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By GREG AUMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 28, 2000
Just as "instant replay" and "super slo-mo" captured the technology of television's coverage of sports, the Internet has its own new phrases as it continues to change the way major events like the Super Bowl are received around the world.
Heard of real-time convergence? Live streaming video? If you haven't, you will.
All the high-tech terms can be simplified to one central thought: Instead of fans muting their televisions to listen to radio broadcasts, tomorrow's fans are more likely to have a remote control in one hand -- and a mouse in the other.
It's what ABC will call "Enhanced TV" during Sunday's broadcast of Super Bowl XXXIV -- effectively watching a game in stereo, with one eye on the TV and the other on the Internet. More than 2.2-million people have given it a try during football games this season, according to ABC, whose surveys indicate that 81 percent of those people have a TV and computer in the same room. That combination might leave less room for chips and dip on Sunday, but across the industry, it seems to be the interior decor of the future.
"The ability of people to watch a game and receive information about that game at the same time is obviously one of the key things ahead," said Steve Robinson, managing editor of CNN/SI. "I think being a fan has always been about having a thirst for information, and while the information isn't changing, the vehicle that delivers it and the speed of that delivery certainly has changed."
The term "real-time convergence" is used to describe the simultaneous use of TV and the Internet, but it might as well mark the intersection of news and instant analysis. Fans who once had to wait for tomorrow's paper to find out more about today's game can now get insight from experts during the game, as they would on television, but with more interaction. Chats allow users to ask questions from analysts, and post-game news conferences are streamed on the Internet, just as if you were there covering the event yourself.
Online technology has progressed so quickly as to make itself outdated within years or months. Robinson points to futurist writer Alvin Toffler, whose 1970 book Future Shock heralded the possibility of technology outracing the people who create it.
"The pace of change is remarkable," he said. "What was new on the Internet two years ago seems ancient now. It used to be that technology would evolve to serve a need, but now the technology is moving ahead of our ability to find new uses for it."
That, it seems, is the challenge of the Internet: Keeping up with a future that's changing faster than the present can imagine. The thinking now is that with each passing Super Bowl, more and more people won't have a computer and TV in the same room -- they'll have it in the same machine.
Quokka Sports' David Riemer calls it a "personal simulcast," integrating live television and the vast resource of online information and the convenience of e-commerce. The beginning stages of it can be seen with WebTV, and the innovations to make couch potatoes more involved in what they're watching are seeming less like the Jetsons and more like part of everyday life, every day.
Imagine yourself taking in a game less like a fan and more like a network producer. Want to know a key stat? You can find it and display it on the bottom of your screen. Don't like the camera angle? You'll be able to pick another and switch as you like. So enamored by a quarterback's play that you want to buy a replica jersey? That, too, can be in the mail on the way to your front door in seconds.
"It's as simple as that," said FoxSports.com's Danny Greenberg. "The Internet is constantly evolving, but it's still in its infancy. You can do a heck of a lot more than you could do four or five years ago, when trying to do a simple poll was out of the ordinary."
By Thursday afternoon, more than 50,000 visitors to CNNSI.com had voted for who they thought would win Sunday's game, with 58 percent choosing the Tennessee Titans. Polls don't just determine each night's highlights -- they also help dictate what gets covered most. ESPN's SportsCenter now allows users at ESPN.com to vote daily on which event is that day's "Showcase," drawing extra analysis and prime-time highlights during the show.
The Internet isn't so much emulating other media as it is merging with them. Superbowl.com, the official site of Sunday's game, has gone overboard with multimedia options, streaming live news conferences online as well as its own Internet-only radio programs each day.
Of course, there are old-fashioned, just-plain-text stories as well -- Bucs defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin offered his "exclusive secrets" on how to contain the Rams offense, for instance. You can send online Super Bowl cards, play trivia challenge games and read tips from other users on how to make your Super Bowl party perfect. There's a daily lineup of chats, player video diaries, and live views from Atlanta's Buckhead district.
And it's possible, way down the road, that Web sites may come to transcend the very media they're working with now. FoxSports.com has featured daily half-hour "Webcasts" from Atlanta, with another planned for halftime Sunday -- like a television show made exclusively for the Internet.
www.postnet.com: This is the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's online home -- check out the daily Dick Vermeil mood-o-meter, which measures the Rams coach on a scale of 1 ("triple cabernet" super-relaxed) to 5 ("hugs and kisses ... could be tissue time."
www.tennessean.com: This is the Nashville newspaper's site, with sound bites from Titans players and a quasi-handy "common football terminology" link (i.e. bomb: a long pass).
www.superbowlxxxiv.org: This is the Super Bowl Host Committee's site, with a trivia quiz and calendar of events. A poll asking for the game's winner was deadlocked at 1,867 votes for each team Thursday afternoon.
www.atlanta.com: Sponsored by the city's convention and visitor's bureau, it doesn't seem to realize the big game is in town. Even the Georgia Dome listing hails the arena as "Home of the 1994 Super Bowl." In fact, the site's calendar of events for Sunday has 26 things to check out in Atlanta -- no Super Bowl listed. But be sure to check out "Tropical Orchids: Splendor Under Glass" in Piedmont Park.
www.football.com: With a great name like this, you figure it has to be good. Main page has no mention of the Super Bowl, but it does tell you that Ronnie Lott and Joe Montana head this year's Hall of Fame nominees. Very disappointing.
www.vpsport.com: You can order Warner's Crunch Time cereal here -- just $4.95 a box or $59.40 per case (no discount whatsoever ... "Kurt's cereal shows who's the man come Crunch Time!"). For only $1.59, you can get a Kurt Warner Chocolate Bar.
www.eddiegeorge.com: Eddie's official site, touting "new photos from Jaxsonville," with a link to official sites
for Frank Wycheck (www.frankwycheck89.com) and Chris Sanders (www.chris-sanders81.com).
www.ebay.com: Among the Super Bowl-related items up for sale -- a pair of tickets, Row 33, with a minimum bid of $15,000 (item #245049971), or the rights to the "hot" domain name "tennessee-titans-nfl.com", with bidding starting at $3,000 (item #245625686) or perhaps the 1980 Super Bowl ring that belonged to former Ram Ron Jessie, which has a bid at $3,000 (item #240663495). Hope Ron's not looking for that ring.
www.superbowl2000.com: All this site has is two lines of text: "$25,000.00" and a phone number. We called, and didn't make any offers. Rick Culleton of Austin, Texas, said he secured the rights to the name four years ago and that the NFL had made him a small offer that "now seemed tempting." Hold out, Rick. Still two more days!