
Salt Lake Screaming Eagles, a football team controlled by fans with smartphones - evo_9
http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_salt_lake_screaming_eagles_a_football_team_controlled_by_fans_with_smartphones.html
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hakunin
Hey folks, I am the back-end/infra dev on this project, AMA. It's built with a
combination of Elixir/Phoenix, Rails, and React (+Native). If you'd like to
work with me on stuff like this feel free to apply by shooting us an email
with some info about yourself. You can find the contact at
[http://www.crossfield.com](http://www.crossfield.com)

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rbobby
Pretty cool idea and the implementation seems on target too.

Just a quick note on one possible way to adjust votes: weighting by success. A
vote from a fan that consistently votes for a successful play (defined as 0 or
more yards gained?) should count for more. A vote from a fan with a bad record
should count for less (though maybe just keep it at 1 as the minimum and favor
success more).

This might also help with gaming the system by opponents (especially if non-
successful votes move you down faster than successful votes move you up).

This could also lead to fan promotion opportunities... "fan of the game" or
"best 5 fans of the game"... "fan of the season"... etc.

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SomeStupidPoint
You should go from 1 to -1; being consistently wrong is useful information,
being randomly right or wrong is not.

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munin
you probably want this?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brier_score](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brier_score)

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IanDrake
This is a really cool idea. I wonder if the play calling is a pure democracy
or if they have an algo to make good play callers have more sway.

They could do something like, for every play I vote for that wins, the results
of that play add to the weight of my vote. So, for a sack, interception, etc,
I lose weight, but I gain weight for every play with positive yardage.

Obviously that's a bit naïve, but you get the idea.

However weights are assigned, they could carry over from game to game and lead
to the best play callers in the crowd having the most sway. It would also
solve the problem of non-fans trying to sabotage the game.

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PKop
Good point. Instead of just achieving "engagement" from the fans, they could
attempt to crowdsource the best calls.

They could also extend the tracking / rating of play calls to fans at home.
Their votes wouldn't have influence like fans at the game, but award /
subtract points just the same if their calls succeed. Then when they _do_
attend games, their rating already exists.

At home vs at game could be determined by having purchased a ticket.

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xahrepap
They could even use that to monetize people who want to vote but don't want to
go to the game (and even monetize away games). Purchase of an at-game ticket
comes with a free voters pass. Or can can buy a voter pass on a game-by-game
basis or a season pass.

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marak830
That's a really good idea. Now I'm thinking of other situations that could
apply to.

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pgrote
Neat to see this coming back.

In the 1980s QUBE cable had a similar system where people at home could vote
on plays in a football game. I have a vague memory of doing this once at a
friend's house ... they had this new thing called cable TV.

"QUBE tried a wide array of program formats for two-way participation,
including games, talent contests, astrology shows, exercise classes,
interactive games, football games in which viewers called the plays, town
meetings and public hearings involving Federal agencies."

[http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/28/arts/two-way-cable-tv-
falt...](http://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/28/arts/two-way-cable-tv-falters.html)

The Qube "remotes" were connected via a cable.

[https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5468/8894868401_4e3a88b540_b.j...](https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5468/8894868401_4e3a88b540_b.jpg)

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defen
Norm Macdonald is apparently a part-owner of this team and was even doing some
play-by-play / color commentary from the booth, to the great dismay of fans of
his podcast.

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wging
The other obvious control mechanism is AI: not one person, not _every person_
, but _no people_. I really want to try that now.

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Waterluvian
I'm waiting for 4chan or the like to catch wind and punt on every first down.

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evo_9
I like the idea but couldn't this somewhat easily be 'hacked' with a botnet
type of thing allowing one crafty person to basically take over and play-call
circumventing the crowd?

Taking it further couldn't this person make poor calls for the opposing team,
aka punting on first down... seems like they gloss over the challenge of
preventing this type of exploit but maybe it's not as easy as it seems?

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pqhwan
The threat of a botnet is something any service that depends on popular vote
has to overcome; it'll take engineering and operations effort, but it's not a
showstopper. As for the hostile vote exploit, remember that a play is "bad"
mostly because it doesn't work well against the opponent's strategy, not
because it's inherently bad (if it were, it wouldn't be listed as an option by
the team). Making this exploit work requires you to know the results of your
team's vote ahead of time. My guess is that it doesn't reveal vote results
until after the play, but I haven't used the app so I wouldn't know.

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ctchocula
The article mentions that the vote results are only revealed to the coach, who
speaks to the QB over the headset to tell him what play he should run. As you
surmised, the vote results are revealed to the app users after the play is
run. This is also to prevent the opposing defensive coordinator from logging
into the app, seeing the results and countering the play.

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phs
First time I saw the headline, I read "megaphones".

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jahooma
It certainly fits the "Screaming" Eagles theme:

Salt Lake Screaming Eagles, a football team controlled by fans with
_megaphones_

