide pre-season and draft value by including season-long projections.
With the renewed partnership between Bloomberg Sports and National Football League Players Incorporated, Decision Maker will again include likenesses of NFL players throughout the product. Fans wishing to get additional fantasy football advice from Jones-Drew can also tune in to his show on SiriusXM Runnin’ with MJD or follow him on twitter (@Jones_Drew32).
Decision Maker – while driven by extremely detailed, fact-based, historical calculations – is very quick and simple to use. It provides fantasy players with the key answers they need to make their choices each week. The players are ranked by a system using complex formulas applied to three years of data, updated based on recent performance and other factors such as the opposing defense that week and the weather forecast at that week’s venue. Decision Maker also has a unique technology-driven Risk/Reward Index, analyzing consistency of the scrutinized NFL players and pointing to long shot opportunities for players whose performance tends to be most unpredictable.
Decision Maker 2011 is available at www.bloombergsports.com for use by all fantasy football players using any fantasy provider. The mobile Decision Maker apps are now available in the iTunes store for the iPhone and iPad. Decision Maker was one of the top selling football apps in 2010.
Launched in 2010, Bloomberg Sports takes the tools developed by Bloomberg, the leading global provider in data and analytics, and applying applies them to the vast data analysis opportunities in sports. Working with MLB.com and NFL.com, Bloomberg Sports fantasy products give fans the most powerful resources as they draft and manage their fantasy teams. Additionally, Bloomberg Sports provides a professional product that delivers Major League Baseball clubs with a secure, virtually unlimited set of analytical functions to assist them in personnel evaluation and performance matchups. For more details, please visit http://www.bloombergsports.com.
Amidst our flurry of #BWB4 and #USMAP announcements recently, certainly not lost in this little corner of the Internet in which we dwell is the fact that early last week BWB3 partner Bleacher Report made waves by hiring a series of writers it is deeming their “lead writers.” Among those lead writers are a trio of conference mainstays – Dan Levy, Josh Zerkle and Bethlehem Shoals. In doing so, B/R picked up one of the best basketball, football and sports media writers online.
A subsequent announcement by the company was equally impressive as TechCrunch reported a “cash infusion: A $22 million growth round from Oak Investment Partners, with participation from existing investors Crosslink Capital and Hillsven Capital.”
Bleacher Report wasn’t planning on raising more money for another six months, but Grey says the company was moving quicker than expected on key traffic and business milestones. Year-over-year page views are up 150%, time on site is up 50% and unique visits are up 75%. He wouldn’t give much detail on revenues, but says in the spring they were already way ahead of plan. Given how robustly the money and valuations are flowing in the Valley, there seemed little reason to wait. “We started to believe we could really build this into a billion dollar company, and we wanted to get aggressive,” [CEO Brian] Grey says.
While Grey appears to be the public shot in the arm the company needed, I’ve advocated around the time of BWB3 back in 2010 that the founders seemed to be poised to turn a page on their own. Many on the web, including some of the new hires, were openly critical of the B/R model. Founder David Nemetz, who was a BWB3 speaker and a guest on our podcast, was adamant about moving the company forward by creating a system for enhancing and showcasing the quality of writing that may have sometimes been overlooked on the massive network. It appears he and the team have succeeded in doing so, and investors and critics alike have taken notice.
Sports new media conference announces return to New York City, All-Star lineup and primary sponsor and host.
New York, August 30, 2011 — HHR Media Group and Modern Hombre are proud to announce the lineup and primary sponsors of this year’s sports and new media conference, BWB4 to be held September 24 2011. The event will be present by TURF, a responsible tailgating awareness program in partnership with Charmer Sunbelt Group and Brown-Forman, and will be hosted by Bloomberg Sports at the media giant’s global headquarters in New York City.
This year’s lineup is comprised of a diverse group that includes featured panelist, NFL Player Association Assistant Executive Director of External Affairs George Atallah, competitive eating champion Takeru Kobyashi, journalists/television personalities Josh Elliott, KevinBlackistone and Jemele Hill, writers, editors and executives from some of the top online outlets including Big Lead Sports, Bleacher Report, Deadspin, SBNation, Women Talk Sports and Yahoo!; sports media journalists like SI’s Richard Deitsch, and cutting-edge digital agencies such as R/GA, Carrot Creative and Deep Focus.
In addition to the all-star lineup, this year’s BWB will feature the First Annual Untitled Sports Media Awards Project (#USMAP), an event aimed at determining the best and brightest in sports media, giving a true voice to sports fans through online and social media. Thousands of nominations were submitted for the 15 different categories that span traditional and new media platforms. Voting for the best in sports media is open to the public at Facebook.com/TurfZone until September 16th.
Confirmed participants to date:
AJ Daulerio, Deadspin
Amanda Rykoff, espnW
Amy K. Nelson, ESPN
Barry Petchesky, Deadspin
Bill Squadron, Bloomberg Sports
Bomani Jones
Chris Russo, Big Lead Sports
Dan Levy, Bleacher Report
Dan Shanoff, Quickish
David Finocchio, Bleacher Report
Dom Cosentino, Deadspin
Emma Carmichael, Deadspin
Eric Kay, CBS
George Atallah, NFLPA
Ian Schafer, Deep Focus
Ives Galarcep, Soccer by Ives/FoxSports.com
Jack Dickey, Deadspin
Jamie Mottram, Yahoo!
Jane McManus, ESPN NY
Jason McIntyre, The Big Lead
Jay Busbee, Yahoo! Sports
JE Skeets, The Basketball Jones
Jemele Hill, ESPN
Jim Cooke, Deadspin
Jimmy Traina, SI.com
Joe Favorito, FatherknickerbockerPR
Joe Fortenbaugh, NationalFootball Post
John Thornton, Retired NFL
Josh Elliott, Good Morning America
Josh Zerkle, Bleacher Report
Kathleen Hessert, Sports Media Challenge
Kevin Blackistone
Lang Whitaker, SLAM/The Classical
Luke O’Brien, Deadspin
Maggie Hendricks, NBCChicago/Y! Sports
Mark Pesavanto, Yahoo! Sports
Matt Sebek, Joe Sports Fan
Matt Ufford, KSK/Warming Glow
Matthew Cerrone, MetsBlog/SNY
Megan Hueter, Women Talk Sports
Michael Hall, NESN
Mike Germano, Carrot Creative
Nando DiFino, Wall Street Journal
Phil van der Vossen, GunaxinSports/Caps Outsider
Richard Deitsch, SI
Richard Ting, R/GA
Rick Liebling, Coyne
Sarah Braesch, Draft Day Suit
Tas Melas, The Basketball Jones
Takeru Kobayashi
Tom Fant, NBAOffseason.com/Tumblr Sports
Tom Scocca, Deadspin
Tommy Craggs, Deadspin
Trei Brundrett, SB Nation
Trey Kerby, The Basketball Jones
About BWB
BWB is the leading sports new media event series in the country. Our events have been attended by thousands nationwide.
BWB events have included participation and attendance from not only a wide spectrum of sport-specific websites of all sizes, but also representatives from newspapers, television and radio, and several of the most recognized national public relations, marketing and advertising firms.
BWB aims to meet three objectives:
Facilitate best practice discussions for the online sports media community
Educate companies and advertisers on how to best utilize online sports opinion influencers and how to best interact with their audiences
Provide insight and strategy for athletes, teams, leagues and their representatives who are looking to tap into emerging mediums
TURF, Tailgaters Urging Responsibility and Fun, is a responsible tailgating awareness program in partnership with The Charmer Sunbelt Group and Brown Forman. The TURF objective is to encourage responsible drinking before (tailgating) and during sporting events. For more about TURF and how you can get involved visit them at www.Facebook.com/TURFzone.
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