Article on New Athletics Website

[www.cornellsun.com]

I know everyone around here tends to get overly excited about plans that Althetics puts into place , but thought people might be interested in some comments made in this article. Most notibly:

"Most notable among these changes will be links to streaming audio and video coverage of games, an interactive Hall of Fame, and an extensive history of Cornell athletics and each team.........."We're going to pick and choose [which games we stream] at first to see what the interest is," Hartigan said. "We want to offer the best product, and we hope cost isn't a huge factor in that, but sometimes the money just isn't there.""

We can all speculate what this all means.

To me, it means Cornell is willing to blow 100 years worth of game video streams so it can build a bigger trophy case for the football team - like they have anything to put in it...

[Q]Robb Wrote:

To me, it means Cornell is willing to blow 100 years worth of game video streams so it can build a bigger trophy case for the football team - like they have anything to put in it... [/q]
They can also fill mucho display cases with clippings of basketball losses to the likes of Quinnipiac.

I hope New Haven-native and former Cornell b-ball great Walt Esdaile didn't get to witness that embarrassment in person.

That would be cool: every minute of every Cornell game in every sport digitized and put online. Instead of reading posts from old timers (who probably weren't there either, given how small the facility was in 1970) recount online how Dan Lodboa's three third-period goals beat Clarkson for the 1970 NCAA championship ... you could see it happen.

The NFL a year ago ran a pretty neat commercial (well, not as memorable as the Desperate Housewives promo) that goes something like this: A guy tells his buddy in a bar, or the guy tells a NFL executive, "I've got this cool idea - put every minute of every NFL game on the Web, and then everyone could see everything." And the voice-of-god voiceover or the NFL exec says, "We're doing it." Trouble is, the NFL doesn't want to make this an NFL museum of the airwaves with a $5 admission fee good for the next 365 days. It probably wants to (I hate this term but I use this term) "monetize" its valuable properties and I shudder to think how much they think they can soak us for.

Within the decade you could stream high-definition video over a broadband connection (actually, archives are standard def or worse), so technology is not an issue. Even right now, using technology like CinemaNow does to deliver movies, if you're willing to watch on a 5 to 30 minute delay (a buffer to deal with vagaries of Web delivery), you could see an almost-live Cornell hockey game at decent TV resolution (okay, there's an oxymoron), but better than the current crummy Web streaming. And for archives, that does mean you could, with a slight delay, see the fullest resolution the game was recorded at.

Heck, I'd kick in $25 to help with the digitization project. Leaving the university only, say, $1 million short of its goal. Even digitizing videotape takes time and money, to say nothing of taking old films into the digital realm. Seriously, it's a good idea. Lots of people are doing it. The Cornell Sun has a project under way to scan its 124 years of archives. Maybe the Cornellian should do it too. Maybe someone should scan every Cornell football program (imagine reading 100 years of "Welcome alumni, students, and guests" messages from Cornell presidents.)

Two or three big problems with doing this big-time:

1) Rights issues. Does the estate of Sam Woodside get compensated for using his voice when Cornell resurrects his 1960s Cornell broadcasts on WHCU? Or Adam Wodon from last year? Maybe there are no tapes of old radio broadcasts and that's that. It's a gray area and authors / announcers sometimes have an inflated opinion of what their old material is worth. Now, unless you're a star, your compensation for the broadcast typically includes future Web rights, and if there are future rights, they're spelled out. For old stuff, if somebody wants $100 for his life's work, okay, there's money for that. $10,000? Hardly likely unless you're talking about the announcer for Oklahoma football in the 1970s. If the game was taped by ESPN sports, does Cornell have the rights to an archival copy? Maybe for internal use but not redistribution. Maybe the NCAA is savvy enough to negotiate rights that let it web-rebroadcast old championship games, but did the NCAA negotiate parallel rights for the participating colleges to stream it? I think the NCAA thinks about the NCAA first and foremost, not about the NCAA member schools.

2) Who cares issues. How many people are going to watch how much old video? If you want to see Ed Marinaro's brilliance, like the 5 TDs in his first game against Harvard sophomore year, you probably want to see a 3-minute highlight reel, not the whole game, and not in one sitting every one of his 4,715 career rushing yards. If a videotape exists of the 1970 NCAA hockey final -- does it? I hope it does -- I could see watching it once at an eLynah boosters dinner. But how many other events are going to be like that? Probably a tape of the 1977 lax championship game for a reunion of the team at its 30 anniversary.

3) Production / editing / indexing cost issues. Digitizing is the killer cost. But you also have to make the material accessible. That means indexing and identifying and editing down to the stuff people really want to see: highlights, not whole games or seasons. Or, if you're a wrestler, it would be great to have archives of each of your matches, but you just want those clips to show your children, not necessarily of your teammates' matches. You could also run up costs creating stats that go with the game (when McKee makes his 10th save, a little counter inside makes that info available; or a link to each goal, so you can fast forward to the game’s scoring), or linking to the text play by play of the footgall game created in the press box. Or making available all the cameras shots, not just the over-the-air feed (that’s a reach). Or linking from the TV broadcast of the football game to the coaches’ scouting films. Or if you’re scanning old photos, identifying the play (if possible) and the players, because maybe an offensive lineman wants to see photos of himself making a block but doesn’t want to wade through all 1,000 posted photos of the 1991 season.

I hope it happens. It won't be cheap. Cornell is certainly right to start off small, with key games in key sports. And for any games going forward, let's hope Cornell locks in the rights it needs, so you can forever watch David McKee's Hobey Baker season in 2006.

[Q]billhoward Wrote: Instead of reading posts from old timers (who probably weren't there either, given how small the facility was in 1970) recount online how Dan Lodboa's three third-period goals beat Clarkson for the 1970 NCAA championship ... you could see it happen. [/q]Hey, speak for yourself (I guess that's what you did ), some of us were really there.

New signature: Owner of the NEW #14 Dan Lodboa jersey [Q]so you can forever watch David McKee's Hobey Baker season in 2006. [/Q]Hockey Gods forgive you.

Both www.davemckee.com and www.davidmckee.com are already taken. Too bad.

Reading the whole article, I didn't see the link between the history section and the streaming video section. My guess is that they are just talking about something like the real-time (almost) streaming video that that we have now, not digitizing the archives of game films.