QB Throws Behind-the-Back Pass for a 2-Pt Conversion?!

By Nick

Well, now I've seen everything. This is Will Briscoe of Central High School (Louisiana) throwing a behind-the-back pass for a 2-pt. conversion in the midst of a 58-0 blowout victory against Zachary High.

Style points? I would say so...

(via totalprosports.com)

Lax Can't Hack It

By Dan

Of collegiate schools with football programs, the median revenue for Lacrosse is -$640,000 according to the NCAA. I was surprised, though not entirely shocked, when I saw the rest of the figures: almost all sports - other than basketball and football - are in the red, as reported by the NCAA and the Wall Street Journal article titled One Bowl Game Buys Many Lacrosse Sticks. In fact, baseball - which generates tremendous revenue in the majors: $5.5B in 2007 - is losing the most money at -$709,000.

At Overtime Media we're well aware that basketball and football are often the big ticket items for colleges. We've also seen, at the other end of the spectrum, how absolutely dedicated club teams can be (I'm looking at you MCLA). Why is it that some sports are able to generate so much revenue while others, with arguably equal passion and dedication from the athletes, have to be subsidized by the money making programs? More intriguing in my mind though: why do the sports burning through cash and not generating profits survive?

Passion. It's the passion of the athletes that keeps the machine running. Today's student athletes (those folks who manage a full time career in sports on top of their class work) become the coaches and administrators of tomorrow, with a clear commitment to keeping their athletic departments going. They are the engine of the machine now, and provide the support (in time and money) for it later.

With so many athletes going on to lead very successful business careers, I posit that those graduates who remain involved in college sports should be able to generate profits.  And they do, for athletic programs as a whole.  This leads me to conclude that schools intentionally have big ticket teams subsidizing the rest.  Basketball and football pull in enough cash to allow the other sports to act as loss leaders, maintaining interest in their school and parity within the leagues.

But I think we can do better.

On Over Engineering

By Dan

During our meeting with Fred Wilson last week he mentioned something fairly obvious about our company: we have too few engineers (i.e. just me). He was making the point that one particular path for our company could see it thrive (netting a few million a year in profits) with a small 10-12 person staff (7 engineers or so). But it started me thinking about it from the other angle: what if we had too many engineers?

I firmly believe one of the reasons startups create some of the most beautiful and expertly crafted products is that they have limited resources with which to produce them. Startups therefore, by necessity, build only to create value and build the smallest solution possible. This viewpoint is bolstered by 37signals’ Getting Real, Paul Graham in many of his excellent essays, and the principle of least effort (or path of least resistance, if you will). It’s why Rob Pacheco (a chef) says, “to find the most efficient way to accomplish a task, give it to the laziest guy in the kitchen.”

Conversely, when a startup grows (or starts) too big, it produces decreasingly beautiful products. Engineers, by definition, like to engineer. An average engineer - which most of them are, by definition of the word average - will not achieve perfection. Since these engineers have to do something with their time, the company they work for ends up with an over-engineered product (by definition!). It is the rare exception (i.e. Apple) that can produce many beautiful products by the labor of many engineers.

-A Lazy Engineer

Originally posted here.

Thoughts about "the winner takes it all"

By Reece

Love this post below from @bijan. He’s absolutely right here.

In our experience building HomeField, we’ve learned of a number of competitors who offer feature X or feature Y or Z. Some of them are great features (and some aren’t). But we’ve purposely tried to avoid the ‘feature creep’ that so often spreads software too thin. Applications can so easily lose focus and don’t know what they’re trying to be. They don’t know what their core purpose is.

Instead, we’ve taken a customer focused approach - starting out very simply and letting our users tell us where to go. This helps us avoid wasted time on features that aren’t necessary, and it keeps the application focused on its core value proposition.

Originally posted at reecepacheco.com

bijan:

It’s only Thursday but I’ve already heard the expression “the winner takes it all” at least five times this week.

The concept is where the winner of a market dominates the entire market. Think ebay for auctions, amazon for online shopping, google for search, facebook for social networks etc.

Often advocates of the “winner takes it all” theory also tend to believe that the best way to compete with the incumbant is too build a better/bigger mousetrap or create the “blah blah on steroids”

I don’t think about markets like that.

Often times the winner doesn’t take it all. And the best way to compete with the winner (or current market leader) is by either doing less (not more) and focusing on one thing and doing it very well. It’s actually the opposite of the “blah blah on steroids” approach.

Few examples come to mind:

1. Jobs.

The market leader for some time was Monster. This is a huge market but it’s certainly not a winner takes all market. Instead we now have powerful companies building tremendous value by focusing on different opportunities in the job market with different business models and different experiences (ie Craigslist, LinkedIn, The Ladders and Indeed).

2. Smartphone

Apple built the amazing iPhone, iTunes & App Store. Those things work together in a smooth & beautiful way. They are killing it right now. The alternative: Not an iPhone on steroids. Instead, Andy Rubin and Rich Miner created Android. A free, open source alternative. Absolutely brilliant. Google understood that vision and bought the company very quickly. I’m extremely bullish on Android’s opportunity with mobile devices.

3. Social networking

Facebook is the market leader for sure. But its not winner takes all because its just too big of a category for innovation & creativity. Right now my social network for music isn’t on facebook (instead it’s on hypemachine and tumblr). My photo social net is on tumblr and flickr. My social net for television is Boxee. My information social net is Twitter. FourSquare and Twitter are my social net for places & events. The list goes on.

There are many more examples (gaming, ecommerce, payments, browsers, etc) but this post is already getting too long for it’s own good. So let me try and bring this puppy home with one last thought.

At the end of the day, I believe that entrepreneurs are just too creative, too ambitious and too optimistic to allow for a winner takes all world.

Video: Amazing goal by 9 year old hockey phenom

By Reece

Absolutely unreal goal by a 9 year old hockey player from Maine at the Boston Garden (via @PTMaddigan).

I love sports.