Are game statistics public domain?

That's usually what I do. But more times than not these days, I'm usually the only media person at a certain game.

I once got into a debate with a stats keeper about how many yards to credit someone with if the ball was, as an example above, between the yard lines. The nose of the ball is past the previous yard line, so I always give one more yard. He said it should be the yard line the ball is just past, which would make a 5-yard gain in my book a 4-yarder in his. No big deal, but he tried to tell me I was keeping stats wrong. To each his own, I told him.

Yet every time I went over stats with that team's coach, his always matched mine and not his stats guy.

 

Official NCAA rules credit the following yard line as the official spot. So if the ball is across the 42-yard line but not to the 41-yard line (going in), give the yardage as the 41.

There are, however, exceptions. Maybe you give a guy 5 yards on first down. Then the defense gets a 5-yard penalty, but the new spot doesn't quite measure enough for a first down. You're supposed to go back and change the first down play to a 4-yard gain (I've heard these sort of announcements in college and NFL in-house press box PA; another reason I ALWAYS do stats in pencil).

Real tricky part comes on punts and interceptions, fumble returns, etc. Ideally, you spot where the change of possession occured and mark off the yardage from there. Realistically, the game moves so fast and if you don't have the benefit of replays, you often end up guessing where the catch/interception/fumble took place and how much yardage to credit. That's where a lot of the descrepancies take place.

 

Agreed.

Last radio station I worked at was too cheap to subscribe to the local daily. So, it just steals scores every morning from a competing radio's website. This type of behavior is symptomatic of the station's ills. Listeners have caught on to the theft and the GM wonders why he is having billing issues.

Anyway, Starman, that was a hell of a story. Thanks for sharing.

 

Well, it's a saga I've told and retold three or four times over the last 10-12 years or so, but it's still fun every time.

 

Someone please show me where the 34 1/2-yard line is?

 

at least you're a true HOFer (or an awesome drunk down at the bar) ... you retell the story and don't just copy and paste a link.
that was the first time i'd seen it, and i just about pist my pants.

 

I think folks are missing something here.

If I am at a high school game, getting paid by my newspaper and I compile the stats on my own, they belong to the newspaper, and for someone else to use them is -- in my opinion -- unethical.

Now, that's a fine line. If I got the stats from the home team, that's different. A college game? SID stats are public domain, so are official pro-league stats (at least for now.)

 

OK, teach me. Why is information my company paid me to gather on my own not information that belongs to the company? The paper is copyrighted. Why is it OK for another for-profit organization to use what we created?

 

OK, maybe this will help me clarify what I am thinking.

The local daily sends a reporter to the county building once a week to get the property deeds.

Public record.

But they are paying the person who gets them, and then they print them in their paper, which is copyrighted (I assume that's the right word.)

Now, if I turn around and run them word-for-word in our weekly, aren't I doing something unethical and stealing their material?

I could go to the county building myself and get them, and they would likely be word-for-word, but doesn;t that missing step make the difference?

 

Between the 34 and the 35.

 

The deeds are still public record. You can't call dibs on them. Regardless the effort that publication made to obtain them, that information is still available. It's lazy, sure, but you can't copyright facts no matter what you did to get them. If you wrote a story *about* the deeds and that got run verbatim elsewhere, well that you can copyright. Not the deeds themselves, though. Unless you're changing the deeds, which is its own ethical problem.

 

WTF difference does it make, Billy? Is someone trying to make a profit off stats?

I know places that pay an outsider to compile season cumultives and such, but that's more paying him/her for the time and work... just like you might pay a guy to go down to the courthouse and dig up stuff.