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nbc is banking on olympic soccer — michael cohen is hedging that bet

When we hear people talking about hiring staffs in American soccer, be it for front offices or broadcast booths, they talk about the need to hire soccer people. Well, you can’t say NBC didn’t do that for the Olympics.

Almost a month ago I received an e-mail from PartnersofNBCOlympics inviting me to become an “official partner” and share with my readers their extensive Olympic soccer coverage through the use of Super Widgets and RSS feeds embedded on my website. Uh, no thank you, but it drew my curiosity. The invitation hinted at an unusually bold marketing maneuver, a network prioritizing soccer (and Judo?). So it’s not just soccer they are pushing, but they are setting aside an entire channel for the sport. With rumors of ESPN looking into an all-soccer ESPN 3 (which I don’t buy), does NBC want to test the waters?

No one is going to answer those questions, and while I didn’t have much interests in the widgets, I was curious to talk to someone about the move. It could not have taken long for them to think of Michael Cohen, who overseas the production of Olympic soccer on the networks and cable channels and heads up the NBC Olympic soccer channel. It surely didn’t take long for me to realize I found the right guy.

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Looking at Giants Stadium at less than even half capacity, well, just the idea that it can sell-out is a grand testament to American sports and marketing. Of course the 80,000 seats are but a drop in the tri-state population bucket and it routinely fills up. Just not for soccer.

“I thought there would be more people here,” the usher said in my favorite mezzanine section, the one that is typically mine alone for Red Bull home games. “Last year it was almost full.” Ninety minutes, an hour, a half hour before the game and the stands were spotty at best, but my preferred section was actually nearly full. This was after all Barcelona. Right? Click HERE for the full story…

a local breath

before the global exhale

and the emulsifying

late-summer light I love.

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In the next week we should get a barrage of Olympic previews. I have mixed feelings about the international ritual but the cynicism goes on the back burner for soccer, which holds my attention even through the smog marketing mayhem. I’ll watch some of the television coverage of other sports thanks in large part to a lack of summer competition, and I’m always up for some environmental and geopolitical intrigue, but like many Chinese men, national team soccer is all I really care about. And that has nothing to do with it being the Olympics. Click HERE for the full story…

an all-star break think piece

Sometimes things have a weird way of coming together. Sometimes you hear something, see something, read something that inspires you. Maybe it pushes you further along your path or causes you to blaze a new trail. A couple of weeks ago I attended a concert at Lincoln Center—Honest Jon’s Revue—put together by a small British record label founded by Blur/Gorillaz front man Damon Albarn and an independent neighborhood record store in London.

I went mainly to see a few relatively obscure Malian musicians I was familiar with and the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, that I profiled for Wax Poetics back when they were just a street band getting ready to back-up Mos Def. But I became fascinated with the label while researching it. At the pre-show symposium I asked label co-founder Alan Schloefield about the profitability of the label and store. “That’s really getting to it,” Schloefield said. “We just brace ourselves for the future and try to make a living.”

Another attendee asked if Honest Jon’s might be an example that supports the Long Tail theory. Um. Long Tail Theory? From the answers and crowd response it was unclear if anyone knew what he was talking about. It went over my head. Click HERE for the full story…

PAID FOR BY THE COMMITTEE TO… EDITION

Frustrating isn’t it Mr. Lipton?

Yesterday was one of the slowest sports days of the American calendar. Yesterday had three quality, and two meaningful soccer games on TV. Yesterday should have been a day for soccer. It was not, not anymore than any other. Why does soccer continue to rest at the fence unnoticed while everyone cranes to glimpse the media darling? Click HERE for the full story…

An audio clip from Luis Bueno of his SuperLiga interview with Pachuca’s Jose Francisco Torres reminded me that I need to get back on the trail of Michael Orozco. Like Torres, Orozco is an American-born soccer player plying his trade in Mexico. Unlike Torres, Orozco has been wearing the national shirt of the U.S.

I haven’t been able to make that happen just yet, but I did in my search come across a gentleman named Hugo Salcedo, a name I remembered from a New York Times article from the 90’s—which I found heading into my early TIAS feature on Martin Luther King Jr. high school.

Hugo has been around the block. He works for FIFA; he worked for the U.S. Olympic Committee (and played soccer in the Olympics), for MLS in development, received the 2008 Jerry Yeagley Award from NSCAA (Coaches Association), and has a son who played and now coaches at UCLA. And it turns out he helped young Orozco find his way. He continues to do so for other players.

I spoke to Salcedo this past April and saved the transcript in case I was able to get a hold of Orozco. That hasn’t happened. But the SuperLiga over the weekend got me thinking about the growing Mexican-American contingent again. And after hearing the Bueno-Torres interview, I revisited my talk with Salcedo. The torn-apart/love-hate feelings of having American youngsters play in Mexico and FOR Mexico, rushed right back into me. Love it or hate it, it’s a situation worth following, even if SuperLiga can’t get past Telefutura broadcasts and disgruntled press releases. Click HERE for the full story…

I wasn’t sure Frank Dell’apa would want to talk to me. Like most I presume, I heard via du Nord that he was being moved at the Boston Globe, where he has been a sports reporter since 1989, from covering his preferred beat (Revolution and international soccer) to the Celtics. To be moved from soccer to basketball would be a promotion to most, but not to Frank, not to his loyal readership. It would be understandable if he just didn’t want to talk about it for a number of easy to deduce reasons.

But he said yes. And as with his decades of reporting, we are all the more lucky because of it. And for the digital time capsule of this here site, it kind of comes with perfect timing (sorry Frank). It is just that for a man who has spent his life in sports journalism chasing soccer this unexpected career tangent elicits perspective, which begs to be gathered up, marked down, and reconsidered as we determine the future—-journalism and soccer, observers and participants. Our conversation is after the jump. Click HERE for the full story…

Welcome to the Designated Players.

I know you have been holding your breath.

What’s that?

After those-half-ass-viral-campaign-teaser-banners? What, a few new prominent links?

Please. Lame.

That is one way to look at it. Click HERE for the full story…

I think there was more media there than any soccer event I have ever been to. And throughout all the coverage you’re gonna see the only thing I can say I got that they don’t is this photo. It’s a keeper.

I’m gonna go with the annotated photo story for this one, because that’s sort of the hand I was dealt. Seated on the ground behind a goal isn’t the best place to watch the game, but it gets you some good camera angles. And from the looks of it–I mean people I knew from glossy magazines were there–you’re going to be hearing plenty about it. I’m hoping someone writes it up as a real game story. That would be fun to read. So on to the Steve Nash Foundation Charity Classic presented by (I didn’t recognize the logo on the t-shirt)…

(UPDATED WITH BEST VIDEO YOU WILL SEE OF THE EVENT)

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