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Showing posts with label soccer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soccer. Show all posts

Saturday, July 21, 2007

SI Writers write about "The Best Game I've Ever Seen"

Sports Illustrated writers' "Best Game I've Ever Seen"

Sports Illustrated pulls off a great concept by asking all their writers to write about the "Best Game I've Ever Seen".

There are lots of entries, and a huge range of sports are covered. Of course, since there are sports writers at all of the major sporting events, all the most recent Greatest Sports Events are covered, like the 1987 Canada Cup hockey tournament, Buster Douglas over Mike Tyson in 1990, Tiger's first title in 1996, one of Michael Jordan's most famous playoff victories and Flutie's Hail Mary victory in 1984. For me, it's often the more obscure sports that make for the most interesting reads, such as Italy's Palio horse race, an Olympic tennis match in Athens, Olympic heavyweight boxing trials, 1995 cross-town rivalry in college hockey, and an NCAA college wrestling tournament.

The concept works, as the writers pour out their passion onto the page, and explain what makes the most famous, and not so famous, sports events so important to their lives and their careers.

Today's Link source: Linkjockey Tumblr

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Web 2.0 masses tackle English Football ownership

My Football Club – Own the club and pick the team

My Football Club is an online effort to sign-up 50,000 soccer (oops, I mean football) fans with the aims of buying an English football club.

When you sign up on the website for free, you will be asked to vote for the club that the group should attempt to purchase. After 50,000 people sign-up, everyone will be asked to pay £35 each (for a total of £1,375,000), and the organizers will start negotiations with the club at the top of the list.
Instead of having a manager, all decisions will be made by the 50,000 owners online, including the selection of the head coach, player transfers, player selection, team strategy and more. Of course, £1,375,000 will not be able to purchase a top tier team, but it's hoped that within 5 years, the myfootballclub.co.uk team could get promoted to the Premiership.

This is a really unique idea in professional sports, and I’m sure a lot of people will be watching on both sides of the Atlantic. If it works, co-operative ownership could be used by community leaders to acquire and resurrect struggling local sports franchises.

I'll do the free sign up, and we’ll see what happens. It’s hard to imagine a League Two team with 50,000 attentive owner/fans not succeeding. Because of the attention, it's easy to imagine that the club would at least be able to attract much larger sponsors than its peers.

Today’s Link source: Springwise newsletter