Slingbox on the iPhone

This morning I noticed a new update was available for my iPhone in the App Store for Slingbox.  I about fell on the floor when reading the release notes which simply said “enables 3G”.  Over the past several months AT&T has enabled (allowed Apple to enable) MMS on the iPhone and now has given their blessing to stream audio/video over their network via Sling.  So today on my drive to work, I streamed television onto my phone not necessarily because I wanted to listen to it as I drove down the road, but because I could.  Technology is a wonderful thing when it’s allowed to be an enabler.

For those that don’t know, Slingbox is a device ($150) that you can install in your home, that allows you to access your television lineup from your computer or phone.  In 2006 I spent several weeks in South Africa during the month of March and it drove me nuts that I couldn’t watch any of March Madness from my computer.  When I got home I did a little research and discovered Sling Media.  Over the next three years I pretty much lived the life of a consultant out of a suitcase, and the purchase of the Slingbox was a no-brainer.  In the summer of 2009 Sling was added to the App Store, the gotcha however was that AT&T/Apple only allowed media to stream via a Wi-Fi connection.  Today’s update now allows the phone to stream video via Wi-Fi or 3G.

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the Texas Longhorns?

Only the BCS could be dumb enough to open their annual bowl selection show by displaying advanced mathematical equations on a chalk board.  We get it, your solution has nothing to do with a football field, but rather uses a bunch of crazy algorithms averaged with human pollsters to determine the best team in the land.  Ari Fleischer, what ever the BCS is paying you, keep up the good work on the WMD like propaganda – dare I say “a playoff system will never work in college football”!

Back in early November I suggested that the nightmare scenario might hit the BCS if TCU and BSU were to run the table and complete undefeated seasons.  Little did I know the perfect storm would actually be averted by Texas winning the Big XII Championship thanks to 1 second being added back to an expired clock after an officials review (after a very bone headed and lackadaisical decision to run one last play by Brown/McCoy, et al.).  None the less, my two predictions have come true.  The BCS in all their arrogance believe they have the best two teams playing in the championship game, and maybe they do, but tell that to the other three undefeated teams that don’t get a chance to prove it on the field.  Secondly, the BCS has elected to match BSU and TCU up in the Fiesta Bowl (dubbed the separate but equal bowl), robbing these teams and the fans  a chance to measure up against the BCS’s chosen ones.

This was an interesting decision by the BCS, they could have pitted TCU and BSU against the so called powerhouse conferences to show the world how undeserving they are.  But, given the performance of non-AQ conferences in the past, the BCS has learned their lesson and they don’t want to risk both TCU and BSU going undefeated on the year.  So the safe move was to ensure only one other undefeated team, assuming Cincinatti were to lose to Florida, and rest on the fact that since they beat another non-AQ team, the winner of the Texas/Alabama game will be the national champion in everyones eyes.  This is the most chicken sh!t move I’ve seen to date from the BCS.

A good article (and hopefully book to follow) was presented by Dan Wetzel of Yahoo Sports debunking the absolute crap that the BCS spews out via their propaganda machine regarding the inability of a playoff system to work.  I agree with him that someday this problem will be fixed, because greed and nonsense usually lose out.  I suspect that one of the best bowl games of the year will be BSU and TCU in the Fiesta Bowl.  I also suspect that the BCS will face this very issue again next year when BSU (who lose 1 starter to graduation) and TCU (who lose 6 starters to graduation) return to the field to once again be treated as second class citizens to the BCS conferences – but this time they will not have to climb from #18 and #20 respectively in the pre-season polls to get their just dues.

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1. Fans of NCAA college football will feel cheated by the BCS’s cartel like assignment of the teams worthy of playing in “their” bowl games.
2. The BCS will once again claim victory and success in getting the two best teams into the National Championship game.

History will repeat itself, guaranteed, like it has year after year.  The odds say it will repeat this year, but if not then next.  Rarely has there been a year that the stars aligned for the BCS and they have had a real argument that their system really worked.  And usually that argument is after the fact when undefeated teams that don’t get a chance to play for the championship lose their bowl game.  The BCS should be concerned with getting it right after the games are done in November, not January.

The BCS (Bowl Championship Series) is a coalition, self-appointed coalition mind you, that states the purpose of:

“match[ing] the two top-rated teams in a national championship game and to create exciting and competitive matchups between eight other highly regarded teams in four other games.” – BCSfootball.org

If I read that mission statement without knowing anything about the BCS I would think, ahh, the BCS runs the March Madness equivalent of college football.  Hardly, you must pay closer attention to what the BCS is, note the “highly regarded teams”.  It’s all about money, the haves and have-nots, and by controlling the money in college football keeping it in the desired conferences, you can also control the lack of parity.  One of the keys to college football is recruiting, and don’t think for a second that money (facilities, equipment, staff, tutors, etc.) doesn’t play a huge role.  The problem for the BCS is there have been two flies in their ointment, the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) and the Mountain West Conference (MWC) placing undefeated teams into BCS games (not the national championship) in four of the past five years (winning three of the four games played) and with a month of football left to play they each have undefeated teams that could once again join the party.  The nightmare scenario for the BCS this year is if both TCU and Boise State end the year undefeated and both likely ranked in the top 8 in the BCS polls, we shall see how things unfold.

The BCS has self promoted propaganda that is laughable at best, one argument is that the entire season is a playoff to the National Championship (BCS Doesn’t Need Intervention).  In the past 5 years there have been 4 teams that finished the year undefeated and didn’t get the chance to play for the national championship – don’t tell me the system works.

Excuses can be made why any system doesn’t work, but I find it ironic that NCAA DII and DIII have a very successful playoff system in choosing a national champion.   And yes there is history and tradition of the bowls themselves, but make them part of the solution and let them host the playoffs.  The money isn’t going to dry up and go away if the NCAA moves to a playoff system, the problem is that the cartel would lose control of where that money goes.

It’s time to break the ties between conferences and bowl games, it’s time to end the OPEC like control of college football, it’s time to institute a college football playoff system that allows the argument to be settled on the field.  Greed will eventually kill the BCS, but probably not until after many more years of failure.  The BCS could do what’s right and adopt a system that gives every team the chance to win the National Championship and divide the money fairly.  That’s right, give the George Mason’s of the world the chance to have a dream run to the final four – because in today’s arrangement Cinderella doesn’t even get an invite to the ball.

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