LPGA Commissioner on Social Media, Equality

5 Questions

Families are cutting their sports budgets in the face of a recession, and women's amateur and professional sports struggle for equality more than 35 years after Title IX was passed.

The Ladies Professional Golf Association continues work on equality and marketing their product in an increasingly online world.

Their commissioner graciously took time in the days just before Christmas to talk with the Communication & Cognition blog. We appreciate it!

CAROLYN BIVENS is the commissioner of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) and the first female commissioner in the organization's history. Bivens previously served as president and chief operating officer of Initiative Media North America, the largest media services agency in the United States and part of the Interpublic Group of Companies. Bivens also has held key positions at USA Today and Xerox. In 2002, Electronic Media magazine named her one of the most powerful women in television. Source: LPGA.com.

1) What is the most important issue facing professional women's athletics today?

Equity and parity are two very important issues affecting future growth and success opportunities for women's sports. Whether it is playing the same courses (fields, stadiums, etc.) or the level of prize money and sponsorship dollars, women athletes and leagues must close the gaps with their male counterparts. We are making progress, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

2) What unique challenges do you face marketing international stars to a largely American audience?

The LPGA has an international membership, which we celebrate, and week-in and week-out the leaderboard is lit up with players from the United States and around the world. We must continue to build player profiles and awareness levels to help introduce the U.S. viewing audience to the great talent and personalities of the LPGA -- no matter where in the world they are from. World-class talent, engaging personalities and increased media exposure will help reach the U.S. audience. A consistent TV platform, which we are working very hard on for 2010 and beyond, would help immensely with these efforts.

3) How much will Annika Sorenstam be missed?

Annika is one of the greatest golfers in history, one of the greatest athletes in history, and one of the greatest role models in our sport. She continues to set the bar for excellence in all statistical categories, and yet to judge Annika only by her on course performance, is to miss the essence of a woman who is the ultimate role model. She's set an incredible standard for the talented young contingent of players who are following in her footsteps on and off the course. While we'll miss her in our tournaments and on our leaderboards, we will look forward to her continued contributions to the game – as a Global Ambassadors in support of the International Golf Federation’s bid to reinstate golf as an Olympic sport, a USGA ambassador, a host of a junior golf tournament as well as her many other business endeavors. As Annika begins an exciting new chapter in her life and in her career, we're also eager to enter a new chapter with Annika, who will always remain one of the LPGA's and one of our game's greatest ambassadors.

4) Is the LPGA involved in marketing through social networking sites?

We recognize the importance of reaching today’s youth and our global fanbase via social networking sites, and continue to explore opportunities for us in this emerging arena. We recently have established Facebook, Twitter and YouTube sites.

5) I'm the father of four young girls? Any tips for getting them interested in golf?

Golf is a sport that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. It also is a wonderful family sport whether one plays or just watches. With four young girls, I recommend you bring them to an LPGA event where you can enjoy hours of family fun in the outdoors watching the best players in the world compete. Also, introducing them to the game via a junior clinic – at an LPGA Tour site or in your hometown -- can be lots of fun as they may make new friends while learning a new sport. I’d also suggest you reach out to your local LPGA Teaching and Club Professional who could perhaps create a family learning session where the whole family can participate together. It’s a sport of a lifetime, and although I didn’t pick up the sport until I was in my 20s I am so glad I did, for the benefits of health, friendships and business are worth it!

Links:

• http://www.lpga.com
• Follow the LPGA on Twitter: @lpga
• Find the LPGA on Facebook
• And watch LPGA video on YouTube: lpgavideo
  

The 2009 LPGA schedule includes 31 events in 10 countries (learn more here). Hopefully you'll be watching. The season kicks off Fed. 12-14 at the SBS OPEN at Turtle Bay (Turtle Bay Resort, Palmer Course) in Kahuku, Oahu, Hawaii.

Home Town Ends 20 Year Title Drought

I have a very weird relationship with televised sports.

Mostly, I hate watching sports. This is because I am insanely competitive, yet I can do nothing to influence the outcome of a sporting event.

So watching a favored team play is much like laying on a bed of nails, or at least that is what I imagine. It hurts.

During most high-pressure sporting events, I just keep thinking "I want this to be over. I just want to know who wins." I also yell, scream and occasionally throw things. And I don't drink much, so I cannot even blame the beer.

Really I hate the anguish.

But I watch anyway.

The search function on this blog does not work as well as I like, but I am sure that I have told this story before (one part here). Growing up, I attended Pembroke Country Day School in Kansas City, which later became The Pembroke Hill School. The school is located, literally on State Line Road in Kansas City, Mo. However, I used to park my car in a school parking lot located across the street in Mission Woods, Kan.

Since it's a private school, students come from both sides of the state line. This created an intense rivalry between fans of the Missouri Tigers and the Kansas Jayhawks. If there were any fans of the K-State Wildcats (where I would subsequently earn a master's degree), I was not aware of it at the time.

Parsing my allegiance is no easy task. I was born in Missouri, but I came home from the hospital to Kansas. My first driver's license was in Kansas, as was my first job. I earned my first college credit in Kansas, and if not for a complete lack of talent, I once intended to walk on to the KU football team.

So, mostly I am a Kansan. And I grew up a Jayhawk hoops fan.

The blossomed, not surprisingly, in 1988 when KU won the national title at home at Kansas City's Kemper Arena.

This national title came fewer than three years after the Royals won the world series.

It was a good time to be a teen-age sports fan in Kansas City.

Little did I know that it would begin a drought of two decades.

By my account, the Chiefs have suffered early playoff defeats after three 13-3 seasons. The Royals have won about 12 games since 1985, and Kansas State found a way to will themselves out of the national title game in 1998.

Derrick Thomas died following a stupid no-seatbelt automobile accident.

The NCAA left town.

Buck O'Neill got shafted by the baseball hall of fame.

And Roy. Oh, Roy.

Roy's a whole separate chapter of therapy.

Roy found new ways to break hearts in Kansas. He cried every March. And despite conference titles, Final Four appearances, and an embarrassment of McDonald's All-Americans, the NCAA title evaded Roy.

I was living in Manhattan, Kan., in 2000. That was the first time the University of North Carolina came calling. For what seemed like an eternity, I was glued to the Internet. Would Roy stay or would Roy go?

He stayed. And he said he'd retire a Jayhawk. Retire. His word. Not mine.

Three years later, he bolted after another of his Kansas teams choked to Syracuse in the 2003 title game.

If you're not from Kansas City, you'll never understand. Or maybe you will. Maybe you're from someplace you love that other people make fun of. Maybe you've explained 100 times that, yes, the streets are paved.

Kansas City is not No. 1 in a lot of things. Barbecue, yes. But we have Kansas Basketball. The first coach was the guy who invented the game. Invented! James Naismith if you're scoring at home. He was followed by Phog Allen. Dean Smith played there. Many others.

So when Roy jilted Kansas, I cannot quite explain the emotion. I felt the ultimate betrayal.

Follow the logic.

Dean Smith was a Kansas boy. He played at Kansas. He got a job coaching at North Carolina. He built his own program. When Kansas called, he said "no."

Roy Williams was a North Carolina boy. He played at North Carolina. He got a job coaching Kansas. He built his own program. When North Carolina called, he should have said "no."

But he didn't.

And it would have hurt if he had left in 2000, but he said he was going to "retire" at Kansas. No one forced him to say that. And one thing about how I was raised in Kansas City: I was taught that my word meant something.

Even worse was watching Williams win the title at UNC in 2005. I even watched in person when Roy came to town and beat my Indiana Hoosiers.

Some of that pain was exorcised when Kansas punished North Carolina in the 2008 national semifinals. For a long time against Memphis, I thought that revenge against Williams was going to have to be good enough. The Jayhawks seemed content to have exorcised a few demons.

Every call seemed to go against Kansas until Joey Dorsey fouled out. Then Mario Chalmers hit the 3 that no Jayhawk will ever forget to send the game into overtime after being down 9 with just more than 2 minutes remaining.

Overtime had its drama after KU built a small lead. There was failure to block out after a free throw (Lou Henson was surely thinking of 1989 if he was in attendance). Then a slip out-of-bounds. Really? An elite collegiate athlete, and all you have to do is remain vertical, but no?!?!?!?

In the end, the 20 year drought ends. Kansas wins its 3rd national title, and my home town's drought is over.

This might even be worse, however. I went into Monday's game assured that there was no way a Kansas City area team could win. They never did.

Now my hopes are up.

The Royals are off to a fast start. How soon until they end my sure-to-be-short-lived optimism?

Delusional Quotation: Big Head Barry

A blurry photo of "Big Head" Barry at bat against the Colorado Rockies on May 26, 2007. He grounded out as part of an 0-for-4 performance.

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"This record is not tainted at all. At all. Period," a delusional Bonds said after the game. "You guys can say whatever you want."

Thanks, steroid boy. Thanks for your permission to point out the obvious.

You were on your way to being one of the best baseball players of all time.

Then you saw all of the attention directed at the also-likely-steroid-fueled attention directed toward Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Then you turned to the needle. Or "cream." Or "clear."

That was some flaxseed oil, BALCO Barry.

I've plotted Bonds' annual home run production versus his running average. Clearly, he was getting better as time marched on. Then something changed.

See if you can spot where the "Game of Shadows" began.

May Lightning Strike Greedy NFL Network

Six months sped by since the last real football game.

Such a drought meant that even the meaningless Hall of Fame Game intrigued me. I was excited to watch it Sunday night.

Then I found out that it was on the stupid NFL Network.

Damn!

And I do not blame my cable provider at all for not carrying this upstart attempt at blackmail. One hundred percent of the blame falls upon the network.

This is just another example of wanton greed and total disregard for the fans.

Damn you, NFL Network. Damn, you Big Ten Network.

All special sports networks deserve to fail miserably, and I hope that their sponsoring institutions suffer for creating them.

Without fans, sports mean nothing. It's time for leagues to start respecting that.

Irvin's Touching Speech Wins Over Detractor

A story I wrote in 1998 about former NMSU head football coach Jim Hess, who was then a scout for the Dallas Cowboys. Hess was in El Paso, Texas, for a scrimmage between the Cowboys and the Oakland Raiders.

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There was a time when I hated Michael Irvin.

You see, growing up I never thought much about the Dallas Cowboys. They were in an NFC town, and I was born and raised in an AFC town.

If anything, I would have told you that the only real football team from Dallas was the Dallas Texans, who became the Kansas City Chiefs.

Then in July 1992, I moved to Phoenix. According to Google maps, it's a 1,067 mile drive from Dallas to Phoenix. So you might not expect to see many Cowboys fans there.

You'd be wrong.

I was amazed at the number of Cowboys fans. They were everywhere. Everywhere! To put it in perspective, the 1992 Cardinals averaged 33,911 fans in the seven home games that were not the Dallas Cowboys. For the Cowboys game, 72,439 people showed up.

And the Cowboys were good then, too. Damned good.

So as part of my fervent anti-bandwagon tendency, I ended up hating the Cowboys.

I was busy then, going to school, working, and getting married. There wasn't much Internet or sports radio to speak of then, so I didn't actually know much about the Cowboys and Irvin. And I certainly didn't read newspaper articles about them.

But I hated them.

Things got worse when I moved to New Mexico, which is really Cowboy country. Many of my friends from the NMSU student newspaper were Cowboys fans. They'd watch the games in the newsroom on Sunday afternoons.

I didn't see the games. As always, I was too busy working. Writing a column. Editing copy. Something.

Anyway, the Super Bowl victories fanned the flames. The hatred grew. I hated only the Oakland Raiders more than the Cowboys, as any Kansas City native will understand.

In some bit of irony, I covered a Raiders-Cowboys at the El Paso Sun Bowl in 1999 as sports editor of the Las Cruces Sun-News. As a journalist, I was forced to be neutral. Perhaps that began to soften the hate. Given the timeline, Irvin and I probably were on the same field that day. Sadly I just don't remember.

Fast forward to 2007, and in another small bit of irony, I'm living in Texas. I've grown to respect Irvin as I learned of his work ethic. It's hard to hate someone universally acclaimed as the hardest worker on the practice field.

Too many times these days, you read of millionaire prima donnas such as Allen Iverson who think that practice is beneath them.

Not so with Michael "The Playmaker" Irvin. His will to win was unmistakable. And I've just got to respect someone for whom the fire burns within.

Watching Irvin as a television analyst, I've gotten a bit more respect. Sure, he is guilty of catering to his cronies, but I enjoy listening to him. Perhaps due to his father's roots as a pastor, Irvin has an attention-grabbing speaking style.

Saturday night Irvin was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He spoke for 26 minutes. Newspaper accounts say that tears began to flow during minute 21. That's just like a sports writer to note the clock on crying, don't you think?

Irvin gave a moving, impassioned speech. He could have ducked his many off-field troubles. He did not. As if he were facing a strong safety in the middle of the field, Irvin lowered his shoulder and went right through the tough times.

On the same night, Barry "BALCO" Bonds tied Hank Aaron's record for career home runs at 755.

These men could not be more different. Bonds is aloof, arrogant, and a detractor to the locker room. And he will not address the steroid allegations.

Irvin led the locker room. He "never let the team have a bad practice," as team owner Jerry Jones acknowledged during his introduction of Irvin.

So on Saturday he stood in front of the crowd and acknowledged letting down his wife, his children, and his family and friends. He spoke of his struggles to be a better father every day.

I was touched.

The last few shreds of hate blew away last night. In there place are respect and empathy. Everyone knows what it is like to let down those you love, and hopefully every parent knows what it is like to want to be a better parent.

I hope that a lot of would-be 14-year-old athletes were watching last night and learned something.

Coach Donovan, I Understand Leaving Angst

When I am at work, decisions come easily. Working on deadline at the New Mexico State student newspaper, someone would shout a question. The answers always came easily. The same was true running the sports department at the Las Cruces Sun-News. And to a large extent, it's true in the lab today.

Personal decisions, however, are another matter.

Plenty of people are vilifying University of Florida/Orlando Magic/? coach Billy Donovan because of his waffling on the NBA job.

To quickly catch you up, Donovan turned down powerhouse Kentucky to stay with the Gators earlier in 2007. That alone won Donovan a place in my heart. But less than two months later, the winner of the last two NCAA championships bolted for the NBA and a $5 million+ annual salary.

He seemed excited.

Then it came time to say goodbye. Not so easy.

Donovan changed his mind. He wanted to stay at Florida. However, he actually inked the Magic deal (unlike his Florida contract upgrade). So now Donovan dances for a release.

I've heard some pretty harsh words for Donovan. You won't hear them from me. Such decisions tear me apart.

Just about a year ago, I left Ohio State for Texas Tech (read here). In many ways, this was an easy decision driven by family considerations. However, in many other ways, this was a gut wrenching decision.

My kids had to move schools ... but they'd be closer to their grandparents. There was one Ph.D. student willing to move to Tech, but there was another very talented incoming Ph.D. student staying behind. Here we have the opportunity to build a Ph.D. program, but building is hard work.

It's been about 56 weeks since I was offered the job here. And I'm pretty sure that there has not been a single week go by where I did not wonder -- at least for a moment -- whether I made the correct decision. More often than not, the answer has been "yes." But the vote has been far from unanimous.

And that's not a property of Ohio State or Texas Tech. Instead, it's about the fact that there are many great things about each place. Choosing either place meant leaving a lot of great things on the table. And as I am sure is the case with the Orlando Magic and the Florida Gators, the great things are not the same at each place.

Thus one is left to decide which great things matter the most.

My decision was a difficult one. And I had spent only a year at Ohio State. Although I made some great relationships -- which were very difficult to leave behind -- I had hardly won two national championships with another finals appearance over the past 11 years.

Leaving "home" always should be difficult. It's still easy for me to recall how I felt when my dad and I drove the moving truck out of Las Cruces on the way to Albuquerque in November 1998. Sure, my career was expanding. But I left a lot of good things behind in Las Cruces.

And I have not forgotten those good things almost nine years later.

My guess is that Donovan realized that he never would have forgotten those good things in Gainesville.

And I, for one, get it.

NBA's David Stern Is an Idiot

Update: 7:46 a.m., May 17: In what I find to be a bit of hilarity, keyword analysis shows lots of traffic coming to this blog off the search terms "David Stern idiot." Hilarious. Mr. Stern, you have lost this public relations battle. Poorly played.

Listening to David Stern try to defend the suspension of the Phoenix Suns' Amare Stoudemire and Boris Diaw made me lose any respect that I had for the man.

The Spurs have played a cheap series, and their cheap shot led to Stoudemire and Diaw walking toward injured teammate Steve Nash.

No punches were thrown.

San Antonio loses a bit player for two games.

Phoenix loses an all-NBA star and his backup for a pivotal game 5 tonight.

This is insanity.

The criminal is rewarded, and the victim is punished.

It's wrong, and a real leader would have made it right.

Help Your Company: Hire a Spokesperson

Buckeyes 27, Hoyas 23. Halftime.

I love sports. I especially love college sports. So I watch them on television.

And I see a lot of awards presented. At halftime, I just watched Chevrolet General Manager Ed Peper present Texas freshman Kevin Durant with the player of the year award.

Good for Chevrolet. Good for the Longhorns. Bad for Ed Peper.

I'm sure Ed Peper could smoke me in a board room. He's probably a business whiz. But he looks like some bowling alley reject on camera. He's awful.

Get him out of there. Hire a spokesperson. We and other mass communications programs across the country are turning out public relations graduates. Hire one. They come across as professionals on camera. Not schlubs.

Buckeyes 29, Hoyas 29. Gotta go!

In Sports, Life We Cannot Be Impartial

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I am fascinated by ESPN.com's SportsNation polls.

I seldom voted in online polls until I realized that you can see a state-by-state breakdown after you vote.

Now I vote in every single poll. And the results are always the same: Voters cannot be objective about their sports teams.

Even if you know nothing about college sports, I bet you can identify the states with schools in the Big Ten, Big 12, and Pac-10.

The correlation is not perfect. Iowa has both a Big Ten and a Big 12 school. The Big Ten school is bigger, and the state tipped that way.

The neutral states of the Mountain Time Zone sided with the ACC, as did Southeasten Conference and Big East Conference states.

Utah, Idaho, Nevada, and Hawaii stayed "regional" in the west with the Pac-10.

Colorado -- whose Buffaloes are in last place in the Big 12 -- defected and sided with the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Pennsylvania -- whose population base is on the east coast and whose Nittany Lions are in last place -- shunned the Big Ten in favor of the ACC.

Best is a subjective thing in sports. We always see the bad calls made against our teams and minimize those that go our way. More often than not, the better team wins. But not always ... and especially not in sports such as football and college basketball where you are one-and-done in the post-season.

If we are to believe the 224,076 voters at the time that I took this screen shot, the ACC is best, followed by the Big Ten, Pac-10, and Big 12.

Looking at a more objective measure, the so-called conference RPI (ratings percentage index), the standings look as such:

Conference W/L PCT RPI
1 Atlantic Coast Conference 132-33 .800 .5861
2 Southeastern Conference 127-38 .770 .5851
3 Pac 10 Conference 90-26 .776 .5733
4 Big Ten Conference 116-38 .753 .5730
5 Big East Conference 159-54 .746 .5615
6 Missouri Valley Conference 79-32 .712 .5597
7 Big XII Conference 119-40 .748 .5593

According to the RPI, ESPN.com picked the wrong teams altogether. My beloved Big XII, apparently, deserved to be at the bottom of the pile. But it looks that population of the respective states undeservedly carried the Big Ten above the Pac-10.

This will fuel the fire of SEC fans who claim that an unfair bias in Bristol, Conn., keeps their conference from getting proper respect on ESPN and ABC sports.

Passionate fans. That's one of the reasons that I love sports. I do not make the mistake of talking politics at work, but I can talk sports every day. We can argue about the best teams without the hatred that is now an inseparable part of politics.

Now I've got to get back to celebrating. My childhood team, Kansas; my master's alma mater, Kansas State; my doctoral alma mater, Indiana; and current employer, Texas Tech, all won yesterday! Sadly my New Mexico State Aggies fell short in an upset of Top 10 Nevada.

I Have Stood at 18th and Vine

I grew up in Kansas City. I loved that town. When anyone talked trash about K.C., I used to attack as if someone had insulted my mother.

I'm not sure what my parents did to instill this pride, but I loved that town. I can remember riding ski lifts in Colorado as a teen or pre-teen extolling the virtues of Kansas City on some poor stranger.

I spent almost every free minute from ages 15 to 18 (a weird farm-based quirk allows kids in the Sunflower State to get a restricted license at 15) driving the streets of that city. That's almost all we did was drive. Here. There. Everywhere.

I probably should have been mayor of Kansas City.

In the spring of 1992, my dad took a job in Phoenix, Arizona. Things had not been going well in life (a story for another day), and an 18-year-old version of me decided to abandon my hometown and move to the Southwest with my parents. Luckily for me, my eventual wife, Emily, decided to join us for the move.

Reading this, you probably think, "people move." And it's true. And that makes it especially difficult to explain how unlikely it was that I would ever leave Kansas City. I remember the stunned reaction of a close friend at the time.

"But you love Kansas City," she said when learning of the pending move.

Emily and I overloaded her Chevy Cavalier and headed down I-35 on July 18, 1992. Although we were excited about the adventure, it was a difficult drive.

As you may know, Phoenix has many paradise-like qualities, and there was much to love. But given the depth of my roots, there was much to miss.

Already a Chiefs fan, the football team somehow came to embody my hometown. The more I missed home, the more the Chiefs came to represent what I left behind. I lived and died with the team that year.

They don't carry many Kansas City games on television in Phoenix. And that was before ESPN.com even existed (I think). Our house in Scottsdale was well beyond the Chiefs radio network, so I was stuck watching the stupid 10 minute ticker during some other NFL game that meant nothing to me.

One day I ventured to a sports bar with my half brother Lance. We watched the Chiefs play Denver, which was a mistake. Denver is far closer than Kansas City to Phoenix, and neither Lance nor I are what you would call "good sports." He and I are pretty different characters, but he is one person that I know detests losing as much as me.

The Chiefs seems to have it wrapped up at Mile High that day, but John Elway did what he always seemed to do to Chiefs' coach Marty Schottenheimer. There were a lot of obnoxious Denver fans there, and I am still not sure how we got out of there without coming to blows. I don't watch many games at bars anymore.

The Chiefs had a decent season, finishing 10-6 and headed to San Diego to face a Chargers team they had twice defeated during the regular season.

If that game had been at a Vegas table, I would have been "all in." I overinvested in that game like an Enron pension fund.

Of course the damned Chiefs lost. They got shut out, 17-0. It killed me.

When paired with my existing homesickness, that game caused some serious depression. I wasn't myself again for weeks. I worked for Super Shuttle at the time, and I can remember standing on the curb at Terminal 2 shortly after the game (it may have been the same day; memory fails me). As sophomoric as it may sound now, it seemed difficult to avoid assault incoming passengers from San Diego.

As someone who studies media effects, I try to never forget that experience.

I wrote this post as I watched the Chicago Bears advance to the Super Bowl. Congratulations, Chicago (star linebacker Brian Urlacher grew up in Lovington, New Mexico, just 2 hours from here). It struck me when the announcers said that Chicago fans had waited 21 years to return to the Super Bowl.

That rung a little hollow to me. The Chiefs have not been to the Super Bowl in my lifetime, and I'm just a bit older than 21.

Three times in recent years the Chiefs have gone 13-3 during the regular season only to lose their first playoff game, twice to the Indianapolis Colts. On my pessimistic days, I think that the Chiefs exist solely to torture my soul these days.

Two weeks ago, the Chiefs lost again to the Colts in the playoffs. I couldn't watch. You see, I learned something that day in January 1993. There's only so must emotional angst to which I will voluntarily expose myself. When I expect to lose, I don't watch.

Sports media research does not get much respect. I still say that it should. Very few things in life reach right into your core and pull you around like strong identification with a sports team. And the media link us to those teams.

If you ever get the chance to go to Kansas City, I recommend it. It's not the hick cowtown that you might think. More fountains than any city other than Rome. The Plaza shopping area is an outdoor shopping area patterned after the sister city in Seville, Spain.

I like the place. I still read the Kansas City Star 0nline every day.

Why Do I Care About Coaching Searches?

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- It started with Roy Williams. Round 1. You remember, the time he promised to stay at Kansas. And then did. And then left a couple of years later for North Carolina.

I will always hate Dean Smith for that. He was a Kansan. He grew up a Jayhawk. He played at KU. Won a national title after playing in Phog Allen Fieldhouse. But in the end, his loyalty was with his adopted home state. So he guilted Roy Boy into leaving. In doing so, he denied Roy Williams the opportunity to have the legacy at Kansas that Smith enjoyed at Carolina.

Nonetheless, I sat glued to the Internet this morning waiting for Nick Saban to go to Alabama. The wait was killing me. And now I know. Having read the Internet and watched ESPN much of the day, Saban either did the right thing or is the worst thing to come around since the black plague.

Seems trivial now. But I wore out my F5 key this morning.

Ugh. Media dependency.

Three-point Clinic Keeps 880 Waiting

We drove back to Lubbock today so that I could watch the Red Raiders take on UNLV.

Instead of elevating coach Knight to sole possession of most NCAA basketball wins, the Runnin' Rebels put on a three point clinic.

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Coach Bob Knight takes the floor before the game in search of win No. 880.

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Big names were on hand. Here Dick Vitale calls the game for ESPN2.

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Former UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian was on hand. "Tark the Shark" won an NCAA national title in Vegas in 1990.

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The final score was disappointing. However, the night was one not to be forgotten. The sold-out United Spirit Arena was rocking. It was the first time the arena reminded me of Assembly Hall in Bloomington.

We'll try again for win 880 on New Year's Day.

Homers Mark New Twist to Red, Blue States

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Technically I do not study public opinion. Because it is a branch of communication research, it interests me nonetheless.

I am interested in how various publics come to identify with objects, especially made-up ones such as brands and sports teams.

As a former sports journalist, I try not to be a homer. That is, I try to be objective about my sports teams. But as we know from experimental psychology, I cannot. I love what I love.

Checking my regular news sources today, I noticed an interesting poll on ESPN.com. Through their Sports Nation section, they were conducting a virtual college football playoff. The first poll pitted Ohio State against Oklahoma. The Buckeyes received the No. 1 seed, and the Sooners received the No. 8 seed.

As the seeds suggest, 87% of Americans thought that OSU would win this match-up. Although I do not often vote in these polls, I put in my click for the Bucks. Then I noticed the "View Map" button.

You can see the result above. State-by-state voting results show that sports fans in every state think the Bucks would win ... except one. Defying logic, 76% of Oklahomers think that the Sooners would win.

Instantly, a light bulb went off in my head. Identification!

Later -- but not now -- there was a poll pitting No. 2 Florida versus No. 7 Wisconsin. This was even more fascinating. You see, The Badgers play in the Big Ten (11).

Here the results were not so overwhelming. Most of the country favored the Gators. Not Wisconsin. Or Minnesota. Or Michigan. All Big Ten states, they were blue. Fellow Big Ten states Indiana and Ohio were grey. Fifty percent of Hoosiers and Buckeyes sided with their conference over the seeding.

Fascinating stuff, people!

Our hearts beat out our minds. I'd bet that some of these results would change if people had to lay money down. But when it comes to siding with our friends, we're all a bit Homer.

Football, Violence Chapter Published

Today marked a pleasant surprise. I received a copy of the book, "Handbook of Sports and Media," in which I have a chapter with former Indiana colleagues Dr. Walter Gantz and Zheng Wang.

The chapter outlines our investigation of the relationship between televised football and domestic violence (read more here). The project began more than 4 years ago, and it is excellent to see the volume in print (despite a copy editing problem with the authors and my affiliation).

If you are interested in sports and media from an academic perspective, I highly recommend the book, which is published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Now that my copy arrived, I can read the many other interesting chapters.

Officially, our citation is (according to the table of contents):

Gantz, W., Bradley, S. D., & Wang, Z. (2006). Televised NFL games, the family, and domestic violence. In A. A. Raney & J. Bryant (Eds.), Handbook of sports and media (pp. 365-381). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.