Sigh

Courtesy of John Ourand at the Sports Business Journal.

Cortaca More of a Party than a Game

It is a lovely turn of events that I am able to cover a football team in Ithaca that has had its ups and downs over the two years I've been on the beat for The Ithacan. I will be covering an NCAA Tournament game for a team that has a decent chance of making a run to at least the Round of 16. I also covered two Cortaca Jug games.

Those two games have been the amongst most dramatic games I have covered in any sport and credit goes to both teams for playing both games tremendously. I also want to give respect to Fran Elia and the Cortland State Sports Info Department for showing class and professionalism, he sets an example that the rest of the University unfortunately does not follow.

80 people were arrested in Cortland after 'celebrations' went too far and made us wonder what is the definition of a riot. I put 'celebrations' in quotations because of the new mantra that exists around colleges – Ithaca is guilty of this too but not nearly as much – 'win or lose, we still booze.' What happened on Cortland's streets was bound to happen regardless of the result of the game.

Don't get me wrong, I was looking forward to last weekend just as much as anyone else was. However, the reason we look forward to these weekends has little to do with the event they are centered on. In the past decade, Cortaca attendance has dropped from 12,620 at Butterfield Stadium in 2001 to 6500 last Saturday. Part of the reason this has happened is because Cortland State fans have stopped travelling.

It is standard operating procedure for Ithaca to use temporary bleachers on the opposite half of the field to accomodate all travel needs. The way things are going, it may be a smart move for facilities to recycle those bleachers for scrap. Red Dragon fans have stopped travelling to the game because of, ironically, ICTV. ICTV — aided by a webstream and Time Warner Cable syndicating the broadcast —set a record number of viewers for their Cortaca broadcast. This allows for bars to open early and show the game. In Cortland, bars were open at 8 a.m. with a $25 cover. They were packed in an hour.

That is the environment in Cortland now. The game itself has become second-fiddle to the event. The event is a party weekend that is circled on our calendars and we take pride in it. We ran a story celebrating the Cortical and NYCortaca parties that got a lot of play, even a mention from Bomber Head Coach Mike Welch. My preview of the game itself, not nearly as much buzz.

Cortland and Ithaca have opposite cultures and quite frankly, winning the Cortaca Jug means more to each student there than to each student here. Cortland State is a school that has athletics at the forefront of its student life while Cortaca may be the only instance that a sports are the big deal on campus here. In a younger life, I salivated to be at a school like Cortland because I wanted to turn up, be at football games, have a sign featured on College Gameday etc. Now that I see that for every Saturday, there is a Monday.

Cortland State students are spending Monday still not fully recovered from the weekend, Cortland residents clean up and Cortland State's president is trying to save face. All after a season-defining win. This is going to be the future of Cortaca and most people do not seem to mind. The straws are building on the camel's back and I fear that as long as Cortaca remains about the party than the game, the straw that breaks the camel's back will fall.

Then regardless of who wins and regardless of who boozes, everyone loses.

Google's Ambiguous Nobility

For all its criticisms lodged its way, Google has done one thing that can go down as being undoubtedly good – centralize self-generated content distribution.

I'm using Blogger, a Google product, to write this. Though I probably won't make a dime off of this post, there are others who have profited off of their content thanks in large part to Google. As the New York Times examined, it is viable to use YouTube, another Google product, as a way to turn a hobby into a business.

There is an ambiguous element of nobility to this. Google is a central hub and distributor for self-generated content. The content is created by users who have genuine interest in their subject and, initially, did not anticipate to make money off of it. Now that it is evident that users can make a money, the gold rush begins. This was Google's goal and it is, for the most part, a good goal to set.

However there is a drawback – censorship.

How you feel about Google's decision to buck to China's pressure on censorship is dependent on how principled you are about free speech. If you fiercely defend free speech, the decision is a disillusioning one. If you are more pragmatic, then you can understand the decision. Seven Levy's In the Plex, chronicles the pressure Google faced internally and externally before making the decision and it brings up a relevant point.

As Google continues to grow, it will be faced with several dilemmas. The Chinese censorship issue illustrated the issues a foreign company like Google has trying to provide a genuine service in a government unlike the one it is based in. The current data collection issue is an issue of trust.

Google genuinely believes they can provide as many services as possible. Centralized self-generated content distribution is one, Maps and Gmail are others. We know that in order for them to effectively do this, they will need data. However, how much data we allow them to have depends on how much faith you have in Google.

I have reasonable faith in Google. Enough so that I use Google Chrome, Gmail and an Android phone. I do acknowledge the potential issues that can arise. But for the most part Google's services have allowed for people to express themselves and get noticed – just like this guy.