football

Craction: A fantasy-football tool for the rest of us?

The PR flacks for Craction, a new online football game, deserve a little credit for getting one point of their rollout publicity campaign correct: it's more or less impossible to have a fully functional life while aggressively competing in an online fantasy-football league.

Dedicated fantasy-football participants--the type of people who spend hours neglecting their jobs and families to pore over player stat sheets looking for the best punter--often sacrifice their maturity and dignity in an obsessive pursuit of a statistically perfect virtual NFL football team.

Craction looks to offer football competition without "all the fantasy-sports commitment." The game launched online this month, but Scott Schmidt developed it in 2000 when he was a business student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

"I wanted to stay connected with my friends who were spread out at colleges across the country," Schmidt said during Craction's debut. "NFL football was something we could all relate to, but I knew I'd have trouble getting people to commit to fantasy football because it requires so much time. So I just invented a better game." … Read more

Notre Dame football tests smart mouthguards

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish football program was the first to win 11 national championships and the first to win seven Heisman Trophies. Now, it'll be among the first to try out a new protective mouthguard that records and reports impact data to help battle concussions.

Pro and college football are much more concerned with head injuries than they were even five years ago, with more data supporting the theory that multiple concussions--even in youth--can lead to long-term depression, permanent memory problems, and dementia later in life.

The "intelligent mouthguard" by Seattle's X2IMPACT records the g-force … Read more

Icebreaker Hockey lets you take the slap shot

Icebreaker Hockey (99 cents) hit the iTunes App Store recently, adding another sport to the challenging 3D tilt-to-control sports arcade franchise from developer NaturalMotion. Now you'll be able to take to the ice and work your way around defenders until it's your turn to take a shot on the goal.

Many iOS gamers will remember Backbreaker Football, one of the early great iPhone games at the iTunes App Store. Taking advantage of the iPhone's accelerometer, Backbreaker Football let you tilt and touch buttons to maneuver a football player downfield to score a touchdown.… Read more

Pro soccer results in Chrome

Developer Dave's Ultimate Football Results is a free Google Chrome extension that fetches results from the most popular soccer leagues from multiple BBC Sport pages and displays them in one page in Chrome. It's the fastest way to check the latest results for your team, league, or association.

Ultimate Football Results is compact and, like most Chrome extensions, installs almost instantaneously. It placed a soccer ball icon in Chrome's address bar; we clicked it to access the extension's setup options. This involved selecting feeds for four tabs, each with four separate frames containing a drop-down list … Read more

EA: NFL lockout or not, Madden must go on

Madden NFL 12 is scheduled to launch this August. And not even the National Football League labor dispute will stop it.

"Fans of Madden NFL will not have their seasons interrupted, regardless of when the labor issues are resolved," Rob Semsey, EA Sports' director of public relations, told CNET in an interview today. "We plan to release Madden NFL 12 in August as always."

Madden NFL 12 will be the 23rd release in the famed franchise. Since its launch in 1989, more than 90 million Madden units have shipped worldwide.

Unlike in previous seasons, Madden fans need reassurance this year.

Earlier this month, the collective-bargaining agreement between the NFL Players Association and the league expired as the sides failed to reach a suitable resolution that would extend their relationship. If the sides don't come to an agreement in the next several months, the 2011-2012 season won't be played. It's a real enough possibility that last month, Sports Business Daily reported that the NFL modified its deal with EA in the event no season is played.

According to that report, the NFL "significantly" reduced EA's "contractual obligation" to help the game developer.… Read more

How are your soccer skills? Ask the shirt

Football shirts are about to go high-tech, with the football club Tottenham Hotspur planning a kit that contains sensors to monitor how players are performing. The North London club has signed a 50-million pound ($80.3 million) deal with sportswear company Under Armour to wear its space-age E39 shirts.

The E39 features an onboard sensor called a Bug that monitors a player's body. It records heart rate, breathing, and skin temperature, storing the data on its 2GB hard drive and beaming the stats to a computer via Bluetooth. Coaches can see a player's performance during training on their iPad or iPhone.

The shirt also boasts an accelerometer, measuring a player's movements and recording how much G-force they face. The data is analyzed by software from Zephyr, which provides similar tech to the U.S. military.

The 404 752: Where Eminem clearly needs more money (podcast)

Millions of sports fans gathered around the TV yesterday to watch the "Big Game," and it's hard to believe that another Puppy Bowl has come and gone. Just kidding, if there's one thing we learned from Super Bowl XLV, it's that brand endorsements are ruining the illusion for celebrities like Eminem and Kim Kardashian who would have us believe that they drive Chrysler minivans and wear Skechers Shapeups.

We're wrapping up the winners and losers of the Super Bowl on today's episode of The 404 Podcast, and the winner for lowest blow is a tie between Groupon and Christina Aguilera.

Groupon took a page from Kenneth Cole PR (context) and pulled a "too soon" with an ad exploiting the tragedy in Tibet, while Christina Aguilera changed the lyrics to the National Anthem into a song about vampires squeezing juice from citrus fruits.

I'll leave it to Jeff to do his own reaming on the Black Eyed Peas half-time show before we move onto the most important part of the game: the commercials!

We all agree that for better or worse, this year's commercials stood out from years past, and our favorites include Volkswagen's Darth Vader spoof, Chevy's Camaro ad featuring Bumblebee from the "Transformers," and Doritos and Bud Light touched our hearts with animals doing human things.

There were also a ton of movie trailers that blew up our skirt, so tune into today's show to hear more of our thoughts on "Super 8," "Captain America," the Lingerie Bowl, and Angry Birds in real life!

Episode 752 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

NFL teams may replace playbooks with iPads

ARLINGTON, Texas--NFL teams including the Dallas Cowboys could soon be abandoning their traditional paper playbooks and game-day printouts of plays in favor of iPads or other tablets.

Pete Walsh, head of technology for the Cowboys, said his team and at least a "couple" of others are currently considering abandoning their playbooks in favor of iPads, a move they feel could save them as much as 5,000 pages of paper printouts per game.

Walsh explained this potential philosophical and technological shift to CNET during a discussion about Cowboys Stadium technology at Super Bowl Media Day here Tuesday. The … Read more

Texas-size tech behind Super Bowl stadium

ARLINGTON, Texas--In my role as a reporter, I've had the good fortune to visit a number of control and/or command centers, such as those running a massive radio telescope, a nuclear submarine, a national laser fusion facility, and several others.

For anyone who remembers the Matthew Broderick vehicle "War Games," the bar for what a control room looks like is high: massive screens, dozens of workstations, long tables, and people moving around everywhere. But in the commodity PC era, that kind of room is mostly long gone. While I've seen NASA control centers that approach … Read more

The ultimate reality show

What's the most galvanizing force in America? I'll give you a hint. It inspires pep rallies, human tunnels, and record television ratings. It's part art, part science, part commerce, and all drama. I'm talking about NFL football!

America's love for the pigskin is building to a fever pitch as we head into the Divisional Championships on Sunday. Look at the facts:

Last Sunday's broadcast of the AFC Divisional Playoff game between the New England Patriots and the New York Jets on CBS averaged 43.5 million viewers and was the most watched divisional playoff … Read more