My first sample from Paul Virilio's Open Sky, which I believe has a great deal of relevance to my work so far on sports videogames:

Loss of sight or, rather, 'loss of ground' is a new kind of fall that is also a form of pollution of expanse, of that 'art of the journey' practised by the nomad, a peculiar form of vertigo brought on by the depth of field of the apparent horizon of the spectacle of the world.

With the contemporary sedentary type of the great metropolis, this on-the-spot contraction not only affects the transit zone and the sphere of productive activity as before. First and foremost, it attacks the body of the able-bodied person, equipped to the eyeballs with interactive prostheses, who is now modelled on the disabled person equipped to control his environment without physically shifting.

So dromospheric pollution is pollution that attacks the liveliness of the subject and the mobility of the object by atrophying the journey to the point where it becomes needless. A major handicap, resulting both from the loss of the locomotive body of the passenger, the televiewer, and from the loss of that solid ground, of that vast floor, identity's adventure playground of being in the world (p.33, emphasis in original).

Ralph Wiley wonders where all the boxers have gone (emphasis added):

Why do you think the NFL is so popular? For one thing, it replaces our Circus, the violent hand-to-hand combat that boxing once personified. Sooner or later, football players, hockey players, basketball players, they all get down to squaring off and doing their simpler version of boxing. We're so disenchanted by it … except I've never seen anybody run from watching a fight. Run away from being in one, sure. But watching? Never.

. . .

It's boxing. Prizefighting. The ultimately noble wrapped inside the ultimately profane. How we destroy ourselves to save ourselves. It is so … human. It's definitely us.

From the Word Origins web site:

Soccer is an abbreviation for Association Football. The Football Association was formed in London in October 1863 when representatives of eleven clubs and schools met in an attempt to standardize the rules of the game. One of the rules prohibited the carrying of the ball, a rule that would lead to the Rugby-oriented clubs leaving the Association several months later. The name Association Football was coined to distinguish it from Rugby.

By 1889, the abbreviation socca' was in use, and the spelling soccer had made its appearance by 1895.

Walter Benjamin notes that the film actor lacks the opportunity of the stage actor to adjust to the audience during a performance. In turn, the audience member takes the role of detached critic, identifying with the camera rather than directly with actor. Though the professional athlete is capable of adjusting to audience members during a performance, this only assumes significance for the athlete's uncertainty-of-outcome identity or orientation.

As a direct result of Marvin Miller and free agency in professional sport, however, abstractions of past performance — in the form of statistics — have assumed central significance in any athlete's quest for labour mobility. Thus, an identity charged with "putting up numbers" has become a necessity for those looking to improve their financial standing (particularly in sports with a high cyborg ratio).

So in much the same way that the audience member identifies with the camera to criticize a film actor's performance, the sports videogamer identifies with the statistics kept by the league — the tools that allows for the manufacture of the videogame — to criticize an athlete's performance. Indeed, to paraphrase Benjamin, sports simulations need not respect the performance of the athlete as a whole. And the resulting disembodiment caused by the simulation's creation suggests that the athlete's body is not respected as a whole, either.

Jake Garnatz, a student at Northern Illinois University, referenced sportsBabel for his end-of-term hypertext project: "Fantasy Football: A Postmodern Trend in Sports Participation."

I think that Jake's project could have benefited from an analysis of the violence done to the athlete during the objectification process that produces the statistics required for fantasy sports to operate. Overall, though, an interesting introductory work.

A case of permeable membrane and turntablism from CBS's coverage of last week's MCI Heritage Classic (via SportsFilter, emphasis mine):

The television coverage ended as controversy swirled regarding a possible Rules infraction by Cink. For the next half hour, PGA Tour officials received numerous phone calls from television viewers who were stunned when Cink brushed aside lose pebbles behind his ball. Because the hazard was a waste area and not a sand bunker, Cink was allowed to move loose impediments. However, some thought he had improved his lie. Tour official Slugger White disagreed. After reviewing the videotape, White ruled that it wasn't a penalty, thus giving Cink the championship title after an anxious 30-minute wait.

dromology = citius, altius, fortius, copiosus?

Students in my sport marketing class were asked to write a short probing aphorism on professional sport, sport marketing, advertising, or any of the other issues we discussed during the semester that incorporated the ideas and style seen from Marshall McLuhan. Almost none of the students had even heard of McLuhan at the beginning of the term, much less read his work, yet only a few short months later some great probes were written. I have included a selection of the best ones below, with the authors' permission:

"Modern sports stadia are the new Santa Croces, but now Stendhal would need twice the aspirin."

– Rob Costigan

"Since the Roman times, gladiators have always drawn crowds. Today, though, square box substitutes for round Colosseum and the thumb is used for the on/off button rather than pointing up or down."

– Luke Kotyk

"The one who holds the ball is to be represented with power, or else the ball becomes irrelevant."

– Christina Karbanyk

"The legs of technology are no longer walking leisurely down an old country road; instead, they are now speed walking on a treadmill in Silicon Valley."

– Marijke Daye

"Bodies were once the powerhouse — energy utilized and manipulated to serve our society. Now we breed physical strength for visual appeal and hard work is left to innovations we mentally create. This shift from physical/mental society to a purely intellectual society will shape future generations in a whole new form."

– Laura Rennie

"Direct marketing is the casual sex relationship of the 21st century. You are only going to get out of it what you put in."

– Jacqueline Acomb

Sports stories rarely make it into the index of blogs at Blogdex, but today 9 of the top 50 links are about Pat Tillman, the man who gave up a career in the NFL to become a U.S. Army Ranger and was killed in action yesterday.

Sadly, this is treated by the North American media as a sports story (yes, Canada covered it the same way). Of course, this is because it is perceived as the ultimate sacrifice: not only giving up one's life for service in the Army, but leaving a Pro Football Career to do so. In doing so, it elevates the professional athlete even higher in the subconscious of the consuming public — that is, being a pro athlete must be a pretty big damn deal if there is such a media-spasm after one soldier's death.

To be fair, many of the commenters in the blogosphere have pointed out that every single casualty in the war is the heart-breaking epitome of the ultimate sacrifice — not just Tillman's. It is just unfortunate that the aftershocks felt from this spasm are likely to strengthen the NFL and its jingoism, despite the fact that by all accounts Tillman didn't want a big deal made out of his decision.

Mark Roberts, the man who permeated the membrane to streak the Super Bowl in February, goes to trial June 21 on a misdemeanor trespassing charge.

A reminder to myself: I learned O Canada in elementary school and The Star-Spangled Banner watching American sporting events on television.

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, thro' the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Of course, the in-stadium fireworks before major sporting events that punctuate "And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air" are truly spectacular.

Today's Kubrickian photo is of the Bod Pod, a device for measuring and tracking body fat and lean mass using patented air displacement technology, brought to you by Life Measurement, Inc., whose mission is "to enhance human health and performance by providing the world's best measurement instruments."

Wired reports that the San Jose Sharks are using a digital video recorder that records the game and then wirelessly transmits the data to a tablet PC manned by an assistant coach on the bench. An interesting application of turntablism in professional hockey.

An ode to Rafael Palmeiro:

Transition Game discusses a new technology from Sharp that will edit out all of the components of a normal-length baseball broadcast that aren't actually part of the game, leaving the distilled essence of 'pure baseball'.

As Nick Schulz rightly notes, we should be asking ourselves "what is baseball?" This hyperreal version of the game leaves out too many of the intricacies — the aesthetic uncertainties one might say — for us not to ask.

From Mark Federman via Anne Galloway via Caterina, a fun diversion, a new take on a chain letter, and an interesting cross-section of reading:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Continue to track the source chain (that would now read, "From Sean, from Mark, from Anne, from Caterina") and add to the analogy (that would be "a fun diversion, a new take on chain letter, an interesting cross-section of reading and [your analogy here].)

"Worse yet, safe and effective operation in the often chaotic home environment is a lot more difficult than in controllable factory settings." — Hans Moravec, Mind Children

Some notes while re-reading Hoskins, McFadyen, & Finn's (1997) Global television and film. An introduction to the economics of the business, from Oxford University Press:

The authors note that as technology-based barriers to entry continue to lower, power will shift from the traditional studios and major production centres (which have made major investments in fixed production facilities) to established creativity suppliers, such as the teams that produce athletic events. There will also be a movement away from centralized production centres, which challenges the massive investments made in sports stadia, if these stadia are viewed as media production centres.

The authors suggest that there will also be an increase in the value of sources of creativity and existing stocks of intellectual property. The primary source of creativity in sport media production is the athletes themselves, and we have already witnessed dramatic rises in athlete salaries over the past few years. Furthermore, we can expect "a sharp increase … in the value of existing libraries of programmes, especially those which can be supplied to services targeting narrow market niches" (p. 137). We have seen evidence of this already with ESPN's launch of ESPN Classic as well as pro league broadcasts of "classic" games, which may target an aging audience demographic at very low unit cost.

With another NBA season looming, fans like me are busy obsessing over questions like "What's the right round in fantasy to pick Kobe?" and "Should Damon Stoudamire change his first name to Cheech?" Still, I'm going to miss the off-season. Thanks to NBA TV and ESPN Classic, I spent my summer watching old games on the treadmill. As my TiVo skills progressed, I could bang out a two-hour game and 600 calories in 40 minutes. There wasn't a point all summer, not one, when I thought, "My god, I've gone insane."

– The Sports Guy

But we shouldn't just look to traditional communications media for libraries of programming. Nike's campaign for the new Air Zoom Huarache 2K4 provides an excellent example of a different medium that can go to the archives for content. The "Chronology" and "Evolution" spots show the last 30 years of their basketball shoes: the first is an audio ride through various basketball broadcasting milestones and the second shows an organic decomposition and renewal of their basketball products against a concrete urban backdrop. This cultural recycling can provide a competitive advantage for Nike against the flavour-of-the-week brands that challenge the giant for bits of market share.

Brent Musberger, on the ABC telecast of the Bucks-Pistons playoff matchup, notes that Milwaukee rookie point guard T.J. Ford is "on the bench in civilian clothing."

The Hummer — a vehicle created for military operations — becomes object of mass consumption, leisure choice of LeBron James, and image-sign on sports telecasts.

"At HUMMER our customers can't be labeled by color, gender or creed. HUMMER is a mindset. A mindset of daring, self-assured, entrepreneurial people who see HUMMER as being a reflection of themselves — unique," — Randy Foutch, HUMMER marketing analyst.

A sample from some of my earlier writing on Foucault and sport:

The apparatus of sexuality certainly has a great deal of overlap with that of the sport star system, but of particular note are the competing ideas of feminine beauty and muscularization. Just after a Foucault reading session, I turned on The Simpsons to see an episode in which Marge becomes a bodybuilder. Of course, feminine bodybuilding is not portrayed well at all, with an aggressive, assertive, "unattractive" Marge going on a steroid rage at the end of the show before agreeing to return to her docile self. The point here is that Marge's particular form of productive power (ie. through weightlifting) is superseded by a (gendered) sport star discourse that says a woman may not be overly muscular-athletic and a beautiful star athlete at the same time.

The WWE attempts to merge the two discourses by creating cartoonish, hyper-muscular and hyper-mammarized "pin-up" stars, meant to be simultaneously muscular-athletic and beautiful.