The NCAA vault sounds kinda impressive.  I’ve tired it out very briefly and it’s pretty cool if your in to historical games and all that.  I would like to see it go back to some old footage of classic games, but maybe that will come down the line.  I wonder what their money making model is.  If they make cash off the ads on there or if they plan for some sort of pay content later on.

vault

link

Say Hello to NCAA Vault, Adieu to Productivity

• By Erik Malinowski
• March 3, 2010  |
• 9:00 am  |
• Categories: Data, Information Technology

It’s March, which can only mean we’re on the cusp of that Great American Workplace Productivity Suck known as the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament. Usually, the three weeks of March Madness are passed by updating office-pool rankings, watching split-screen highlights on CBS, and checking if you still qualify for Yahoo’s $1 million grand prize for submitting a perfect bracket.

But today, the college basketball bigwigs have upped the ante. In partnership with Thought Equity Motion, the NCAA has launched the aptly named Vault, which contains full, commercial-free footage of 150 tournament games from the past decade — every Sweet 16 game on to the championship from 2000 through last year. More so, engineers have indexed every game with nearly 6,000 combined metadata tags, so fans can easily filter incredible dunks, blocks, buzzer beaters and more. If you prefer, you can also sort by team, year or player.

More than anything, it’s the blazing-fast video-loading and incredible wealth of metadata that make the site shine. Rather than just dropping in 45-second clips of individually great moments, clicking on a game clip will drop you directly into that moment in that game.

Say you want to relive Mario Chalmers’ game-tying three for Kansas against Memphis in the 2008 championship. When you’re done watching, you can just hunker down and let the game keep playing, on through the end of regulation and then overtime, all commercial-free and with nary a buffer. Of course, the site only works well if you have a large viewing screen, so those users hunched over a netbook or smallish laptop could find themselves constantly scrolling through their browser window while navigating the extensive UI.

The effort kicked off last summer, when Denver-based Thought Equity (which was already working on digitizing the NCAA’s extensive archive) started collaborating with the NCAA on “how to unlock the value of NCAA.com,” says Greg Weitekamp, the NCAA’s director of broadcasting. “For a while, we were very protective of the copyright, and you have to be very careful in terms of allowing all that content out. As our relationship progressed, we started saying, ‘Look, this is a digital world, the content can be out there, and it can help drive your fanbase.’”

The first time he entered the Vault, Weitekamp pulled up the 2007 Sweet 16 matchup between the University of Florida and Butler University, his alma mater. Before he knew it, 45 minutes had gone by and he was officially sucked in. “I thought, ‘Well, if this is happening to me, I can’t imagine how other people are going to love it,’” he says.

Kevin Schaff, Thought Equity’s CEO, likens the Vault’s capabilities to that of a “third generation” of sports-media–archive distribution, following in the path set forth by ESPN Classic and broadband. Both parties say it’s possible that more men’s basketball games — as well as other collegiate sports — could be added to the Vault over time. “The NCAA had the foresight to preserve every second of every game,” Schaff points out, “and that sort of dedication allows these types of effort to come through.”

Of course, the traffic numbers and ad dollars will have a lot of say in whether that expansion comes to fruition. “The business model will have to prove itself,” Weitekamp says. “There’s a lot of resources that have been put into it, and CBS is out there trying to sell out. So if it’s successful, then naturally we’ll expand it.”

But starting today, fans can share Vault highlights with others using direct URLs, as well as having Click to Post functionality built in for Twitter and Facebook users. And with an accessible API, there’s still more potential for the NCAA Vault as time goes on.

What the hell is with the love affair programs have with Lane Kiffin.  Did I miss the point where this guy showed he knows what he’s doing and isn’t a fricken flake?  Shell gave him a crazy opportunity with the Raiders, and to be fair…I don’t even count that as anything.  Shell is so crazy it’s hard to say what went on during that time, and the idea of giving a 31 year old guy an NFL head coaching position is so far out in left field that it doesn’t even deserve consideration.  But he goes to Tenn, has problems shooting his mouth off, violates some rules and produces a 7-6 season.  Not bad for his first season in a program.  I’ve said before college coaches need at least 3 years to get their guys in there and install their system.  It’s not bad, but it’s not phenomenal either.  After 1 year, USC decides to hand him the keys to the kingdom?

I don’t know about anyone else, but I couldn’t respect a guy that spent 1 year in a program and decided to jump ship.  Granted it’s USC…but improve your resume a little bit…right now you look like a job hopper, that hasn’t done anything.  I read some from Stewart Mendel, and he seems to think that USC’s motivation might be to hire someone that is really similar to Pete Carroll.  That’s certainly a good idea from the college’s perspective, they might maintain their level of success without having to go through a coach installing their system and recruiting their players.

I also don’t understand why someone would willing walk into the USC situation right now.  It sounds like they might face some NCAA penalties, but maybe to a program that size it doesn’t really matter.

I haven’t followed NCAA football too closely, there is so much to pay attention to and for whatever reason it just doesn’t interest me like the NFL.  Every year I try to pay attention, but outside of catching the headlines I find myself really not caring.  I blame it on the bowl system.  Outside of your season record, there is really no measure of how you stand up to competition.

Is one of the biggest dumbasses I have read about in awhile.  On the verge of going pro…making millions of dollars and having women beyond even his stud college imagination…he proposes to his girlfriend?  what a dipshit.

Instead of getting married, these young men that are about to embark into a world that us normal guys will never understand should only be concerned with how to not knock up all the bimbo’s they are about to bang and how to not catch something.  None of these athletes should get married or have kids until their playing days are over.

disgusting.

This year’s BCS title game will forever be known as the “what if” game.  With Colt going down early in the 1st quarter we don’t get a good feeling for who the better team is…or do we?  Injuries are part of sports, and over the course of the football season managing your injuries is part of the coaches responsibility.  I was watching the game and saw the injury as it happened.  I had to back up the TiVo several times to see what might have been hurt.  The hit put on him really didn’t seem like much at all, but given the right amount of force at the right angel it doesn’t take much at all.  I thought it was McCoy that had shoulder problems at the beginning of the year, but I can’t find anything to confirm that…so I’m probably mistaken.

Last night we didn’t know how bad the injury really was.  What we did know is that it would have risked his potential draft position and/or entire NFL career if he tried to re-enter the game.  It was the right decision for him career wise and financial wise to not go back in to the game.  I was really pulling for his backup to have a game winning performance.  Coming in for an injured superstar and engineering a win in the championship game would have been an incredible way to start a college career.  In the 2nd half, he had a pretty solid performance…but in the first half he looked like a scared little kid.  There were several poor passes, but there were also quite a few passes right on the mark that his receivers just dropped.

Congratz to ‘bama.  Saban built a championship team fairly quickly.