Big West Conference Best Practices: Long Beach Gives Us In Game Blogging

What does Long Beach State's Women's Basketball team have to do with the Green Bay Packers?

They both changed the notion of the phrase "Watch the Game with Us."

It's something I love doing in the NFL season (I'm a big Packers fan and love getting the experts' view by following along live via a blog while watching the game on TV). And I think the reason I love it is it feels like I'm sitting next to the most passionate and knowledgeable fans (the beat writers for the team). It arms me with info that goes beyond what I can see. And, unlike the national broadcasters, they feel the same emotion I do.

Hit the Long Beach Athletics page and mouse over the Multimedia menu.




You'll see a callout for the LBS Blog, which we'll now direct our attention. (In case things have changed on the site before you read this, I'll be breaking down this post -- linked here). Side note - love the graphics style!

As you'll note below, they did a live blog during the Women's matchup versus USD. If you read along, you'll see there is a nice mix of observation ("Trapping Defense giving USD trouble" with timelines ("16:09 left in first half).

And, as you'll note below, they break this apart by half...

This mix of observation and timeline is pretty solid. It gives us the emotion behind the play-by-play, and it does so in real time. Plus doing it like this adds value to come back later and see how the game developed. This is precisely what is done at the NFL level, albeit (naturally) on a larger stage.

How could this be better? The blog offers access to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube (see image below) but does not integrate those into it. I'd love to see these live games post to Facebook and Twitter, pull in from Twitter Hashtagging, and pull in video clips from YouTube. To create such a system with social media and a blog would literally be world class!

And, don't forget, you can follow along on Facebook (here) or on Twitter: I'm@pawlow34.

Andy