Wednesday, April 23, 2008

An Idea

I taped one NBA game and two NHL games last night and really only had time to watch part of one game.

In the "old days," we had one game a night to watch, if we were lucky. Now, during the NBA and NHL playoffs, having four in one night isn't uncommon.

We're overloaded, and we all have less time than ten years ago. I already never watch sports live, because the commercials are time spent that I just don't have. Everything is recorded and watched later.

So last night, as I tried to decide between three games I had recorded, I had an idea.

[Please note that when one of you makes ten million dollars from this idea, I won't ask you for a cent. You are hereby fully in the clear for a lifetime of limos, hookers, and blow.]

What we need is a sports website that doesn't tell us the scores--it tells us how interesting the games were to watch.

Here's how it would work. There would be ratings (1-10), by period or quarter, for individual games as well as comparisons between games. So, for instance, last night I could have gone online and seen that the Toronto-Orlando NBA game was an "8-8-8-9", but the Mavericks-Hornets game was only a "6-4-4-1."

Too much detail? You'd also have an option just to get a rating for the full game. So the Orlando game would have been an "8", but the New Orleans game would have been a "4".

That gives me enough information to know what to watch, but it doesn't give me any details. I don't know the score or anything that happened, but I do know which games were most exciting. Sure, not everyone defines excitement the same way, but I'll take my chances.

Here's a twist. Let's say I started recording a game an hour ago, and now I want to start watching. It's an NHL playoff game, for example, and it's the middle of the second period. I could look at ratings by period, and if I see that the first period is a "2", for example, I just saved half an hour of my time, at least.

This is true (for me, at least) during any sports season--there will be several games to choose from that I'm interested in, and if I could tape them all, then know which one would be most interesting to watch, then I would be getting maximum utility out of my sports viewing time.

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