Sports Tech Blog

Creating a Website Part 1 of 4

Scott Shepard — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:31:14 +0000

A question that I get from coaches a lot is what it takes to create a website and how to go about it. There is quite a little process that I have narrowed down to 4 steps that I will cover over the next couple of weeks.

First and foremost you need to choose a domain name and then register it. For those that might not know your website address is more commonly referred to as your domain name. This is probably one of the most important things to come up with before you ever start down the path of building a website. You need to come up with the domain name that you are going to use and check to see if it is available.

Coming up with a domain name is rather tough these days as there are over 97 million registered .com domain names! This is why more than likely your first choice probably isn’t going to be available for you, at least not as a .com. It might be available as a .net, .org, .info, or .biz because the number of registered domains goes down rather significantly as you move down the list. The good ones though usually will buy both the .com and .net names at the same time when an individual first registers their domain.

I won’t give any suggestions on who to register your domain with as the company that most people are familiar with is Go Daddy but really they do a good job of charging you more while also trying to get you to buy other UNNECESSARY products. I suggest trying to use someone else like Name Cheap, Name.com, or Domain Discover. You don’t need anything else from any of these companies except to register and monitor your domain.

Now one final bit of advice is that when you purchase your domain you keep track of it as it does expire in 1,2,4, or any other number of years that you purchased it for. You will get a reminder from the company that you bought it from so long as you used a good email address that you regularly check. So I do suggest that you enter some basic info into a document or spreadsheet so you can have it in case you don’t see the reminder. I would include your domain name that you purchased, the email address that you used to create your account, and most importantly the EXPIRATION DATE that which your domain will expire. I can not tell you how many times I have heard horror stories from people who lost their domain name because they totally forgot when it was going to expire!

Good luck with picking a domain name. The next post will cover what type of web platform to use for your website.

Collegiate Basketball Coaches Recruiting / Evaluation Part 2

Scott Shepard — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 15:20:07 +0000

This is a follow up post to my previous post regarding collegiate basketball coaches using Tripit to plan their July evaluation travel itineraries.

Friday July 22, 2011 started the second 10 day evaluation period for College Basketball Coaches and ended yesterday (Sunday July 31, 2011).

Now comes the waiting games that take place. Although today (August 1, 2011) through early September (Sept. 8, 2011 – to be exact) is technically a quite period recruits can still verbally commit to a school or institution at any time whether coaches can talk to them or not. Recruits also know who really is interested or not. Word can easily get back to them on what their status is at any given school. But coaches do like to be able to keep tabs on recruits and where they decide to commit to play sports in college.

Now there are some resources that college coaches like to use to track recruit commitments but one tool that is absolutely completely FREE to use is Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts).

By utilizing Google Alerts you are able to get information sent to you via email as it happens, once a day, or once a week regarding any search parameter that you enter. I have provided a couple screen shots of an example alert that I setup a couple of months ago regarding one of the nations top Basketball recruits, Andre Drummond.

As you can see by utilizing Google Alerts I was able to pick up anything that mentions Andre Drummond. This can be anything from videos, blog posts, or even forum/chat boards. Basically Google Alerts does all of the hard work for you in emailing you all of the information instead of you having to go out and get it on your own. Just imagine how many different sites you as a coach go to each day just looking for information in regards to a particular recruit that you are pursuing?

The biggest help that Google Alerts can be for coaches is during the season. As you are busy worrying about your own team it makes it extremely difficult to find the time to keep up with the player you are recruiting because they are playing at the same time as you are. Just imagine Google Alerts could have an email waiting for you each morning with any news that might have taken place overnight regarding your recruit. If you set it up right collegiate coaches could have news about any recruit sent to their inbox the minute that any news breaks. Just think the instant that, that newspaper article goes online you could be notified about it immediately and then you could make note of it the next time you place a phone call to the recruit. No more looking through numerous newspapers, blog posts, or other websites trying to keep track of what your recruit did in the last game he played in. Just rely on Google Alerts to keep you up to date on him or her.

Coaches on the Road Recruiting

Scott Shepard — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 09:00:28 +0000

On Wednesday (July 6, 2011) of this week the Summer live evaluation (recruiting) period for Men’s and Women’s Collegiate Basketball Coaches opened up. From then until Friday July 15th (and then again July 22-31) coaches will crisscross the country by planes, trains, and automobiles to have the opportunity to watch in person current or potential recruits play games.

This can be a rather hectic time for these coaches because they might be in one city to begin the day and a completely different city somewhere else in America by the late afternoon. This is all in a days work for coaches during the live period. Now there is a big difference between the way those coaches at high major schools travel in comparison to those coaches at low major schools. There is also a big difference in the types of recruiting showcases that these coaches will attend. If you want to read more about these differences Jeff Goodman and Gary Parish are doing a great job of explaining this, this week over at their blog.

So something that the mid to low major coaches may not know about that probably could help effectively manage their schedule for them over the course of these two 9 day periods would be Tripit (FREE & Paid versions available). Tripit could easily help any of these coaches out as it consolidates and manages all their flight, hotel, and car rental travel confirmations into a clean simple mobile itinerary. Just think some of these coaches could easily travel to numerous cities, staying in many different hotels and driving many different rental cars all within a 9 day period. Talk about crazy.

This is where Tripit could easily help these coaches out by having all of their flight, hotel, and car rental information available for them on a mobile phone which coaches never leave home without. Tripit also provides a Route Planner and Road Trip Planner as well, which are both FREE.

This wouldn’t just pertain to basketball coaches it could also be used by coaches of any sport who tend to travel very extensively, although not in such a condensed time period like collegiate basketball coaches. Another frequent traveler that comes to mind is the NBA Scout who logs many many miles traveled through out an NBA season not just live scouting the opposition but also evaluating potential draft picks.

Let me end on this, A recent Fortune article (June 7, 2011) listed Tripit as the number 3 best business app out of 5. You can also read about some other ideas in using Tripit in this article.

If by chance there are any coaches out there currently using Tripit I would love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to post them in the content section.

Please note that Sports Digital Dashboard or Scott Shepard do not have any affiliation with Tripit or their founders.

Why was this blog started?

Scott Shepard — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 04:00:12 +0000

Why was this blog started is a typical question anyone gets when they start any blog. Why do it, what is the point?

Well, for me it needed to be started and I truely meant to start blogging a little over two years ago but things with my small business (startup) and the idea I initially had has transformed into something a little different.

I have not seen a really good Sports and Technology Blog out on the web. I feel that there needs to be one as technology has increasingly become more and more important to coaches and athletes. This blog will be geared more towards coaches as that is my main focus.

So why me?

Well, I have a very unique background on top of the fact that I am very web savvy and very knowledgeable when it comes to computers and technology. I also have a finance and business background. Additionally, I was once apart of the staff of a NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Program where I was in charge of film exchange. When in charge of Film Exchange at the DI level you begin to build a very big and extensive network within the coaching fraternity.

From this network that I have continued to keep in place and develop further coaches have come to know about my technological expertise. Therefore they come to me looking for answers to computer issues or insight into web based programs that may help them gain a legal recruiting competitive advantage. Other times they might ask about computer programs or web based programs that may even make their life simpler by providing a much more efficient solution.

Therefore, the main reason why I started this blog is to pass along information to athletic coaches that just might help them in some way shape or form.