Brad Hubbard Football

He Can’t Dance But He Could Probably Code

By Brad Hubbard | @bradhubbard

Peyton Manning can do a lot of things. Dancing to ‘Rocky Top’ apparently isn’t one of them. Truth be told, no one looks very good dancing to the default Tennessee fight song. However, if you think about it, Manning would probably be a really good programmer.

A good developer is a good problem solver. Like, a really good problem solver. In a nutshell, they have to take a problem, break it down into pieces, figure out the dependencies and then create a solution.

Sounds a lot like an NFL QB.

Manning does something similar. He looks at a defense, breaks it down into individual match ups, finds the best one for success and then executes the play. Except he does that in 40 seconds during the game.

As you can see there are similarities in the two roles. At the core is the ability to problem solve and being quick at doing that comes with experience and practice.

While developers have the luxury or Google and StackOverflow.com at their fingertips to find solutions, Manning only has game film to study the week of and nothing but what he sees during the game.

While no one really knows when Manning will finish his playing career or if he would ever venture into the world of code, it is an option.

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“Traditional” Beats “New” When It Comes to Live Sports (Despite Red Bull)

This past fall the Red Bull Stratos jump had at its peak 8 million concurrent views on YouTube. That annihilated the streaming of last years Super Bowl which had 2.1 million uniques which was on NBCSports.com. No one knew what would happen when the streams hit that 8 million mark and there was some genuine concern among the engineers but the system held up. A major part of the system though hasn’t held up well this past year.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is rapidly becoming a leader in the cloud space. According to a Bloomberg report by Cory Johnson AWS will generate $1.6 billion in revenue in 2012. It’s not all fun and games for AWS though. Christmas Eve saw Netflix go down. According a Wall Street Journal article 95% of Netflix computational and storage needs are handled by AWS. Netflix in turn accounts for 33% of peak downstream residential internet traffic in North America so if AWS goes down, which it’s done a few times this year, it’s a problem.

If YouTube (who’s parent company is Google) would have failed during the Red Bull Stratos jump one could argue about the level of consumer outrage it would have received from the public. If YouTube was hosting the Super Bowl or the BCS National TItle Game on the other hand and the stream fails then there is a pretty good chance that the level of consumer outrage would be significantly higher.

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For all of the the mocking and criticism that goes toward broadcast television, cable and satellite providers they have something that people will continue to pay for, reliability. If the Super Bowl is on you can bet that you are going to be able to find a reliable “old school” way to watch it. The broadcast, cable or satellite signal does not get weighed down by the amount of people using it. It does not need to be ‘throttled down’ just to be able to continue showing you the game or event.

Strip away the economics of this argument and just look at the stability of the platforms and on that alone it is easy to see why live sports will continue to be the lifeblood of “traditional” outlets like broadcast, cable and satellite. While leagues like the NFL, MLB, NBA, MLS and UFC will continue to offer live streams of games and events they will not be able to deliver the same experience or reliability night in and night out like the “traditional” outlets can.

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Food for Thought: On The Media