Chanel’s Blog

March Madness is the best tournament on earth. For 3 weeks during the end of March and beginning of April, 65 college football teams square off in an orgy of upsets and thrillers. This year, CBS expanded its online on demand live streaming. Working all day, the only time I have to watch games are at night. By streaming the videos, it gives me a chance to at least listen to the games while I work. This way everyone wins: I get to keep track of my favorite games and CBS gets to serve me more ads.

Being a geek, I really wanted to see how the March Madness on demand service will handle the bandwidth of serving the video. I found this InformationWeek article that points out that Akamai is used to stream their videos. This makes sense because Akamai has always been a huge player in the contend delivery market. From their site, Akamai claims it “handles 20% of the world’s total Web traffic.” Now those are big numbers. Even with Akamai’s large content delivery network, “CBSSports.com monitors and throttles its system based on usage and historical data patterns” so that it won’t overload their system. The fact that CBS has to restrict the amount of people using this service shows how far the US has to go if it wants to be completely digital.

For really cool visualization of global web traffic, check out this Akamai flash app.

Everybody has a favorite time of the year. Whether it’s the hot laziness of summer or the bitter coldness of winter, there are moments of the year when everything smells better, the colors are brighter and nothing can go wrong. For me, growing up as a sports crazy boy in a small, college town in “The South” was really amazing. During the fall, everything is second to Saturdays. The weekdays seem to build up to a crescendo of noise and energy that suddenly comes to an end on Sundays. Going to a college football is still one of my favorite events because its not just a game, its much more than that.

In truth, the above paragraph is overly grandiose and attributes much more to college football than it deserves. If I grew up in London, I would be talking about soccer and if it was India, I would be cricket crazy. For some reason, I gravitate towards sporting events with as much fervor as a kid in a playground. For me, the aspect I most appreciate about the game day experience, and there are indeed very many, is the sheer scale at which a big-time college football game is played.

Imagine all of the food and liquid consumed throughout the day. The gas used to transport people to and from the games… and the noise. These are all what makes college football exciting. There is a scene in the move Gladiator when Juba, the African friend of Maximus, views the Colosseum for the first time and says, “I didn’t know men could build such things.” I felt the same way when I first laid eyes upon Jordan-Hare Stadium, the on-campus stadium of Auburn University. I was such in awe and intrigued to see such a large building. Granted I was only 3 years old and “fresh off the boat” from Burundi, this event started an obsession that I have not fully recovered from since.

In summary, humanity have advanced from killing each other and wild animals for sport to watching 300 pound men smash into each other. In my opinion, everybody wins!

I’m a really big fan of college football. Within the cultural context of males and sports, this reaction to sports is not out of the ordinary. I start to question that sentiment when its the night before National Signing Day, the day high-profile high school football players sign with the college of their choice, and I’m up all night watching videos, and reading articles on what school some super-freak athlete will choose to play for. This type of obsession is usually reserved for creepy, sweaty guys who park their vans by city parks and create countdowns for celebrity starlets’ 18th birthdays. Given all of these reservations, athletics is still one of the purest forms of entertainment, steroids aside, and like all good things, moderation is key. So with that out the way, on to the real story…

Over at one of my favorite blogs, Saurian Sagacity, there is a story comparing the population size of a state and its representation in recruiting rankings. Like everything they do, they always have ample amounts of data supporting their premises. Towards the end of the article, they hinted towards the correlation between the recruiting prowess of southern states and superiority of the SEC.

I have discussed this matter many times with a lot of people and that argument does not sit well with me. In truth, I do believe that the SEC is the best college football conference but not by much. The reason for SEC’s edge is mostly attributed to weather and population shift in my opinion.

It’s obvious that living in the southern US is an advantage when it comes to outdoor sports. You have much more time to practice outdoors when you don’t have to worry about excessive snow, or extreme cold. This applies throughout the development of the human body so a person living in the south would theoretically have slightly more outdoor time to develop athletically than a similar person up north. Of course this logic is highly speculative but merits attention.

Population shift towards the west and south is another trend that has affected many areas of the US including college football. This hypothesis actually supports the general argument Mergz (from Saurian Sagacity) presented. Ohio State and Michigan still have great programs. Other schools up north also compete well nationally every year.

When it’s all over, it appears this argument is just a regional chest-thumping about whose better. For me, I would rather give a nod of approval.