Solid sports writing - by Burkholder, Posnanski, Arthur, Wetzel, & Tullis

Some recent great sports writing included a couple of pieces that that struck me as fascinating along with a few more that were really impactful as well.

Stories in the fascinating category were "Being Andre the Giant" by Denny Burkholder for the CBS Sports website and "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Dalkowski?" by Joe Posnanski for the NBC Sports site. Both pieces are on really interesting people with pro wresting star Andre Rene Roussimoff having passed away in 1993 and retired MLB pitcher Burkholder now 75-years-old.

Two pieces that felt to be on very cool people were "Canada’s Steve Nash calls time on transcendent NBA career" by Bruce Arthur for the Toronto Star and "Aaron Hernandez finally taken down by a 5-foot-tall operations manager" for Yahoo Sports by Dan Wetzel, with him writing about about jury foreman Lesa Strachan and the courage she showed in delivering the guilty of murder verdict to Hernandez.

The last piece of great writing to note here was by Matt Tullis for SB Nation. "The Ghosts I Run With" was a feature story about Tullis and how his running pastime makes him think back to his teenage years battling cancer, and how many of those he got close with didn't make it. It's extremely personal writing and really really good.

Great sports writing - by Passan, Jenkins & Schlereth

There's been a few pieces of really good sports writing over the past few weeks that I haven't linked to previously.

for Yahoo Sports, Jeff Passan wrote "Lockerbie: A story beyond tragedy, a story of curling and Olympic pride," a very cool story about a town, it's painful past, current Olympic heroes and a writer wanting to tell it's story.

For Sports Illustrated, Lee Jenkins wrote "How Pacers' Hibbert emerged to anchor NBA's best defense" and what struck me about the piece was how Jenkins described the style of defense employed by Roy Hibbert as different than most if not actually revolutionary.

For ESPN, Mark Schlereth wrote the excellent "Don't lose crucial parts of 'the code'" on Richie Incognito and the NFL workplace harassment of Jonathan Martin and also from ESPN was the great 30 for 30 video "Judging Jewell" on Richard Jewell and the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bombing.

Really solid work in all of these.

Favorite Winter Olympics writing so far - by Farber, Wetzel & Drehs

There's of course been a lot written about the Sochi Olympics and my three favorite stories to date are by Michael Farber, Dan Wetzel and Wayne Drehs.

The first two stories were both about US Men's Hockey with "T.J. Oshie: The new American hero" by Wetzel for Yahoo Sports after the preliminary round shootout defeat of the Russians and then Farber for Sports Illustrated wrote "Uncommonly introspective, Bylsma leads USA hockey into the spotlight," an in-depth profile of head coach Dan Bylsma.

The third story I found interesting in large part because the people it covered in US skeleton competitors Katie Uhlaender and Noelle Pikus-Pace were so captivating. "Smallest Margin Between Victory, Defeat" was by Drehs for ESPN and showed both the great highs and rough lows that can come from the Olympics.

It was really excellent writing in all three pieces and there's I'm sure going to be much more great work published in the next week.

Solid & quiet sports writing - by Wetzel, Bidini & Jones

There's been a few pieces of really good sports writing I've seen lately that seemed to group together with each feeling to be excellent and quiet (if that makes sense as a description of writing) commentaries on nice subjects.

Back in December for Yahoo Sports was "Tom Izzo's admiration for Ed Hightower a reminder that refs are human, too" by Dan Wetzel and then last week Dave Bidini for CBC Sports wrote "Wendel Clark revisits his Saskatchewan roots" on the former NHL star.

For ESPN The Magazine recently were two excellent back-page columns by Chris Jones with "Eggs and wisdom" on the late college basketball coach Rick Majerus and his player at Utah, Keith Van Horn and "Biggest lugers" on teenage Olympian Tucker West and the backyard luge track his father built following the 2002 games in Salt Lake City.

Well done and interesting sports stories - by Davis, Sneed, Knapp & Adelson

There's a few recent sports stories to mention here that struck me for different reasons.

From SB Nation Longform came two excellent features with "The Prospect" by Brandon Sneed and "She Is Gone" by David Davis.

The feature by Sneed was about Montaous Walton, a 29 year old from Milwaukee who has consistently over the past decade fabricated stories of his baseball career, seemingly for the purpose of hoping to wish it into becoming true. It's a tremendously interesting read that walks through the details of Walton's life and lies and the piece inspired more than anything else a sense of pity for Walton and his never given up on dream of playing baseball for a career. Also interesting to me about the piece was both Walton's appearance in the comments attached to it and the note from Sneed about how he happened across Walton while doing research for an intended story on obscure baseball prospects.

The Davis feature for SB Nation also stood as a lengthy and compelling one that's really about two different topics, Dodgers baseball and the author and his family. A fascinating story in and of itself is detailed with how the home run ball hit by Kirk Gibson to win game one of the 1988 World Series hasn't been conclusively found. Beyond this, Davis writes about living in Los Angeles as a Dodger fan and his sister's mental illness and suicide two years prior to Gibson's famous home run. It's highly personal writing that would seem to be unrelated to the game of baseball, but Davis puts together two stories into a really great narrative.

Two other pieces of sports writing I saw about a month ago, but haven't yet linked to here weren't as long as the SB Nation ones, but each interesting. "Baseball's most entertaining fans" was by Gwen Knapp for Sports On Earth and about Oakland A's fans in the rightfield bleachers section 149 of the stadium. It's just a very nice look that contains some memorable stuff about positive interactions with opposing players like Jeff Francoeur of the Kansas City Royals. The final story to mention here was an update by Eric Adelson titled "Devon Walker shows strength in face of paralysis" for Yahoo Sports. It's uplifting writing about Walker and support received since his injury suffered last September while playing football for Tulane University.

Great sports stories - by Jones, Lake & Watson

There's three pieces of sports writing I've seen over the past few weeks that struck me as particularly solid and are available now to post online.

From the May 13 issue of ESPN The Magazine was the back page column "Boston Strong" by Chris Jones. Really compelling and short piece on Boston and what the 2014 Marathon could be like.

In the Sports Illustrated May 13 edition was a feature by Thomas Lake titled "Drinking and Driving and Dying". It's excellent writing about the long history of high profile DUI accidents caused by professional athletes with particular focus on the death last December of Dallas Cowboys player Jerry Brown with his teammate Josh Brent behind the wheel.

Finally, another piece that struck me was the heartwarming story "Athletic departments work together to save college football reporter’s life" by Graham Watson for Yahoo Sports. Recounted in the piece is how Wyoming assistant athletic director Tim Harkins during a phone interview with freelance journalist Natalie Meisler recognized that she might be having a stroke and tracked down her location so emergency personnel could respond.

Writing on the Boston Marathon Bombing

Not to simply list out great writing (well, actually, exactly to simply list out great writing) since the Boston Marathon bombing, there's been some amazing work done, both poignant and well reported with the pieces below being those that have stood out to me the most.

In the poignant essay category were pieces by Patton Oswalt and Joe Posnanski with Oswalt doing a Facebook post about good people and Posnanski's essay on his personal blog containing the same notion with his last sentence of "There are exponentially more good people than bad."

The piece of writing reported from the scene that I found most memorable was "In Grisly Image, a Father Sees His Son" by Tim Rohan for the New York Times. Recounted is the story of Jeff Bauman, a marathon spectator who lost both his legs at the scene. While the piece certainly contains a graphic image and some difficult to read text, it's also an inspiring depiction of helping others with Rohan's description of Carlos Arredondo (the subject of NYT piece from 2007 that Rohan links to) coming to Bauman's aide. Incredibly, there's a story that's come out just this evening on Bauman with "Boston Bombing Victim in Iconic Photo Helped Identify Attackers" by Asjylyn Loder & Esmé E. Deprez for Bloomberg.

The final pieces to note here contained details about the response of emergency personnel to the bombing and injuries with a New Yorker essay "Why Boston's Hospital's Were Ready" by noted author and Boston area surgeon Atul Gawande and "First responders to Boston bombings get relief, postgame beers from grateful Bruins" by Les Carpenter for Yahoo Sports.

Finally, it's of course not a piece of writing, but here was footage from the Boston Garden two nights after the bombing...

 

Sports writing from Smith, Chen, Saslow & Carpenter

There's been some remarkable sports writing over the past week from a variety of different sources.

Most profound of the pieces was by Gary Smith for last week's issue of Sports Illustrated. Written about the childhood sex abuse suffered by Cy Young winning pitcher R.A. Dickey and Judo gold medalist Kayla Harrison, "Stand Up Speak Out" is a detailed and painful to read story of children being overlooked, manipulated and taken advantage of.

From this same issue of issue was "The Politicization Of Jeremy Lin" by Albert Chen. It was interesting reading that dealt heavily with identity and how enemies China and Taiwan both seek to claim the Rockets point guard (who was born in the U.S.) as their own.

Another piece of noteworthy sports writing lately was by Les Carpenter for Yahoo Sports. "Former NFL QB Jon Kitna finds ‘gold mine’ at his troubled old high school" was a solidly written profile of a remarkable teacher and coach. Contained within the piece was the disconcerting anecdote about the H.S. football team returning back to school at 11:30PM and there being no parents there waiting.

Last piece to mention here was from the latest issue of ESPN the Magazine. Eli Saslow wrote "A trip to the threshing floor" on former Cowboys receiver Michael Irvin and his Hall of Fame induction speech. The story features a ton of interesting anecdotes reported on by Saslow and is just very well done.

Excellent Sports Writing - by Chris Ballard, Jeff Passan & Chris Jones

There's been two pieces of great sports writing I've come across lately that also brought to mind solid work from years past.

Story I've thought about the most was "Mourning Glory" for the October 22 issue of Sports Illustrated. Written by Chris Ballard, it's on a Maryland high school baseball coach, team and how they responded to tragedy. There's also a remarkable connection to Nick Adenhart who died three years ago after pitching his first start of the year for the Los Angeles Angels. This connection for me helped give the story an appropriate balance between inspiration and devestating loss and I found myself wondering whether Ballard had in mind these things while writing. Regardless of what he thought about during the process, the piece he finished with was just excellent.

The topic is of course completely different, but an additional Ballard story I've read recently was his 2008 SI feature “The Birds”, a tremendously entertaining “fear & loathing-like” look at homing pigeon racing in Las Vegas.

Another recent piece of writing that stood out as outstanding was “Bonded by failure, Barry Zito, Tim Lincecum give Giants right stuff in Game 1 of World Series.” Written by Jeff Passan for Yahoo Sports, it’s great stuff on the two pitchers.

Zito is one of my favorite athletes and his recent success (after thus far not meeting the expectations of his contract) has brought up mention on the World Wide Super Tubes of a 2002 Zito profile “He Came from Outer Space”, Chris Jones’ first published work in Esquire.

Excellent Sports Writing - by Dan Wetzel / Wright Thompson / Tom Verducci / Dave Sheinin

I've been thinking over the past few days that since I brought up the whole topic of types of sports writing, it makes sense to post here on some of the best sports pieces I've seen lately.

Favorite feature story I've seen was "The Kid Who Wasn't There" by Wright Thompson for ESPN. Thompson writes lengthy pieces that tend to appear on the longer form E:60 section of the ESPN site and this one is remarkable both in the amount of research put into it (as revealed in a post to writing site Grangry), and the story itself. Topic of the piece is an Odessa, TX high school basketball player living under the assumed name, Jerry Joseph (he was actually in his early 20s and grew up Guerdwich Montimere in Florida). It's ridiculously good writing that traffics heavily in the concept of identity and how fractured and shape-shifting it can be.

Another very solid lengthy feature piece was actually printed a year ago for Washington Post. The Dave Sheinin written profile "For the love of Bryce Harper: Get ready, Washington. You're about to fall head over heels for the Nationals' newest star." gives an excellent view into the 19 year-old baseball phenom. Also, and onn the occasion his recent major league league call up, Tom Verducci wrote the shorter piece "With Harper, future of Nationals -- and maybe the game -- has arrived" for the Sports Illustrated website.

Final thing to mention in this post is around a writer who consistently produces great work for Yahoo! Sports, Dan Wetzel. My favorite piece from him was "Bubba Watson won the Masters with his own brand of golf, but family trumps his green jacket" and two other stories that stood out were "Pat Summitt stepping aside as Tennessee coach could lead to her raising awareness of Alzheimer's" and "Andrew Luck, Robert Griffin III go 1,2 in the draft, and now pressure really starts to mount." Wetzel's writing (at least that for Yahoo!) seems to tend towards blended player analysis/feature piece work and he publishes frequently... with 15 pieces (including those on Pat Summitt and Luck/Griffin) between the Apr 10 Bubba Watson piece and today.

How much is too much? Limits of fandom & Pieces by Patrick Hruby and Tim Brown

There's a topic I've been thinking about lately that's become more front of mind with two different controversies in the sports world, and two different pieces of writing I've seen on them.

First to the topic... that of sports fandom, and what it takes to cause someone to abandon a rooting interest for what I'll call "moral grounds."

It's important to note this abandonment very different than someone simply letting go of their once favorite team for more banal reasons including (A) moving away or (B) sick of their team losing all the time. Rather, the type of "favorite team dropping" I'm thinking of is the willful and sudden "no longer do I want to cheer for a group like this" casting aside of a favorite team. While I'm busy noting frameworks for the discussion, should also state that this type of abandonment often precipitated by ones views on a particular player on said favorite team. Especially if a star, that player and team often can go together as the guy can very much be a reflection on and shaper of views about the entire group. Yep, it's true... a rotten apple can spoil the whole bunch.

The specific example in my mind (prior to the last few days and aforementioned writing I came across) of a player that could have caused fans to cast aside their favorite team was Barry Bonds. I don't think many Giants fans thought him a great guy while he helped win games (you know, through his particular ways and methods), but they still cheered him. In fact, Bonds even in retirement/exile from the larger baseball community still appears beloved as a former Giant with the cheers he appears to receive whenever attending games at AT&T Park.

So... it's a question that could be examined in much greater detail than just via this blog post (and Bonds would be me thinks a perfect subject to evaluate the larger topic through), but the working theory I've developed is fans primarily want to be entertained (not gonna win any major awards from that insight), but also want to not feel foolish for their rooting interest. What I mean by that is me thinks someone wants to not be embarrassed by and for the players and team they support. When sports fans become adults we by and large accept that "because they're on our favorite team does not by definition make them good guys", but we want to be able to sort of believe it's possible they are. A couple of guys on your favorite team who go out and kiss babies can help in thinking you support "good people", but really you just don't want guys (especially the best players) on your favorite team kicking the babies. It's basically a concept of plausible deniability and not thinking the players you cheer for actual bad people.

To the example of Bonds for Giants fans... he was by most accounts not a nice guy while on the team, but never went completely over the line towards bad guy status. The line of course gets drawn in different places and there's greater leeway given when greater production in effect (73 home runs in a season helped), but there's still a line (and post retirement, Bonds' image has been helped by the "well, everyone was doing it" view of steroid usage). So, here's a case of someone who didn't appear a great guy, but could have that explained away and excused. When this can't be done for someone and the concept of plausible deniability lost, that's where things get sticky and a fan more likely to cast aside a team rooting interest based on the actions of a player. These are the situations in which teams should and often do act quickly to "draw a line in the sand" and reprimand or release the player. It's usually not really that the team and its management are acting from a moral high ground, but rather than they see a particular player or players actions jeopardizing the paid (emphasis on paid) fan rooting interest in the team.

Example I always think of in relation to this is Virginia Tech and Marcus Vick. The guy was a highly skilled quarterback (didn't hurt that his older brother was supremely skilled former Tech QB Michael Vick in his pre-arrested for dogfighting days), but also seemed quite the miscreant. Team rule violations seemed to happen again and again, but (so goes the story I've heard from "people who know things") Vick finally got booted from the team after prominent boosters began making noise about his reflection on the program. Going only a tiny step beyond that, really it's not just "the program" as some sort of non-affiliated entity, but rather an institution that said boosters affiliate themselves with (you know, in a financial way). Back to the plausible deniability concept, it's one thing to support a team that you know isn't filled with saints and choir boys, it's another entirely when you're embarrassed by the actions within the team you support.

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So... here's the views I've had and the impetus for putting them done in this post (you know, Words Written Down) two different pieces I've seen lately. For his website, Patrick Hruby wrote "Ozzie Guillen, Bobby Petrino and the real business of sports." It's excellent writing that seems to be completely in line with my views (gee, surprise I consider it excellent) and includes what seems the very well stated paragraph below...

"Winning on its own doesn't matter. It may as well happen on a desert island. Winning that excites the public enough to buy tickets, splurge for jerseys and tune in on television does matter. In fact, that's the only winning that matters. The ultimate point of revenue-generating athletics isn't building character or testing the limits of human performance or hoisting championship trophies; it's hawking merchandise and selling captive audiences to advertisers."
The second piece I've come across lately on these twin controversies (or put a finer point on it - dumb statements and actions from Guillen and Petrino both) was "Ozzie Guillen's remarks on former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro should be tuned out" by Tim Brown for Yahoo! Sports. Brown makes the accurate point that Guillen not being evaluated or paid based on whatever social or political nonsense (or even brilliance if he reversed course and said smart things), but rather to manage winning baseball games. Where I disagree with Brown, though, is on this whole affiliation, plausible deniability and support of something completely messed up platform I've brought up. It's ok to be wacky and say dumb things, just don't go over the line to where it's an embarrassment to say "yea, I'm a fan of the team that employs that guy." Maybe Guillen will be sufficiently contrite to get people in Miami back on his side, but given where is and what he said... it may well be tough sledding from a business perspective (and is there any other that really counts?) for Marlins ownership and management to keep him at the helm.

The whole thing is a fascinating topic... and I'd love to see some longer-form writing about the ideas of sports fandom and paid affiliation I've brought up and Hruby wrote about as well.

Excellent Sports Writing - from Ballard, Lake, Bamberger & Hruby

There have been a number of sports pieces I've come across lately that featured really solid writing worth noting.

Personal favorite was "Man in Full" from Chris Ballard a week ago for Sports Illustrated. It was profound and thoroughly reported (as detailed in my blog post linking to a Ballard interview) writing on Chicago area high school wrestling coach Mike Powell. Stricken with the muscle wasting disease polymyositis, Powell is put in horrible personal circumstances and what makes the story so compelling is his continued relationship to the team of kids he leads. Really well done piece by Ballard which includes Powell's career path working with kids in need and imparting to his athletes a lesson of "manliness" different than is traditionally associated with the term. Its not to say one guy exactly the same as another, but the story of Powell reminded me of that I saw years ago on youth track coach John Baker (who had an elementary school named in his honor).

The most recent Feb 20 issue of SI also had two pieces that stood out with one being another profound high school athlete related story and one an insightful golf piece. The "writing with great meaning" was done by Thomas Lake and titled "The Legacy Of Wes Leonard". Subtitle to the piece is "You may have heard about the Michigan high schooler who made a game-winning basket and then died. Here's the rest of the story: a violent car crash, a bone-shaking tackle, a near-perfect season, a reluctant substitute and a search for the will to carry on" and what got me most from the story was the content about the automatic external defibrillator. Leonard suffered a sudden cardiac arrest of his heart and its definitely unknown whether a defibrillator would have saved him, but the potentially lifesaving machine at the high school had been neglected and found to have a dead battery when applied to Leonard's chest. Out of this sad situation has come some good, though, with mother Jocelyn Leonard creating the Wes Leonard Heart Team and spearheading efforts to have a working defibrillator available at youth sporting events with someone trained to use it. Additionally, of note on the Heart Team site is a link to an ESPN Outside the Lines 16 minute story "Wes Leonard: Never Forgotten".

From the same issue of Sports Illustrated came a piece that stood out to me in part because I didn't expect it to. "The Meaning Of Pebble Beach" by Michael Bamberger could have simply been a recap of the recent PGA Tour event, but instead wound up as an insightful look into Tiger Woods and where he is now in both life and his golf game. Its very cool to come across pieces like this that don't scream out "feature story on something of great meaning", but wind up as interesting and insightful.

Last piece to note here was written by Patrick Hruby in the Yahoo Sports ThePostGame section. "End Game: Brain Trauma And The Future Of Youth Football In America" details the head injury suffered by Sequim, WA high school QB Drew Rickerson and then gets wider on the danger of concussions and need for concussion education. It was sad, but not surprising to read of mother Jean Rickerson and her attempt to further awareness and training around concussions and getting ignored by some coaches and administrators. This difficulty in getting people to move past their preconceived notions of "toughness" and "playing through pain" reminded me of something from the excellent Thomas Lake SI story "The Boy Who Died of Football". Lake wrote the following towards the end of a piece on Max Gilpin, a 15 year old who suffered heatstroke during a practice and then passed away: "Later, when he looked back at his son's last practice, Jeff Gilpin was filled with pride and wonder. "I underestimated this kid, big-time," he said. "His heart. Can you imagine the fortitude it took to keep running out there?"

Back to Hruby and his piece on concussions, his commentary at the end of the piece is me thinks spot on with "Protect our national pastime. Protect our children's brains. The hope is that we can do both. Biology and physics suggest otherwise. Safer does not mean safe. In locker rooms and school board meetings, quiet funerals and noisy grandstands, the future of youth football may not be matter of risk management. It may be a matter of risk acceptance. Roll the dice."

Excellent Sports Writing - from Reilly, Wetzel, Lake, Segura, Phillips & Wertheim

Have seen a host of interesting pieces of sports writing lately from a few different sources.

The recent Feb 6, 2012 issue of Sports Illustrated had two of them in Game, Set, Matchless by Jon Wertheim and Under Siege by Thomas Lake and Melissa Segura.

The Wertheim story was on the just under six hours epic Australian Open Final between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. Solid writing on a domination of men's tennis with Wertheim noting that 24 of the last 28 Grand Slam semifinal spots have been claimed by one of Djokovic, Nadal, Roger Federer and Andy Murray (with the four in that order as of late). Its a pretty remarkable level of competition right now and brings to mind Wertheim's chronicling of what at the time was more just a Federer-Nadal rivalry in his 2009 book Strokes of Genius.

On the same just completed Australian Open Final, Brian Phillips penned the exceedingly well written Nadal vs. Djokovic: Here We Are Again, My Friend for Grantland. Piece covers the same four-headed domination of the men's tour, but differs from that by Wertheim in that Phillips gets further into Nadal and his drive, brilliant play... and still coming up short. Definitely writing on athletic struggle that traffics in the profound.

The Lake and Segura story in this same issue of Sport Illustrated was on the three months ago kidnapping of Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos in his native Venezuela. Lake's writing carries an air of thorough reporting and this piece no exception as he and Segura delve into the particulars of the case and what may or may not have been the reality of his capture by Venezuelan government agents.

Another Jon Wertheim piece that stood out recently was Driving for Home from the Jan 23 issue of SI. About Delaware college hoops star Elena Della Donne, it brings to mind the 2009 Selena Roberts commentary "Burning To Play Again" on the at Deleware, but not yet returned to the game of basketball Della Donne.

Finally, two excellent pieces recently on New England Patriots QB Tom Brady. Shortly after his Super Bowl loss to the Giants, Dan Wetzel wrote Tom Brady in postgame daze of disappointment for Yahoo Sports and Rick Reilly did Tom Brady is as advertised for ESPN. Wetzel's story takes a more conventionally reporting approach than Reilly's (makes sense as Reilly tends towards commentary with his writing) and each shows Brady as someone who has both stayed a good guy and continued to try really really hard despite being at the top of his profession.

Business Strategies To Do Well: Simplicity & "Special"

One of the things I've done on this blog is post about business topics that I find of interest (which included touch-screen technology and was followed up by this post on Social Media) and that's been an entertaining exercise (you know, for myself), but I also keep thinking beyond business areas and about business strategies and tactics.

For the purpose of this post, I want to look at business to consumer interaction (as opposed to business to business) and highlight two strategic consumer interaction concepts... which, done well, go a long way in helping decide who I want to spend money with. In addition to the concept itself, I also list out some tactical examples of it executed well... or not so well.

Concept # 1 - Simplicity of interaction.

- Very impressed with the new Bank of America ATM machines. To give customers the ability to go from entering their ATM card to walking away with cash with the combination of a pin # and two touches ("fast cash" and "no receipt) is an excellent example of how to make an experience easy.

- Love the simple menu at Chipotle. I know what they offer and can plainly see what it costs. I suppose there's something to be said for a fast food restaurant offering a lot of options, but so many places require you to either go with one of the limited offerings on the board, have knowledge of what else is available or just sort of guess at the offering or cost. Again, options are nice, but me thinks it doesn't behoove a company to have a stressful purchasing experience.

- Will almost always pick a mobile-enabled website (like the CNNSI site http://m.si.com/) over a standard one when surfing on my iPhone. Why there's still heavily visited sites (Yahoo! Sports as an example) which don't automatically send mobile users to a mobile-enabled site is beyond me.

- Not a fan of shopping at stores that don't have transparent and easy to find pricing. To this end, I'm a huge proponent of price scanners in stores, but even places that have them can still be annoying to shop at if there's not enough of them and prices aren't clearly marked. Bad example that comes to mind is Kohl's... yes, they've got scanners here and there, but it's still not always easy to know what stuff costs.

Concept # 2 - Making the customer "special" (or at least feel that way).

- Love the Starbucks Gold Card. They give a card and instantly you get a discount not available to all... fantastic way to make someone feel "special." With them doing away with the discount and moving to a "free drink with 15 purchases" format, I'm a bit sceptical of the same cache remaining.

- Really really not a fan of stores that want to check you upon your exit. I get that shoplifting is a major problem for retailers, but have avoided Fry's Electronics for years with their practice of checking receipts against items as people leave. My understanding is that (at least in California) shoppers are under no obligation to stop and be checked (different story entirely for stores like Costco that are membership based), but I view the request as intrusive.

Great Isiah Thomas Story

Really interesting piece posted onto Yahoo! Sports yesterday. Written by Adrian Wojnarowski and titled "Thomas Won't Find Soft Landing in College" it gives a sense of the fun that Florida International University is in for now that Isiah Thomas has been hired as head basketball coach.

For more details about past bizarre and destructive behavior from Thomas... his Wikipedia entry gets really entertaining once you reach the "post-NBA career" section about halfway down. Some of the highlights (and you know if they're on Wikipedia, they must be true)...

End of Continental Basketball Association ownership: "Many CBA managers blamed Thomas for the league's failure, citing mismanagement and out-of-control spending on his part. Many such managers publicly declared that Thomas ran the league into the ground, possibly on purpose to eliminate the non-NBA-owned minor league in order to make room for the NBA-owned NBDL."

End of New York Knicks employment: "As part of the reassignment agreement Thomas was banned from having contact with any Knicks' players under the rationale that he could willingly or unwillingly undermine Donnie Walsh and the new head coach."

"Sexual harassment lawsuit: In October 2006, Thomas and Madison Square Garden were sued for sexual harassment by Anucha Browne Sanders. The matter came to trial in September 2007 and Thomas was determined to have made demeaning statements to Sanders, as well as making sexual advances and repeatedly telling her that he was in love with her."

"Drug overdose: On October 24, 2008, Thomas was taken to White Plains Hospital Center near his New York City area home after taking an overdose of Lunesta, a form of sleep medication. In the opinion of Harrison Police Chief David Hall, Thomas tried to 'cover up' the incident by claiming his 17-year old daughter required medical treatment when in actuality he was the patient."

Crazy...