How An Optimized Search Got The NCAA In Big Trouble

The NCAA may have search optimized themselves into hot water.  The NCAA has a set of Bylaws that layout what is and is not permissible relating to student-athletes' names and pictures being used to sell merchandise.  One specific Bylaw that address this topic is 12.5.2.2, which states,

“Title:12.5.2.2 - Use of a Student-Athlete's Name or Picture Without Knowledge or Permission.
If a student-athlete's name or picture appears on commercial items (e.g., T-shirts, sweatshirts, serving trays, playing cards, posters) or is used to promote a commercial product sold by an individual or agency without the student-athlete's knowledge or permission, the student-athlete (or the institution acting on behalf of the student-athlete) is required to take steps to stop such an activity in order to retain his or her eligibility for intercollegiate athletics.  Such steps are not required in cases in which a student-athlete's photograph is sold by an individual or agency (e.g., private photographer, news agency) for private use. (Revised: 1/11/97, 5/12/05)”

However institutions have been bending these laws for years by selling merchandise in the likeness of an athlete without acknowledging the athlete's name or actual picture.  Tuesday Jay Bilas publicly outed one of the biggest offenders of breaking this NCAA rule, the NCAA themselves.  Bilas tweeted the below message on August 6 at 11:06am, “Go to ShopNCAAsports.com, type in “Manziel” in upper right search box, hit enter. This comes up. Pic.twitter.com/N7KNvXIu24” The twitpic attached is a screen grab that shows a variety of Texas A&M #2 jerseys for sale.

Over the next few hours Bilas followed the above Tweet with 14 additional Tweets of other examples of names of current and former players names he searched on Shop NCAA Sports and the returned results.  The athletes included Nerlens Noel, Marqise Lee and suspended Notre Dame QB Everett Golson.  However his first Tweet (the above mentioned Tweet) is still perhaps the most surprising and ironic, Johnny Manziel, the Texas A&M quarterback who, according to yahoo.com, “is being investigated for allegedly violating NCAA rules by accepting money in return for autographing his jerseys.”

Bilas’ Tweets garnered attention on Twitter and in the media, and then around 4pm EST yesterday, ShopNCAASports.com removed their search function from their site...or at least hid if from the public.  At the time of this article, it remains removed from the site.  However the NCAA recently did announce that it will not longer sell team-related jerseys.  USA Today quoted NCAA President Mark Emmert saying, ""There's no compelling reason the NCAA should essentially be re-selling paraphernalia from institutions," Emmert said. "I can't speak to why we entered into that enterprise, but it's not something that's appropriate for us, and we're going to exit it.""

This incident raises an interesting question about the site's (and by extension the NCAA's) liability for aligning the keyword phase (in this case a student-athlete’s name) with search results (a jersey of their school and the number they wear).  I inquired with an SEO expert and he explained that the internal search within websites can either be an embedded Google search (meaning the site leverages Google’s search functionality and accepts whatever its crawl technology decides is the best results to display) or the site can use its own, customized search software (likely purchased from a vendor and allows the website owners to set-up those search-return relationships themselves).  Most ecommerce sites employ the latter technique.  That way, they can connect the search terms customers use for given products with the results they think will be most useful (e.g. a search for ‘Father’s Day gifts” is set-up to return ties, golf accessories, etc.).  As ShopNCAASports.com is an ecommerce site, and the way the results displayed, it is very likely the results were manually linked to those student-athlete name keywords.

The site, ShopNCAASports.com, is labeled with the official NCAA logo & links and is copyrighted by Fanatics Retail Group.  The site appears, for all intents and purposes, to be sanctioned by the NCAA.  The questions now are around liability, which casts search & optimization into an interesting light.  Can/should backend code and search software be audited to check if the site deliberately linked a player to a jersey?  Taking that one step further, if the audit comes back that there is a deliberately created link, could the NCAA then be liable for breaking its own rule based on using a player's name without his/her permission, even if it is just on the back end of its site?  If the NCAA is truly breaking its own rules, how can justice be handed down?  Considering the power of the NCAA, one might ask the most important question of all, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? (Who will guard the guards themselves?) Ref. huffingtonpost.com, usatoday.com, sports.yahoo.com, web1.ncaa.org Pic. Ref. twitter.com

Ergonomic Bats

Ergonomic ProXR bat design
Pic Ref. proxr.com

Obviously the biggest story of the week is the steroids scandal that is rocking the reputations of many of the game’s most notable players.  Staying in the theme of baseball, today’s article is a look at how America’s pastime could be changing in a different way, but this time it could be to the safety benefit of the players.

Baseball, much like soccer, is steeped in tradition and sometimes slow to adopt new technology.  Grady Phelan, designer of the ProXR bat, knows this struggle well.  Phelan used physics, research, ingenuity and basic technology to develop and patent a new bat design that could help prevent a common hand injury in baseball.  The design has been approved by MLB and received general approval by players and equipment experts.  However this bat is not widely available and few players have ever used them in a MLB game.  There are many reasons, but first, the design.

Baseball bats are designed with a knob at the base for safety reasons.  Phelan developed a bat with a knob tilted 23 degrees.  The purpose of the tilt is to prevent players from getting a hamate fracture.  Traditional bats (without this tilt) create a situation in which the bat’s knob will potentially rub up against the hamate bone.  This rubbing occurs because players grip the bat at the base (just above the knob) to increase their speed of swing.  A hard swing of the bat, impacting the hamate bone into the knob, can cause a fracture that many times requires surgery and even bone removal.  Fracturing the hamate bone is common in baseball and many players, including Jose Canseco, Ken Griffey, Jr., Jim Thome, Eric Hinske and this year Gordon Beckham, have had the hamate bone removed during their careers.

The pain of the fracture and costly loss of time recovering from surgery makes for a powerful business case for the new bat design.  Moreover, the MLB approved the ProXR and admitted the bat into the Hall of Fame.  This was the first new bat design approved by the MLB since the 1970s.  The design tilts the knob “by 23 degrees (which happens to be the precise range of motion of the human wrist) to work with human anatomy to mitigate hamate impacts by roughly 25%” (ref. fastcodesign.com).

On paper the design offers a compelling story, but players and bat producers are slower to adopt the new design.  Some experts estimate that it would take a day of batting practice to learn how to adjust their swing to the new design.  Since that is not a huge investment of time, tradition and familiarity is what motivates many players to stick with the traditional design.  Many players are very loyal to their bat brand, be it Louisville Slugger or Hillrich & Bradsby.  Bat manufactures are also hesitant to change, though many have provided very positive response to the ProXR design.  Tradition aside, one notable and valid criticism of the bat came from the newly hamate-less Gordon Beckham. As fastcodesign.com put it, “Because the bat is asymmetrical, its margin of grip error is in some ways more like a golf club than a baseball bat. “If you grip the bat, you’ve gotta make sure you grip it exactly the right way,” [Beckham] explained. “If you’re not swinging and hitting the right perfect spot on the barrel, you’re going to have trouble.””

Critics aside, the new design could potentially prevent many injuries.  If introduced early in a young slugger's career, the habit and tradition of gripping the bat would be developed to the design of tilted knob.  However before it can get into those young athletes’ hands, it needs to be manufactured.  Whether any bat manufactures will take a swing at production has yet to be seen. Ref. fastcodesign.com, proxr.com Pic. Ref. proxr.com