Sport Management and Recreation Review

I’ve been having some computer issues on both my laptop and desktop computers. Sorry for no post yet. It should be up by Wednesday.

Did you read Moneyball as soon as it came out? Are you fascinated by the idea of using complex statistics to analyze a game, a team, or individual players? Do you love football? If you like both these things then FootballOutsiders.com (FO) is for you. Today I’m going to turn my analytical eye on this analytical website.

Aesthetics

FO has a simple grey, green, and white color scheme. Nothing fancy. It works. This is a data driven website that focuses on content. While not beautiful or breathtaking, the site is easy enough on the eyes. I wish it was a tiny bit less crowded though.

Design

Once again, this is a data driven site. Design includes a navigational bar at the top that features drop down menus for each section of the site. The site opens with this week’s current features. It utilizes three columns, with the left column focusing on current statistics and links, the middle column providing main content, and the right column showing in-site links and advertising. The search bar is easy to find in the top right column.

Content

This is a website for die-hard football fans or people who love statistics and math. If you watch football every week, and then watch ESPN for the analysis, and still hunger for more football analysis and statistics then you should check this site out. Statistics are available for many aspects of football. As explained on the site’s About page, these statistics are not the traditional yards per carry or QB ratings. They are predictive statistics that are rigorously analyzed using advanced statistical analysis. People with math-phobias do not despair! There are also plenty of articles exploring fantasy football and (relatively) non-statistics focused topics. Most interestingly, they “challenge the conventional wisdom about the game”. I like anything that challenges convention!

Links

The writers of Football Outsiders (referred to as “Outsiders” on the website) have experience writing, and the site is partnered with FoxSports.com. On their Links page, these guys have listed a ton of links to FoxSports content, other places they write for, and NFL-team specific blogs. Categories for links include: Articles Written by the Outsiders Appearing Elsewhere, National Columnists, Statistical Analysis, Other News and Commentary Sites, Specific Team Blogs, Un-Official Specific Team Salary Cap Pages, and Intelligent Analysis for Other Sports.

Price

FO offers a premium subscription to the site for access to their DVOA (one of their calculated stats) database which contains DVOA stats for every season from 1996 - 2006 plus the current 2007-08 season. However, the website offers plenty of information for everyday users who don’t need to deeply analyze the 1998 NFL season and aren’t up to shelling out $40 for the back season statistics.

Overall

This is a content, statistics rich site with analysis for a hard core fan. It’s easy to find data and articles for in-depth football analysis. Overall it is a great resource for those interested in getting deep into football, but others might find it too analytical.

Three words. I love it. Or should I say “them”? The Business of Sports Network is actually a series of websites about, yes, the business of several sports. Right now the Big Four sports are covered - baseball, football, basketball, and, recently added, hockey. The official titles of each website are: The Biz of Baseball, The Biz of Football, The Biz of Basketball, and The Biz of Hockey. The network was founded by Maury Brown, a sports business analyst with an impressive resume that includes writing for the Baseball Prospectus, Basketball Prospectus, and numerous major newspapers. He has also appeared on ESPN2 and the CBS Evening News.

So what exactly do I love about this network? Does it need any improvements? Read on to find out.

Going to the Biz of Sports Network homepage provides a brief overview of the network, links to the most recent posts for each sport site, and a list of the interviews with sports business executives. Let’s focus on the actual websites. All four are have similar design and aesthetics, but I’ll be using the Biz of Baseball website to actually review.

Aesthetics

The Biz of Baseball site is definitely easy on the eyes. It has an easily recognizable banner logo at the top of the page, and the page features standard black text on a white background. Links are the standard blue text color as well. Another aspect that I like is that each article has a relevant graphic or a photo of the author at top of the article. This makes it more visually interesting and breaks up the text.

Overall Aesthetics: Nothing to fancy, but they definitely gets the job done and as a bonus the page loads quickly.

Design

The Biz of Baseball is well-designed overall. Its one flaw, if it can be considered a flaw, is that it might have too much information. However, this is a very minor detail. The top of the page features the previously mentioned logo banner and a menu under that for general navigation such as Home, About, Author Profiles, Advertising, and Search. Regular readers can keep up to date on baseball news as it appears in the form of interviews, articles, announcements, and other content in the main panel. On the left is a navigation column for content categories. There are two different versions of this. Unregistered guests get one version, and registered members view an extended column with extra content. More on that later though. A small sampling of the categories in the default guest view includes: Special: Mitchell Report, Free Agent Tracker, MLB News, Interviews, NCAA Baseball, MLB Baseball, Ballpark Facility News, and Articles and Opinion. A right-hand side panel includes a baseball poll, and links to the other Sport Business Network sites.

If I were doing active research using this site, my favorite feature would be the Search form bar I mentioned earlier. It’s in the perfect place-right at the top, easy to find, first page you get to. The search functions well. I searched for Theo Epstein and got 6 results. A search for steroids finds 52 results.

Overall Design: Once again, no high-tech crazy design, just a solid design that makes it as easy as possible to browse or search through the huge amount of content available.

Content

The Business of Sports Network hits a grand slam when it comes to content. I could easily spend hours just researching the baseball content. Add in the other three sports and that’s where the grand slam comes in. Biz of Baseball provides current sports news (2 new articles were posted in the time I spent time writing this article) and great statistics and figures relevant to the business. Articles for today were: Cubs Get Approval To Add Luxury Seats, Signage at Wrigley and Atlantic League Announces Realignment . Some of the tables available were the Free Agent Tracker and the 2007 Arbitration Figures. Interviews with Billy Beane, Ken Rosenthal, and other sports business executives provide excellent information. An interesting section is the Featured Book content. As stated on the website this is “A collection of book reviews where the topic is the business of baseball and sports economics.” Hmm..anyone up for some more reading?

Overall Content: Game winning, walk-off grand slam. Like I said, I could spend hours here.

Links

There are lots of internal links that lead to further information in the Business of Sports Network. The few external links usually link to source information such as the New York Times or the San Francisco Chronicle when quotations have been provided. There is also a link page that has about 25 links to external websites on it. These are categorized and seem to link to valuable other sites.

Overall Links: The Links page definitely saves them here. Not too many links in the articles, but make sure to check out that Links page for further research.

Price

Everything on the website is free. There is an option to register for free, which I did. This gets you access to a lot more data. See below for comparisons of registered and un-registered content. The unregistered guest view is on the left, and the registered member view is on the right:

As you can see, there is a LOT of information. For free. Which earns the Business of Sports Network lots of points in this review. One quick note here, according to Maury Brown, you’ll also receive periodical updates on the site via email when you register. I have no problem with this as I’m sure any additions will only further improve the site.

Overall Price: FREE!

Overall

Overall this is an amazing resource. I’m actually (pleasantly) surprised that it is all available for free. The site does utilize ads, but they are tasteful and unobtrusive. I highly recommend this website as a starting point for any sport business research. In addition, make sure to check out Maury Brown’s Biz of Sports where he covers the Biz of Network as well as AutoRacing, Broadcasting and several other categories.

the Business of Sports Network. This is one resource you don’t want to miss!