Hockey webcasts - why is RPI so good?

[phillysportsfan]

We arent the only ones complaining about video feed quality, here Penn/Princeton fans are complaining about their feeds for basketball
http://boards.basketball-u.com/showtopic.php?tid/10281/pid/78420/post/last/m/1/fbb_session_id/2826360235d4765eb11d68e68a9c0dae/#LAST

[billhoward]

The people in Cornell athletics aren't evil. They may be overwhelmed. They may make poor choices and improve or fix them over time. What Ivy athletics programs are the other athletics directors looking up to these days? It's Cornell's. The embarrassment at Cornell athletics (the one we kind of blow right past) is the state of the football team. A lot of people could send messasges, "Andy, you're a jerk for showing mediocre web video" and have zero impact, as opposed to a bunch of people sending e-mail, mentioning how much they love the webcasts and wish it could be even better sooner (and BTW we were impressed by how the RPI webcast appears to be near TV quality)."

Remember Al Capone's upbeat thought about politeness: You'll get more with a kind word and a gun that you will with a gun alone.

[phillysportsfan]

The people in Cornell athletics aren't evil. They may be overwhelmed. They may make poor choices and improve or fix them over time. What Ivy athletics programs are the other athletics directors looking up to these days? It's Cornell's. The embarrassment at Cornell athletics (the one we kind of blow right past) is the state of the football team. A lot of people could send messasges, "Andy, you're a jerk for showing mediocre web video" and have zero impact, as opposed to a bunch of people sending e-mail, mentioning how much they love the webcasts and wish it could be even better sooner (and BTW we were impressed by how the RPI webcast appears to be near TV quality)."

Remember Al Capone's upbeat thought about politeness: You'll get more with a kind word and a gun that you will with a gun alone.

Honestly as many mistakes as athletics makes Andy sure does know how to hire good coaches which is the most important thing he can do. Maybe some of the long time alumni can comment on whether there has been a better last few years overall for Cornell sports than these past few years, right now we have great mens/womens hockey, mens basketball, mens lacrosse, wrestling, and probably some other non spectator sports

[bamnet]

Does Team RPI get paid? Or are they student volunteers? I think that's the difference right there.

RPI TV doesn't make a dime for their hockey game filming; everyone involved in the past weekend's streaming operation is a student volunteering to stick around their first weekend of spring break.  The club has been filming RPI hockey games for 5-6 years now and has developed a lot of pretty neat tools (like Andrew mentioned) to make it look as good as possible.

My limited interactions have been that Athletic Departments tend to partner with a video provider like Redcast/Sidearm, B2, or alike based on a sales pitch and the potential to earn a very small amount of revenue.  Only afterward do they figure out exactly who's going to get stuck moving the camera.  RPI TV approached it backwards: they've been filming hockey for a long time (regardless of if the Athletics Dept wants to stream it) and had gotten pretty good at it.  This weekend they decided to try streaming it online to see how that worked out...

[billhoward]

Let me get this straight: A bunch of students, who obviously don't know as much as real adults, decided to try your luck at streaming this stuff online and managed to do a better job - beginner's luck? you hit the Web on a good weekend? you're still pissed at getting shot down by Cal Tech? - than commercial services with a couple years in the business? Incredible.

Have y'all ever considered outsourcing your services?

[upperdeck]

All the emails in the world dont matter unless the Ath dept cares.. And every conversation I have had with them and people higher up the food chain has made it clear they don't care about much of anything execept the public perception about how good certain teams are.. FBall is clearly the main concern, all the other issues that Ath dept's need to manage (web sites, marketing, tickets, merchandise, publication, the facilities, etc) they could care less about and it many instances have people in charge of them who dont care either.. for many its a job, how good a job they do is less important than that they keep it.

[mnagowski]

Let me get this straight: A bunch of students, who obviously don't know as much as real adults, decided to try your luck at streaming this stuff online and managed to do a better job - beginner's luck? you hit the Web on a good weekend? you're still pissed at getting shot down by Cal Tech? - than commercial services with a couple years in the business? Incredible.

Have y'all ever considered outsourcing your services?

Here's the thing, Bill -- if they outsourced their services, they would probably want to be paid for it -- because they certainly aren't going to be filming every Cornell men's lacrosse and women's basketball games for free. They would also one day graduate from RPI and want to put food on their table, a roof over their head, and decent level of health insurance. And if you think through all those costs then RedCast would all of a sudden cost more than $70 a year per person.

So the more important question in my mind is why does Cornell have 3 times as many undergraduates as RPI yet can't seem to cultivate a similar level of student interest?

[upperdeck]

You cant do for free what Cornell doesnt want people to do. Cornell would  now rather be losing money on Redcast and do all the sports than produce better quality and some of the sports. I think people here think they can do both but it would require delgating to some new group or keep track of details them selves.. this way they know it gets done and can wash thier hands of it.

[billhoward]

Some comments here have departed the rational plane. Others are on active runway. Why isn't Cornell doing first class video? It's not an active conspiracy. In some cases, perhaps the message-bearers have had encounters with Cornell before and the two don't see eye to eye, so their message is discounted. More importantly, the people who can make a difference such as Andu Noel are bombarded with requests to do this or that, to have Lynah declared a nuclear-free zone, to have Steve Donahue welcome Drake at Slope Day, to balance the athletics budget, to say hi on the phone to an alum who's about to write a check for $25,000 to Cornell athletics, to have lunch with the Boiardi family when they're in Ithaca, to think about replacements for Steve Donahue in case he's on the move, to find money to snowplow Schoellkopf Field on account of all the snow, and so forth. This is a classic Important / Not Urgent managerial issue (like buying life insurance) that doesn't bubble to the top.

If there were to be a five-person committee to investigate and recommend, do you think Andy Noel would want any of us on it, or do you think he'd say we're all hotheads and unable to play well in a sandbox?

[mnagowski]

If there were to be a five-person committee to investigate and recommend, do you think Andy Noel would want any of us on it, or do you think he'd say we're all hotheads and unable to play well in a sandbox?

To be fair, I don't think we're all hotheads. And some of us can even agree on some things some of the time.

What I find interesting is that SlopeTV has been streaming free video of some of the basketball games this year. The video has been shaky and hard to follow, so I have typically watched RedCast instead, but the powers that be obviously had to approve SlopeTV's operation. So what's not to stop a similar organization from attempting to freely stream the hockey games?

[KenP]

IF WE WERE HOTHEADS THERE WOULD BE FAR MORE UPPERCASE LETTERS IN THIS EMAIL THREAD

[billhoward]

IF WE WERE HOTHEADS THERE WOULD BE FAR MORE UPPERCASE LETTERS IN THIS EMAIL THREAD

Ken, you wouldn't qualify on account of all the words are spelled right. Although you didn't get the chance to misuse your and it's. And you got there not their right.