1. “There are three groups of players in the GAA rights war. The terrestrial broadcasters, like RTE and TV3, pay TV providers, like Sky and Setanta, and the rights holders themselves, in this case the GAA. As has been made abundantly clear the only two games protected for free to air broadcasters are the All-Ireland football and hurling finals. Sky could, if the GAA were willing, buy the rights to everything but those two games. There is a third option, rights retention.
Earlier this year the professional wrestling promotion WWE launched its own digital network, realising that a core subscriber base paying it directly could yield far more income than dealing with intermediaries. The company set a target of 1 million subscriptions by year end. It has already surpassed the 700,000 mark. While men in tights jostling to pre-arranged results may not seem like an immediately relevant business model, the US firm has taken a logical leap from formats established by professional sports leagues in North America.”
2. “Nolan Nawrocki lives in the nicest house in a tidy neighborhood in Elmhurst, Ill., a western suburb of Chicago. When I visit him a couple of weeks before Easter, the windows are already awash in signage. He does much of his work in his basement. Next to his desk is a full weight room set up with a punching bag. Five large flatscreen televisions are mounted on the nearest wall. The lights are dimmed when we meet, and Nawrocki is using one of the TVs, which is hooked up to his laptop, to show me footage of Nick Foles’s interview at the 2012 NFL draft combine. This is insider stuff, unavailable to the general public.”
3. ”If you put all those types of perfectionism on a Venn diagram, the man in the middle might be Dennis Bergkamp, the perfectionist’s perfectionist. Thierry Henry said he loved ‘Every. Single. Thing’ about Bergkamp, but the thing he loved the most was the way Bergkamp trained, because ‘everything had to be perfect’. Bergkamp also had unrealistic expectations – of himself, if not necessarily others – and was a sucker for cleanliness. The Guardian’s Amy Lawrence noticed how starched his socks were during an interview 10 years ago, a revelation that would not surprise Patrick Vieira. ‘To make his kind of passes you have to like things to be perfect,’ says Vieira in Stillness and Speed. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if his clothes are really well organised. I wouldn’t be surprised at all.’ Finally there is perfection as aesthetic idealism, the thing with which Bergkamp is most associated and which informed so much of what he did on a football field.”
4. “After morning practice, after the media session, LeBron James went to the locker room and iced, then got pulled for a random piss test, so now he’s late, which he does not like being. Also, he’s tired. There’s a chef here at the warehouse, where Tupac and Snoop and Jay Z keep the rhythm, and hot lights shine over racks of clothes and shoes to put on, which he loves—he loves this shit—fashion is his candy, just ask Randy, to whom he has handed his phone to take photos. He wants pictures of himself in the outfits, maybe to tweet, which he also loves. But he’s tired, that’s the thing.”
5. “With fan interest booming, soccer is no longer the Kylie Minogue of the sporting realm: huge everywhere but here. After years of being greeted as the Next Big Thing that wasn’t, the sport (particularly England’s Premier League, with its enhanced presence on American television) has become a conversation topic you can no longer ignore. This is particularly evident in New York creative circles, where the game’s aesthetics, Europhilic allure and fashionable otherness have made soccer the new baseball — the go-to sport of the thinking class.”
6. “The Bag Man excuses himself to make a call outside, on his “other phone,” to arrange delivery of $500 in cash to a visiting recruit. The player is rated No. 1 at his position nationally and on his way into town. We’re sitting in a popular restaurant near campus almost a week before National Signing Day, talking about how to arrange cash payments for amateur athletes.”
Pro wrestling lessons for the GAA, Lebron and Bergkamp's wonder goal: it's our favourite sportswriting this week
1. “There are three groups of players in the GAA rights war. The terrestrial broadcasters, like RTE and TV3, pay TV providers, like Sky and Setanta, and the rights holders themselves, in this case the GAA. As has been made abundantly clear the only two games protected for free to air broadcasters are the All-Ireland football and hurling finals. Sky could, if the GAA were willing, buy the rights to everything but those two games. There is a third option, rights retention.
Earlier this year the professional wrestling promotion WWE launched its own digital network, realising that a core subscriber base paying it directly could yield far more income than dealing with intermediaries. The company set a target of 1 million subscriptions by year end. It has already surpassed the 700,000 mark. While men in tights jostling to pre-arranged results may not seem like an immediately relevant business model, the US firm has taken a logical leap from formats established by professional sports leagues in North America.”
Action81′s Emmet Ryan explains how Croke Park chiefs could take a page out of Vince McMahon’s playbook.
2. “Nolan Nawrocki lives in the nicest house in a tidy neighborhood in Elmhurst, Ill., a western suburb of Chicago. When I visit him a couple of weeks before Easter, the windows are already awash in signage. He does much of his work in his basement. Next to his desk is a full weight room set up with a punching bag. Five large flatscreen televisions are mounted on the nearest wall. The lights are dimmed when we meet, and Nawrocki is using one of the TVs, which is hooked up to his laptop, to show me footage of Nick Foles’s interview at the 2012 NFL draft combine. This is insider stuff, unavailable to the general public.”
Deadspin’s Daniel Libit on the NFL’s most infamous scout’ is worth your time.
3. ”If you put all those types of perfectionism on a Venn diagram, the man in the middle might be Dennis Bergkamp, the perfectionist’s perfectionist. Thierry Henry said he loved ‘Every. Single. Thing’ about Bergkamp, but the thing he loved the most was the way Bergkamp trained, because ‘everything had to be perfect’. Bergkamp also had unrealistic expectations – of himself, if not necessarily others – and was a sucker for cleanliness. The Guardian’s Amy Lawrence noticed how starched his socks were during an interview 10 years ago, a revelation that would not surprise Patrick Vieira. ‘To make his kind of passes you have to like things to be perfect,’ says Vieira in Stillness and Speed. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if his clothes are really well organised. I wouldn’t be surprised at all.’ Finally there is perfection as aesthetic idealism, the thing with which Bergkamp is most associated and which informed so much of what he did on a football field.”
The Guardian’s really enjoyable World Cup moments series continues with this treat from Rob Smyth on Bergkamp’s goal against Argentina.
4. “After morning practice, after the media session, LeBron James went to the locker room and iced, then got pulled for a random piss test, so now he’s late, which he does not like being. Also, he’s tired. There’s a chef here at the warehouse, where Tupac and Snoop and Jay Z keep the rhythm, and hot lights shine over racks of clothes and shoes to put on, which he loves—he loves this shit—fashion is his candy, just ask Randy, to whom he has handed his phone to take photos. He wants pictures of himself in the outfits, maybe to tweet, which he also loves. But he’s tired, that’s the thing.”
GQ’s cover star this month is LeBron James; here’s Jeanne Marie Laskas‘ story with the NBA superstar.
5. “With fan interest booming, soccer is no longer the Kylie Minogue of the sporting realm: huge everywhere but here. After years of being greeted as the Next Big Thing that wasn’t, the sport (particularly England’s Premier League, with its enhanced presence on American television) has become a conversation topic you can no longer ignore. This is particularly evident in New York creative circles, where the game’s aesthetics, Europhilic allure and fashionable otherness have made soccer the new baseball — the go-to sport of the thinking class.”
Alex Williams‘ New York Times piece on football (aka soccer) culture in the Big Apple garnered plenty of online attention this week. What’s a thinking class?
6. “The Bag Man excuses himself to make a call outside, on his “other phone,” to arrange delivery of $500 in cash to a visiting recruit. The player is rated No. 1 at his position nationally and on his way into town. We’re sitting in a popular restaurant near campus almost a week before National Signing Day, talking about how to arrange cash payments for amateur athletes.”
SB Nations’ Steven Godfrey ‘meets the bag man’.
Have you read any good pieces we’ve forgotten this week?
Watch the new ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on Hillsborough in full
Healy: ‘There’s a lot of satisfaction in being able to lift a lot of weight’
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
GAA Lebron James Soccer Well read WWE