Xark!

U.S. Soccer gets Twitter

As a freshly minted (2010) soccer fan who has traveled for one U.S. Soccer tournament and hopes to make a second trip this fall, I've had the sense that I was riding a rising tide of American interest in the sport (1 million+ Americans watched Chelsea v. QPR; MLS attendance is up; new wave of soccer-specific stadia being built around the country, etc.). 

But skeptics have a point when they question why this increase in interest is different than previous ones. It's not like Ameirican soccer fans haven't been predicting success for decades, even as the sport's fortunes rose and fell. So am I being rosy-eyed optimisitic?

Well, here's a new reason why I think I might be on to something. The people at U.S. Soccer are smart enough to understand how to use Twitter to promote their brand, and that bodes well. 

If you follow U.S. Soccer (and 334,262 of you do), then you might see a Tweet from the organization offering to add you to a "fan roster" if you plan to attend an upcoming match. If you reply, U.S. Soccer puts your Twitter account into a public list of fans attending that game. 

Here's why that's brilliant.

Soccer fandom, more than any other sport I've followed, is about a shared communal experience. Soccer fans stand, they sing, they bang on drums, they dance in the aisles. That's true at club matches, but U.S. Soccer relies on fans who are willing to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to support our national teams. That means you show up in a city not-your-own looking for a community of fans to join, places to meet, special deals on beer, etc.

Supporters groups like The American Outlaws and Sam's Army help make those connections, but here's U.S. Soccer stepping directly into the matchmaking game. They're not selling something. They're improving their product by improving the fan experience.

That's how you grow a sport today. Not by hyperbolic, expensive carpet-bombing marketing campaigns, but by partnering with your fans in expanding the future of the thing you both love.

Soccer may or may not continue to rise in the U.S., but there's a new generation of fans falling in love with the game here, and if the institutions involved keep making saavy little moves like this one, they might just get somewhere.

 

Meanwhile, in Portland...

Dave Kindred: MLB Opening Day, A-Rod, Cubbies, curses, etc.

Dave Kindred, MLB '09 Opening Day from Dan Conover on Vimeo. 

Award-winning sportswriter and author Dave Kindred stopped by Chez Xark on his way to Augusta to cover the Masters, and after lunch at Moe's Crosstown Tavern he sat down for an interview with Xark guyand fanboy Dan Conover. The legendary baseball writer talks about the best ballpark in the majors, puts Tiger Woods in context and answers the question: What the hell was A-Rod thinking when he did that Details magazine photo spread?

The Good Old Days, when ballplayers were role models

"In 1903 (Rube) Waddell had a good season; once he finally bothered to show up in June, he won twenty-one games and led the league in strikeouts (with 302). It was a busy year in other ways, too: he also starred on vaudeville; led a marching band through Jacksonville; got engaged, married and separated; rescued a log from drowning (he thought it was a woman); accidentally shot a friend; and was bitten by a lion. Throughout his career, Waddell skipped games to go fishing and skipped debts he found annoying. Among his more respectable hobbies were chasing fires (he adored fire engines) and wrestling alligators; he once taught geese to skip rope. Hughie Jennings, manager of the Tigers, used to try to distract him from the sidelines by waving children's toys."

--Cait Murphy, describing a future Hall of Famer from a very different MLB era in her book Crazy '08: How a Cast of Cranks, Rogues, Boneheads and Magnates Created the Greatest Year in Baseball History.

XARK TV: 2007 MFL Draft review show

2007 MFL Draft in review from Dan Conover on Vimeo.

This week's XARK TV episode isn't for everyone, but if you're a fantasy football player and/or a member of the Manly Football League, give this one a try.

The MFL will hold its 18th draft on Aug. 23. Not bad for a bunch of newsies from Waynesville, N.C.

Name that pitch

FRIDAY 5: Fan's Guide to Spotting Baseball Pitches from Dan Conover on Vimeo.

You can get the whole thing over at my Friday5 blog, but here's the video I cut today on how to recognize five different baseball pitches.

Oh, and this week's cartoon contest features a geek action hero.

Have at it, nerds. ;-)

The Never Ending Trail

On the recommendation of friend and fellow distance runner, Cara Finnegan, I recently read Pam Reed’s The Extra Mile.  Finnegan and I have individually played around with the idea of trying a few ultamarathon events at some point in the future and Reed’s book, subtitled One Woman’s Personal Journey to Ultrarunning Greatness, seemed to be a great place to start thinking a bit more seriously about it. 

Ultramarathons are loosely defined as any race going beyond the normal 26.2 (and change) miles required by a marathon.  When distance is the defining characteristic, normal ultramarathons are 50 and 100 miles (although there are odd numbers and some are much longer).  When time is the defining characteristic, ultramarathons are normally set at 24 or 48 hours with the “winner” being the person who covers the most distance during that time period. 

There are a number of aspects of an ultramarathon which make it interesting, especially as you get a bit older.  For one, my times in half-marathons and marathons are going down rather than up.  I see no feasible personal records in my future.  As a result, an ultra would give me a different way of judging myself.  Given that there are so many of them of so many different lengths and on so many different terrains, I imagine I would never have a personal standard against which to judge. 

Secondly, there’s just something romantic about the idea of such long distances.  I find myself particularly attracted by the idea of the “timed” race, even if it means going around and around on a track.  I can imagine the brain working in extraordinarily odd ways in such a race, and I can imagine a very strong sense of community between those who finish such a run. 

It was with a mind like this that I approached Reed’s book, then. While I expected that her words would only add to the romanticism with which I was approaching ultras, there are ways in which Reed’s book—and subsequent reading--work against such romanticism. 

Perfect, for the Moment

Yes, yes, I know it's true of more teams than Vanderbilt--including UNC--but no one expected it to be true of us.  And since I may not be able to say this a week from today, I want to say it now:  We're perfect.  16-0.  That's 16 wins.  Zero losses.  Life is so good.

Like You've Been There Before

Of all the sports clichés that I dislike—and there are more than a boatload of them--the one that bothers me most is “Act like you’ve been there before.”  Someone inevitably makes this claim each time a home run hitter celebrates his ball going over the fence and each time a wide receiver makes a one handed end zone catch and celebrates wildly.  That is, every time a player does what he or she is supposed to do, and takes a moment to celebrate it, someone will ask them—or at least ask the player on their television--to act as if it’s a routine day at the accounting firm.

This phrase has never made sense to me, and it makes less sense the more often I think about it.

On the emotional side, it doesn’t make sense because I’m the type of fan, the type of person, who simply enjoys big emotions and larger-than-life personalities.  I want players to celebrate wildly, to physically show how much fun it is to feel like they are the greatest, if only for the moment.  I love big personalities and big moments befitting those personalities.  I’ve never like the accountant approach to sports in which a player is supposed to act as if their great moments are mundane.  Hell, when I have a good day of teaching, or write a good line in an essay, I jump up and down and shout. Why shouldn’t the athlete do so as well?

Tomorrow's Judgment Today

Last weekend, my Bonnie and I were playing Taboo with another couple and their nine year old son.  For those who haven’t played it, Taboo works like this:  one member of a team draws a card and on that card, there is a word you’re trying to make your teammates say out loud plus five words that you cannot use to help them.  For example, if the word is “James Bond,” you couldn’t use clues like “007”, “Sean Connery” “Roger Moore,” and so forth. 

During one round, we had all the males on one team, and I was drawing cards, attempting to get my friend Trey and his nine year old son to guess.  When I drew the word “Steroids,” I immediately said, “Barry Bonds.”  Within a half second, both Trey and his son shouted their first guesses. Trey was wrong with his guess of “home runs.”  But his nine year old son, who will be thinking about Barry Bonds long after Trey and I are put out to pasture . . . well. . . he guessed the word correctly.

Think about it:  a nine year old kid hears “Barry Bonds,” and the word that immediately comes to his mind is “Steroids.” 

Say it ain’t so, Joe.