TOUCHDOWN or FUMBLE? A case study for the Olympics

Judging the Vancouver 2010 Games on Style and Performance.

To take a page out of the Veritas Communications handbook, this will be my first edition of touchdown or fumble. In this case, the culprit: The 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games (copyright, double copyright, re-use and redistribution restricted, all rights reserved, black magic swallow the key, etc).

FUMBLE

The Olympic Committee decided, as they have in the past, to establish an official website. Great. Now the public has the opportunity to become a 'facebook fan' right away! Currently on their facebook page, the Olympics have approximately half a million fans. On their official twitter page- only 9,976. With the obvious emergence and I would argue necessity of social media, why are the Olympics failing to bring in worldwide youth via internet networks? I couldn't tell you how many people watch the Olympics but I bet it's a WHOLE BUNCH! Maybe a billion? Anyways, the less popular "winter" aspect may not prove to be as interesting but as we know, the most developed nations with high internet connections are all located in the cold. Why are we not utilizing our capabilities to watch the Games on the internet or to socialize about them on 'fb'?

I can (try) to answer that.

There is a lack of communication between the Olympics and the public. While watching the Superbowl, I noticed that CTV shoved the Olympics down the view ship's throat every commercial break. (If I hear that 'I Believe' song one more time...) There was a serious failure to mention to audiences about the capabilities of the website. The website itself is actually quite impressive. They have up-to-date medal coverage, videos, news, alerts, podcasts and you can even watch the coverage live. Too bad few will ever see it.

TOUCHDOWN

As a huge fan of crisis management, I BELIEVE the Olympics dealt appropriately with the death of young luger (pronounced loo-zh-er, not loser) Nodar Kumaritashvili, from Georgia. They immediately checked the track, made modifications such as not racing immediately, testing the track, deciding on appropriate start and finish distances. Officials also talked to the media explaining the science behind what happened in terms of trajectory and other physical components. They were incredibly professional and posted information on the website appropriately. It has been so successful (as of writing this) that the Olympic games have continued on without any further discussion regarding the tragic accident.

Touchdown - Wayne Gretzky lighting the torch

Fumble - Not-so cute characters as mascots

Touchdown - Remembering to put everything in both French and English

Touchdown - Aboriginal participation in the games (also included on the website

Fumble - CTV seems amateur to NBC

Undecided - Cassie Campbell still a hockey analyst

Touchdown - Dealing with weather conditions, global warming and not letting Al Gore attend the Games
Fumble - Olympic theme song - no question about that.

The Vancouver 2010 Games win the Bronze, not Gold, in Social Media.

A PR SUCKER PUNCH: Mayweather-Mosley Mayhem May 1

Mayweather-Mosley Mayhem on May 1st Might be a Mega Miss-Match.

Ignore the alliteration-please! For after years of name calling, fight ducking and more name calling, Sugar Shane Mosley will fight Pretty Boy (actually he goes by 'Money' now) Floyd Mayweather Jr. on May Day. If you remember, yet hopefully you forgot, Mayweather was supposed to fight Manny Pacquiao but after the dramatic 'blood test' incident the fight was canceled and instead a lawsuit began. Both fighters were looking at making minimum $40-million a piece.
Mayweather unfortunately has settled to tangle with a 'past-the-due-date' Mosley. All brought about by the earthquake in Haiti, Mosley was sent to fight 'up and comer' Andre Berto. Mosley is lucky to fight Mayweather out of this because a loss to Berto, which I believe would have been the outcome, could not give Sugar Shane the opportunity he has now.

 My prediction is that Mayweather wins by score cards.

Rather than trying to hype the fight up to what it isn't (by holding it in Cowboys stadium à la Pacquiao), the Mayweather-Mosley fight is using the proper technique of creating a sold out crowd at the famous MGM Grand Garden Arena.
This is great PR. Strike that- AMAZING PR! Hold a fight, though it has the possibility to be a snore, in a historical arena where some of the biggest names have upset and been upset through the past century. The outcome of the fight is more interesting than the fight itself since both boxers will probably counter-punch each other until the crowd falls asleep and one of them gets bored.

A nightmare for Mosley's PR team is his former EPO use and the constant heckling he gets for his alleged steroid use. Guess we know what the 'Sugar' stands for. Such an up-hill battle will take most of his energy before the fight and watch for Mosley to be yawning during the fight like the rest of us. Of course with Mayweather's strategic use of urine and blood samples prior to the date, this fight may bear witness to two of the cleanest athletes in all of professional sports.

May 1st conveniently happens to be the same day as UFC 113- take that Dana White! (despite you're wonderful business sense)

As for 'Punch Drunk Pacquiao' versus Joshua Clottey - the boxing community's: "whoever that is" - he'll win but I guarantee there will be empty seats. Out of 100,000, there will be 60,000 empty seats. Mayweather-Pacquiao could be and should have been the biggest fight ever, in terms of profit, pride and punches- truly a boxer's public relations wet dream.
Apparently the winner is set to fight Pacquaio, says Freddie Roach.

Re-coining the term: 'Rope-a-Dope' as Mosley's nickname