Sports Ramblings News and Notes

It has been awhile since I’ve had a chance to blog due to my contracting projects at the moment. Below are a couple of quick items I have noticed recently:

Tom Brady Buys a Condo in NYC

It has been reported for a while that during the off-season, Tom Brady regularly visits NYC to go out in the city to relax. When was the last time you saw Brady in Boston? I can’t. Bostonians, for some reason, are more interested in their sports personality than the Hollywood types. Brady can’t go anywhere in the city without being mobbed. Brady can go to NYC and no one bats an eye. I believe that was one of the main reasons he bought a condo there.

As we all know, Boston is an extremely small city. Not much that goes on in this city stays quiet – especially if you are the quarterback of three Super Bowl winning teams. Why would anyone care about this? Professional athletes who move to Boston always complain that they can never go out in the city to relax – this needs to be addressed somehow in the future.

Fantasy Hockey – The Next Level of Fantasy Sports

You have to be impressed with the NHL’s marketing department. They are trying a variety of different ideas to generate interest in the upcoming season. I am glad to see they are starting to understand the importance of fantasy sports and its role in generating more NHL viewers. In a recent e-mail I received, the NHL wrote “And, most exciting of all, WATCH your players perform. NHL.com's free fantasy game is the ONLY on-line fantasy game that provides post-game highlights of the players on your roster!”

Do you really need to see game highlights of your fantasy players? Personally, I don’t, but if it draws traffic to sport and the NHL Web site, then it’s a smart idea.

MLB, Marketing and its History

One of the things I have never understood is why MLB does not do a better job marketing its history. The sport has more history than all the other American sports combined. Do they market this? No. And MLB wonders why the sport is not popular.

This year is the 50th anniversary of Larsen’s perfect game and Bobby Thompson’s “shot heard around the world.” Has anyone heard about these anniversaries? Any national sports articles or mentions on television? There is a reporter who just finished a book on Thompson’s homerun, but what have we heard about Larsen.

If MLB was smart, they would have a department that spent all its time marketing baseball’s history -- to baby boomers and young fans a like. This is definitely an untapped area for the sport.