One of Rovell’s latest posts focuses on the “All Name” team for college football players, and considering the season is only 22 days away, content like this is not only timely, it’s quite fitting and does a great job of getting people ready for what’s coming.

The list is quite entertaining, but first, a disclaimer from the author:

Before we get to the list we have to thank the creative parents who came up with these names. In some cases, the player’s name listed isn’t his given birth name but is eligible because that is the name he goes by. This list was only going to include FBS schools, but I couldn’t resist letting one FCS name in at No. 24. You’ll see why.

For those who are unsure, think of it this way: FBS is Division 1 and FCS is Division 1AA. For a more extensive, yet confusing take, read the Wikipedia entry. Now for some awesome naming conventions:

1. Wave Ryder, S, Navy

2. Yourhighness Morgan, FAU

3. Tank Carder, LB, TCU

4. Boyblue Aoelua, LB, New Mexico State

5. Whitney Mercilus, DE, Illinois

6. Shavodrick Beaver, QB, Midwestern State

7. Spiffy Evans, WR, Boston College

8. Mister Cobble, DT, Kentucky

9. Bacarri Rambo, S, Georgia

10. Aireal Boyd, CB, North Dakota State

11. Skylar Stormo, DE, Washington State

12. Jose Jose, DT, UCF

13. Munchie Legaux, QB, Cincinnati

14. Sterling Lovelady, C, Florida State

15. Thor Jozwiak, OL, South Florida

16. Terrance Bullit, S, Texas Tech

17. Vontaze Burfict, LB, Arizona State

18. Bo Moos, DL, Arizona State

19. Derek Slaughter, LB, Nebraska

20. Barkevious Mingo, DE, LSU

21. Chi Chi Ariguzo, LB, Northwestern

22. King Holder, DB, San Diego State

23. Konockus Sashington, DB, North Texas

24. Delector Durley Jr., DL, Western Illinois

25. Silverberry Mouhon, DE, Cincinnati

While I’m partial to the University of Kentucky, and therefore, number 8 on the list–Mister Cobble–for my money, I’m not sure there’s a better name in the world than “Barkevious Mingo.” That’s just incredible. Others agree.

With that in mind, is football here yet?

The company has created a special page to help people manage their tournament experience over the next few weeks. Fans will be able to view an up-to-date tournament schedule, tour college campuses in Street View and click through to watch games on NCAA March Madness on Demand.

Google has included a “Distance Tool” as well. The Google Blog offers more details. “There’s been a long-running debate over whether teams playing closer to their home court have an advantage, we added a “Distance Tool” on the map to make it easier to measure how far schools have to travel from game to game.”

Users can personalize the Daily Sports Watchlist, which includes coverage of the NFL, MLB, NBA, NCAA, auto-racing, golf and tennis. Locally televised high school games will also be available for check-in.

“Since we launched check-in last fall, Sunday Night Football and Monday Night Football have been among our most-checked-into weekly TV events,” said Christy Tanner, Executive Vice President and General Manager.

“We want to make it easier than ever for fans to find when and where their favorite teams are playing and to root for their teams by sharing with their friends what they’re watching.”

Last year, the NCAA March Madness was available as a paid app for iPhone and iPod touch. Also available this year are free streams of the tournament outside of the U.S.

New features of March Madness on Demand (MMOD) include improved live viewing with better quality and larger streams, a personalizable channel lineup option, and live stats.

“MMOD is the primary online destination for fans of NCAA March Madness,” said Greg Shaheen, Interim Executive Vice President of Championships and Alliances, NCAA.

“The NCAA enters a new dimension with Turner Sports and CBS Sports that provides men’s basketball fans with enhanced features that will further enrich their online and mobile viewing experience.”

Additional features include:

*My Channels- The online, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad apps list all four TV networks: TBS, TNT, truTV and CBS by default. Through My Channels, users can plug in their zip code, select their TV provider and see their channel lineup for every game.

*The Game Center View- Users can follow stats of every team while watching games on TV.

*The March Madness Social Arena- Will allow people to connect to Facebook and NCAA.com and “Like” teams in each round.

The tournament field will be announced on Selection Sunday on March 13 on CBS and the tournament will begin with the First Four airing in primetime on Tuesday, March 15 and Wednesday, March 16 on truTV.

The app is free and combines social functionality with real-time NCAA football news. Fans of Division 1 teams will be able to chat with one another (as well as fans of opposing teams, so that should cater to a fair amount of trash talk). 

"The NCAA Football Fan Zone App Powered by AT&T gives college football fans an ‘always open’ venue to do what they do best – talk about college football," says AT&T. "To get started, users simply download the app and choose a team or teams they want to track. Users can chat with all other group members – making predictions, cheering and ranting during the game, uploading photos or partaking in a round of post-game analysis."

"To add a little fun to the conversation, groups for opposing teams are merged before, during and after each game allowing all posts made during that time to be visible to both teams," the company adds.  "To ensure smack talking remains family-friendly, groups are systematically monitored and users can report abuse at any time."

The app also includes  a live scoreboard, team schedules, discussion groups for weekly rankings and breaking news.

The app is available in Apple’s App Store.

In total, there were 3.4 million hours of live streaming video and audio consumed, over 20 percent growth compared to 2009, with 3 million more unique visitors to the MMOD video player. Both figures represent the largest single day of traffic for a live sporting event on the Internet.

The MMOD "Boss Button" was clicked over 1.7 million times on the first day of the first round of the tournament. The "Boss Button" was redesigned for the 2010 tournament, it hides the live video on the screen and mutes the audio replacing it with a flow chart image. The 2010 Boss Button was designed by cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the Dilbert comic.

"NCAA March Madness on Demand continues to regularly exceed our expectations," said Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports.

"It is the perfect combination of programming and the Internet. Our ability to successfully develop the product alongside steady growth in streaming programming for the Internet and wireless content provides many options and truly maximizes the Network’s NCAA bundled rights agreement."

Other highlights from MMOD traffic include:

*The most watched game on 3-18 was the double overtime Florida vs. BYU game with 521k hours of streaming audio and video. That’s up 50 prcent over 2009′s most watched game from the first day of the first round (Washington vs. Mississippi State) which had 348 hours of streaming.

*The most watch hour yesterday day waas 2:00-2:59 ET with 533k streaming hours (16% of the total for the day).

The MMOD is also available on CNN.com, ESPN.com, Facebook, TV.com and CNET
 

The NCAA Vault lets users search for individual plays and highlights from their favorite NCAA men’s basketball teams and players from the Sweet Sixteen through the championship games.

Visitors to the NCAA Vault can comment on specific moments within the games and share them through links or via Twitter and Facebook. Comments will appear on their Twitter and Facebook pages with links back to the exact moments in the games.

NCAA Vault is powered by Denver-based Thought Equity Motion, which specializes in digitizing and archiving videos.

"Through our proprietary technology, we’ve made the NCAA’s March Madness content accessible to fans in a way that’s never been done by a sports rights holder," said Kevin Schaff, CEO and founder of Thought Equity Motion.

"This Vault experience extends the life of the tournament and enhances the excitement of March Madness at NCAA.com, increasing visitor engagement and dwell time, while also creating new advertising and sponsorship opportunities."

CBS said it will again offer a standard video player in addition to providing viewers with the ability to upgrade to a high-quality player delivering an improved video stream. Upgrades to the player include the ability of viewers of the high-quality player to watch picture-in-picture highlights of ongoing action inside a live video stream from the tournament.

Additionally, both the standard and high-quality MMOD video player will provide viewers with the ability to show stat overlays on top of live video action, displaying tournament and game leaders in categories including points, assists, rebounds, and 3-pointers.

MMOD’s standard video player will launch on March 10 with historical highlights from past NCAA tournaments at NCAA.com as well as via links on CBSSports.com.

The MMOD "Boss Button" has been redesigned for 2010 as well. The "Boss Button", which was clicked over 2.7 million times during the 2009 tournament, hides the live video action on the screen and silences the audio, replacing it with a "business-like" image. The new "Boss Button" image will be introduced on March 14 before the NCAA Basketball Champion Selection Show.

"The upgrades and improvements CBSSports.com has made to NCAA Madness on Demand in 2010 will provide for an incredible online viewing experience," said Jason Kint, Senior Vice President and General Manager, CBSSports.com. "

Our goal has always been to give NCAA basketball fans access to all the games on all platforms – TV, online, and mobile, and through that process, we’ve built one of the largest streaming events in the world."

While I sometimes wonder why people get so attached to brands and think it’s a little weird, I have to admit that I am almost over the top with my Coke addiction (go ahead and snicker and insert silly drug reference here). I actually refuse to drink other soda products unless there is literally no other choice. Also, I just like the logo and the sense of Americana it carries. Of course, with the amount of aspartame I have ingested drinking Diet Coke for years I will likely prove those lab rats correct but, hey, everyone has to check out of here for some reason, right?

Anyway, back to the marketing stuff. Posterous has teamed with Coke but there is a unique business spin on this one for Posterous which is a free “blog service” to consumers. You see, Coca Cola is actually paying Posterous for it being the platform for a contest they are running that will be part of the NCAA Basketball Tournament this year.

TechCrunch provides the overview

One of Posterous’ first “clients” is Coca-Cola, which is definitely a good first start. Coca-Cola is using Posterous for its NCAA “Dept of Fannovation” where people can come up with ideas to improve the experience of being a fan, and a chance to win $10,000.

Coca-Cola’s use of Posterous revolves around the “post moderation” feature. Any Posterous site can be enabled so that anyone can email post@sitename.posterous.com. The site owner can then moderate those posts, and publish them with a single click. This feature can be used to crowdsource images, video, and text from users.

I have not followed through on the idea submission process on this one so I have not seen this in action. I do see though that on the “Dept. of Fannovation “site” which is a very dark site in its theme because the actual Coke product for this is Coke Zero, there is a nice yellow Posterous tab that could do quite nicely to make the service more well known to a crowd (college hoops fans) that is young enough to understand it and get it.

So it looks like Posterous is taking the same tact as Twitter and deciding that the money to be made is in the corporate market. Keep it free for the regular folks so they can be herded for companies to pick apart and market to the ones they need. Sounds cold and analytical but marketing can be that sometimes, can’t it?

Comments

In total, there were 7.52 million unique visitors to its video player, a 58 percent increase over 2008 figures. There were 8.6 million total hours of video and audio consumed, a 75 percent increase over 2008.

CBS Sports‘ coverage of the entire 2009 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Championship was up 5 percent from the previous year.

Jason Kint

"Together with the NCAA, March Madness on Demand continues to set the bar for excellence for online video coverage of a sports event," said Jason Kint, Senior Vice President and General Manager, CBSSports.

"We’re thrilled by the record numbers we saw this year and appreciate the tremendous support we received from across CBS in helping to make this event as successful as it was."

During the Final Four weekend, online viewers watched 515,000 hours of video, an increase of 51 percent over 2008.

The "Boss Button" which brings up a fake spreadsheet, received 2.77 million clicks, while in 2008 it was clicked 2.5 million times.