Star high school players Demar Dorsey and Christian Green go to Michigan and to Florida State on National Signing Day, pushing Florida State to the rank of best recruiting class in the country while being snubbed at the same time.
Coming off a season which saw the loss of legendary Head Coach Bobby Bowden to retirement, Florida State came back strong with Demar Dorsey and Christian Green, but then Dorsey switched today. Demar Dorsey is a Miami Boyd Anderson star defensive back who decided he was more comfortable away from home. But I think there's something more to this unprecedented wave of big school snubs that I will explore later.
Christian Green was penciled in at Georgia, but then dropped the Dawgs for Florida State. And Georgia feels like it's being picked clean: Da'Rick Rogers dumped them for Tennessee and DB Nickell Robey was reportedly headed to USC.
More on this crazy National Signing Day. Stay tuned.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Cal's Tosh Lupoi credited with getting Keenan Allen to Cal from Alabama
Ask how the University of California managed to get the nation's best defensive back Keenan Allen to commit to Cal, when as recently as at the Shrine Game Allen was all set to go to Alabama, and ESPN will point to Tosh Lupoi.
Lupoi's Cal's second year defensive coach and 2005 Cal graduate, is considered an ace recruiter and has the numbers to prove it. Lupoi's landed six commitments, two of them, including Allen, are five-star players. (The other was defensive end Chris Martin in 2009 who put down Notre Dame for Cal.).
In addition to Allen, Lupoi basically mined the state of North Carolina. Cal landed QB Zach Maynard, Keenan Allen , and Linebacker Chris McCain. All from Greensboro, NC.
As I write this, Coach Tedford's holding his press conference, which you can view live here:
Tosh Lupoi (BearInsider photo)
Lupoi's Cal's second year defensive coach and 2005 Cal graduate, is considered an ace recruiter and has the numbers to prove it. Lupoi's landed six commitments, two of them, including Allen, are five-star players. (The other was defensive end Chris Martin in 2009 who put down Notre Dame for Cal.).
In addition to Allen, Lupoi basically mined the state of North Carolina. Cal landed QB Zach Maynard, Keenan Allen , and Linebacker Chris McCain. All from Greensboro, NC.
As I write this, Coach Tedford's holding his press conference, which you can view live here:
National Signing Day: Cal Football gets Keenan Allen, best defensive back in USA.
Not to be outdone by its San Francisco Bay Area NCAA college football rivals The Stanford Cardinal, the University of California has formed what Rivals.com calls the 11th best recruiting class in America and got the best defensive back in the country.
The star of the class is Keenan Allen, a 6-3 195 lbs defensive back from Greensboro, NC. He' considered the best defensive back in America by Rivals.com and is the fifth best player in the country. Allen runs a 4.56 40 and is described as a tall, rangy athlete with the moves of a jungle cat.
Keenan Allen dropped the Alabama Crimson Tide to sign with Cal. Here' a video on Allen:
More soon on Allen's jump from Alabama to Cal.
The star of the class is Keenan Allen, a 6-3 195 lbs defensive back from Greensboro, NC. He' considered the best defensive back in America by Rivals.com and is the fifth best player in the country. Allen runs a 4.56 40 and is described as a tall, rangy athlete with the moves of a jungle cat.
Keenan Allen dropped the Alabama Crimson Tide to sign with Cal. Here' a video on Allen:
More soon on Allen's jump from Alabama to Cal.
National Signing Day 2010: Stanford lands 4th best QB in Nottingham
National Signing Day 2010: the Stanford Cardinal lands the 4th best high school QB in America in Brett Nottingham. In doing so, The Cardinal is in the same conversation as BYU, Alabama, and Texas, all of which secured the top three quarterbacks in the U.S.A according to Rivals.com.
Fresh off a 2009 season that saw the Cardinal go to its first bowl game since 2001 and present a Heisman Trophy runner-up in Running Back Toby Gerhart, Stanford is poised to have its best recruiting class in years.
Brett Nottingham is 6-4, 210 lbs and is a local-to-Stanford San Francisco Bay Area product from Monte Vista High School in Danville, CA. Barry Every of Rivals.com compares him to Tim Tebow in size and build. (Let's hope he doesn't cry after big bowl losses!)
Here's a video view of Stanford's newest QB:
Stay tuned.
Brett Nottingham
Fresh off a 2009 season that saw the Cardinal go to its first bowl game since 2001 and present a Heisman Trophy runner-up in Running Back Toby Gerhart, Stanford is poised to have its best recruiting class in years.
Brett Nottingham is 6-4, 210 lbs and is a local-to-Stanford San Francisco Bay Area product from Monte Vista High School in Danville, CA. Barry Every of Rivals.com compares him to Tim Tebow in size and build. (Let's hope he doesn't cry after big bowl losses!)
Here's a video view of Stanford's newest QB:
Stay tuned.
Will Comcast fire NBC's Jeff Zucker? Ad execs hope so
The word on the street, according to Nikke Finke, is that Comcast will fire NBC NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker "within minutes" of Federal approval of the Comcast takeover of NBC.
That news could not come sooner for advertising executives, who are still really in a snit over Zucker's decision to green-light the failed Jay Leno Show, and the awful way Zucker handled Leno and Conan O'Brien.
On AdAge, the ad industry news publication, negative articles about Zucker are common, the most recent one calling for President Barack Obama to fire Jeff Zucker. And this article has bite:
Ad execs blame Jeff Zucker for what they refer to as the "destruction of NBC" and most important what they see as the terrible Jay Leno Show. When it was announced that NBC would move Leno back to his old place, AdAge reported that anyone would be better than Jay Leno at 10 PM.
Ouch.
And MediaLife doesn't pull any punishes either. In a blog post that is a view of NBC from an ad buyer's perspective, Louisa Ada Seltzer writes:
The post is followed by an unflattering survey and quotes of media buyers telling Zucker to resign or calling him an idiot, and all for his bungling of the Jay Leno Show.
But in fairness, all of this is happening in the storm of a terrible, and just recovering, economy which has been weak for two years. Zucker's actions would have been judged critically in a good economy, but in a bad one, they look like career suicide.
Stay tuned.
That news could not come sooner for advertising executives, who are still really in a snit over Zucker's decision to green-light the failed Jay Leno Show, and the awful way Zucker handled Leno and Conan O'Brien.
On AdAge, the ad industry news publication, negative articles about Zucker are common, the most recent one calling for President Barack Obama to fire Jeff Zucker. And this article has bite:
...the man who engineered this fiasco and the general demise of NBC, Jeff Zucker (president and CEO of NBC Universal), still, bizarrely, has his job. In fact, he doesn't even really seem to fully grasp that he's at fault. When the New York Times, in a page-one, above-the-fold story, declared that "the network is in shambles" and that its "overall finances are crumbling" (from $1 billion in profit less than a decade ago, to a projected $100 million loss this year), Zucker offered the paper this defense: "We live in a society today that loves a soap opera. Three months ago it was David Letterman. Six weeks ago it was Tiger Wood's problems. Today it's NBC's problems."
Um, sure, Jeff. Tell yourself that. All of us who think you're blindingly incompetent, and have been for years, are just serial bitches and bullies who pick our targets for sport. It's merely NBC's turn, is all; this, too, will pass. Suuuure.
Ad execs blame Jeff Zucker for what they refer to as the "destruction of NBC" and most important what they see as the terrible Jay Leno Show. When it was announced that NBC would move Leno back to his old place, AdAge reported that anyone would be better than Jay Leno at 10 PM.
Ouch.
And MediaLife doesn't pull any punishes either. In a blog post that is a view of NBC from an ad buyer's perspective, Louisa Ada Seltzer writes:
The pain NBC has suffered through its mismanagement of the entire mess will remain a scar on the brand, and in the end it's really accomplished nothing in the way of fixing its primetime problem by moving Leno from the 10 p.m. timeslot, where his weeknight strip had done so poorly.
The post is followed by an unflattering survey and quotes of media buyers telling Zucker to resign or calling him an idiot, and all for his bungling of the Jay Leno Show.
But in fairness, all of this is happening in the storm of a terrible, and just recovering, economy which has been weak for two years. Zucker's actions would have been judged critically in a good economy, but in a bad one, they look like career suicide.
Stay tuned.
Oscar Nominations: Hitler's pissed off about Star Trek
Oscar Nominations: Hitler's pissed off about Star Trek.
Star Trek, Director J.J. Abrams widely acclaimed "reboot" of the popular television and movie science fiction series, was widely expected to be one of ten Oscar "Best Picture" nominees. Instead it was snubbed for the competition, causing a loud, Worldwide outcry from Star Trek fans. The movie was marketed as "Best Picture Material."
Still, it didn't win. Avatar, Hurt Locker, District 9, and the surprise entry, The Blind Side, were named to compete for Oscar, Best Picture.
What happened and why Star Trek didn't get a nominations is anyone's best guess. But one thing is clear: Hitler's not happy. Just as he was unhappy about a number of life's happenings, lets just say he was more than a little worked up about Star Trek's miscue:
Stay tuned.
Star Trek, Director J.J. Abrams widely acclaimed "reboot" of the popular television and movie science fiction series, was widely expected to be one of ten Oscar "Best Picture" nominees. Instead it was snubbed for the competition, causing a loud, Worldwide outcry from Star Trek fans. The movie was marketed as "Best Picture Material."
Still, it didn't win. Avatar, Hurt Locker, District 9, and the surprise entry, The Blind Side, were named to compete for Oscar, Best Picture.
What happened and why Star Trek didn't get a nominations is anyone's best guess. But one thing is clear: Hitler's not happy. Just as he was unhappy about a number of life's happenings, lets just say he was more than a little worked up about Star Trek's miscue:
Stay tuned.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
2010 Academy Award Nominations - Oscars Social Networking Grade = D
In evaluating the 2010 Academy Award Nominations announcements from a New Media perspective, Oscar gets a social networking grade of "D". The criteria is based on reach, Twitter top tag entries, and search trend impact.
Considering the collective movie audience and television and marketing exposure, the 2010 Academy Award Nominations Announcement Event should be the top news of the day, dominating Google Trends, Twitter top hashtags, live stream views, and with all of that, total reach. Instead, Oscar's outdone by "Punxsutawney Phil 2010" or "Groundhogs Day".
That today, February 2nd 2010, is "Groundhogs Day" is no excuse for Oscar to be punked by a couple of groundhogs, but that's what's happening.
The seeds of this problem are various, starting with the fact the Oscar telecast is on one station, ABC early in the morning. If you missed ABC's telecast, or weren't forced to look at the Oscar Nominations by it being on, say, ABC, NBC, and CBS, you didn't know what happened until an hour or so after the event was done.
If three networks had the Oscar telecast, the resulting search activity, and thus the trend metric, would have been greater. But even with that, Oscar's New Media platform was too small to carry the search trend, and still is. Why?
The Oscars are not on Twitter.
That's right. A simple visit to The Oscars website shows what The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences thinks about New Media. It's stuffed down in the lower right corner, where it reads "Connect with the Academy" and has a link to its RSS feed, Facebook page, and YouTube account.
That's it.
Heck, I'm all over the place - Oscar should be too. AMPAS does a massive disservice to its members and sponsors with this awful online production. A well-done Twitter account could gain as much as 1 million followers and cause a total hashtag domination, pushing Phil the Groundhog to second place or no place. But if Oscar's not on Twitter, it's at the mercy of other organizations to push its message and some of those, like Sony, don't have enough Twitter followers themselves.
At just over 7,000 followers as of this writing, Sony has less than this blogger on Twitter. So, it can't really carry its message in such a way as to impact a hashtag list in seconds, and it can't do it for AMPAS' to as wide an audience as is needed to create a lasting buzz that carries for days.
And when Oscar does have a New Media platform to use, it does not have the right strategy. The live stream was such that the chat was on Facebook, so your updates became the chat. Great. Now, my friends are wondering how much coffee I had to produce a pinwheeling set of updates. But beyond that, the live stream had only 15,000 viewers at best.
What Oscar should have done is worked with YouTube on the live event. That would have gained hundreds of thousands of viewers and netted a high search trend impact. Didn't happen.
On YouTube, Oscar's presentation is much better, but again, it has just 29,000 subscribers, when it should have several hundred thousand. The problem is AMPAS doesn't upload enough videos considering the material it has, and it prevents video from being embed on websites. Frankly, that's really a bad decision.
There's not a good, metric-based reason for AMPAS decision to basically prevent its own brand from being presented across the web. None, not one.
Did you see the Steve and Alec video? Only 908 people did as of this writing. If it were embedable, that number would be in the thousands. It would gain more video views that Oscar could then convert into YouTube Partner revenue.
To close what could have been a book, Oscar's dropped the ball on the one event that can and should serve as a catapult to high ratings on Oscar night. The problem is AMPAS does not take New Media seriously and may very well be the reason why I didn't get the press credential AMPAS sent for me to fill out.
Beyond me, AMPAS needs to fix its New Media problem for 2011. It's harming Academy members and sponsors and will continue to do so unless it turns this around ASAP.
Stay tuned.
Considering the collective movie audience and television and marketing exposure, the 2010 Academy Award Nominations Announcement Event should be the top news of the day, dominating Google Trends, Twitter top hashtags, live stream views, and with all of that, total reach. Instead, Oscar's outdone by "Punxsutawney Phil 2010" or "Groundhogs Day".
That today, February 2nd 2010, is "Groundhogs Day" is no excuse for Oscar to be punked by a couple of groundhogs, but that's what's happening.
The seeds of this problem are various, starting with the fact the Oscar telecast is on one station, ABC early in the morning. If you missed ABC's telecast, or weren't forced to look at the Oscar Nominations by it being on, say, ABC, NBC, and CBS, you didn't know what happened until an hour or so after the event was done.
If three networks had the Oscar telecast, the resulting search activity, and thus the trend metric, would have been greater. But even with that, Oscar's New Media platform was too small to carry the search trend, and still is. Why?
The Oscars are not on Twitter.
That's right. A simple visit to The Oscars website shows what The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences thinks about New Media. It's stuffed down in the lower right corner, where it reads "Connect with the Academy" and has a link to its RSS feed, Facebook page, and YouTube account.
That's it.
Heck, I'm all over the place - Oscar should be too. AMPAS does a massive disservice to its members and sponsors with this awful online production. A well-done Twitter account could gain as much as 1 million followers and cause a total hashtag domination, pushing Phil the Groundhog to second place or no place. But if Oscar's not on Twitter, it's at the mercy of other organizations to push its message and some of those, like Sony, don't have enough Twitter followers themselves.
At just over 7,000 followers as of this writing, Sony has less than this blogger on Twitter. So, it can't really carry its message in such a way as to impact a hashtag list in seconds, and it can't do it for AMPAS' to as wide an audience as is needed to create a lasting buzz that carries for days.
And when Oscar does have a New Media platform to use, it does not have the right strategy. The live stream was such that the chat was on Facebook, so your updates became the chat. Great. Now, my friends are wondering how much coffee I had to produce a pinwheeling set of updates. But beyond that, the live stream had only 15,000 viewers at best.
What Oscar should have done is worked with YouTube on the live event. That would have gained hundreds of thousands of viewers and netted a high search trend impact. Didn't happen.
On YouTube, Oscar's presentation is much better, but again, it has just 29,000 subscribers, when it should have several hundred thousand. The problem is AMPAS doesn't upload enough videos considering the material it has, and it prevents video from being embed on websites. Frankly, that's really a bad decision.
There's not a good, metric-based reason for AMPAS decision to basically prevent its own brand from being presented across the web. None, not one.
Did you see the Steve and Alec video? Only 908 people did as of this writing. If it were embedable, that number would be in the thousands. It would gain more video views that Oscar could then convert into YouTube Partner revenue.
To close what could have been a book, Oscar's dropped the ball on the one event that can and should serve as a catapult to high ratings on Oscar night. The problem is AMPAS does not take New Media seriously and may very well be the reason why I didn't get the press credential AMPAS sent for me to fill out.
Beyond me, AMPAS needs to fix its New Media problem for 2011. It's harming Academy members and sponsors and will continue to do so unless it turns this around ASAP.
Stay tuned.
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