Nike SportWatch GPS Eyes Fitness Fanatics

LAS VEGAS — Nike launched its successful Nike+ fitness software just four years ago, but nearly 4 million users have turned it into the most popular and widely available run-tracking UI ever. And just four months ago, Nike enabled GPS tracking in a completely overhauled iteration of its mobile app. Now, Nike has partnered with TomTom to bring GPS functionality and Nike’s run-tracking prowess to your wrist.

CES 2011The as-yet-unreleased Nike+ SportWatch GPS won’t be of any use to those trying to keep their New Year’s resolutions, but consumers will soon get their chance to try out this slick and easy-to-use run tracker. Operation couldn’t be simpler: Just slap on the watch and punch a couple of buttons to let it know you’ve started running.

The watch syncs up TomTom’s GPS navigation and mapping expertise with the Nike+ sensor (likely found in the sole of your shoe). The dual services integration also ensures that your data will be actually recorded even when running through areas where GPS might be lacking. When you’ve finished your workout, just pop the embedded USB connector on the end of the watch band directly into your computer and your workout is uploaded to your NikePlus.com account through a standalone software app.

Thanks to an integrated accelerometer, the watch face is actually a “tap screen,” so you can tap the display to either bring up the backlight or to designate a new lap while you’re working out. Also, if you haven’t worked out for a few days, the watch screen will bring up a “run reminder” to try and prod you into working out again.

Nike won’t say how much the watch will cost, but you can bet it will competitive with other wrist-centric running gizmos. It goes on sale April 1 in the US, but you can preorder it at Nike.com starting March 1.

Image: Erik Malinowski/Wired.com

This post originally appeared in Gadget Lab.

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For College Quarterbacks, NFL Success Is a Risky Bet

Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck, fresh off a virtuoso performance (18-of-23 for 287 yards passing and four touchdowns) in a 40-12 demolition of Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl Monday, has a seemingly no-brainer decision ahead of him. The junior will be the consensus top-overall draft pick in the 2011 NFL Draft, should he choose to enter — and forgo his two remaining years of athletic eligibility.

Even with the impending demise of the sport’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, Luck stands to command a hefty payday if he declares for the draft. And plenty of subpar teams will certainly jockey to draft him, hoping he can lead their franchise out of the doldrums.

But while there’s little downside for Luck, is it such a good idea for the teams who might want him?

The history of quarterbacks drafted first overall is spotty, at best. But teams have a love for the big arm that has grown stronger, even as the wisdom of the idea might have waned.

In 21 drafts from 1990 to 2010, teams have taken a quarterback first overall 12 times. That’s as many as were taken first overall in the 35 years prior. And over that time, the rate of busts has increased, as well. Prior to 1990, just two of those 12 picks could be considered unmitigated busts: Randy Duncan (1959) and Terry Baker (1963).

Duncan was drafted by the Green Bay Packers but chose the Canadian Football League instead. (No kidding: The money up north then was better, he once told the Daily Iowan). After two years, he switched to the American Football League’s Dallas Texans (soon to become the Kansas City Chiefs). But he played sparingly in one season and retired when the team traded for Len Dawson, who would go on to enjoy a Hall of Fame career.

Baker, the 1962 Heisman Trophy winner, is considered by some to be the first big-time Heisman bust. Perhaps he was ahead of his time as a dual-threat QB — good not just with his arm but also his running ability — but Baker had a mere 21 passing attempts through three NFL seasons for the Los Angeles Rams before leaving the sport entirely.

But other top QB picks from 1955 to 1989 include Hall of Famers and Super Bowl winners, like Troy Aikman (1989), John Elway (1983) and Terry Bradshaw (1970), along with two-time Super Bowl winner Jim Plunkett.

Besides Baker and Duncan, every top QB pick from that time period played at least eight seasons, in an era when salaries were low enough that teams could afford to jettison a player who wasn’t working out.

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Adidas Unveils Lightest Football Cleat Ever

If speed kills in football, then Adidas would seem to have the perfect shoe for maximizing it.

When Buffalo Bills running back C.J. Spiller and Kansas City Chiefs safety Eric Berry took to the gridiron on Sunday, they weren’t wearing their usual adiZero Scorch footwear, which weigh a still-featherweight 8.6 ounces each. Instead, they were officially unveiling the 6.9-ounce 5 Star, which Adidas says is the lightest football cleat ever made.

According to Jeff McGillis, one of the 5 Star’s designers, decreasing weight was the main goal for the 5 Star, which will retail for $100 when it’s released in April.

“Every time we have conversations with players and we ask them what they’re looking for, ‘lightweight shoes’ is the first thing that comes out of their mouth,” McGillis told Wired.com.

Many of those players are derived from focus groups, which are usually held at 7-on-7 high school tournaments at various college campuses every summer, including the Texas State 7-on-7 Championship held at Texas A&M University.

McGillis emphasized it was Adidas’ duty to follow up the requests for lightweight cleats while ensuring that stability wasn’t compromised.

So Adidas developed a new material which reduces the weight of the plate, the center of a shoe’s structural integrity, by 50 percent against the typical thermoplastic polyurethane, or TPU, material. Then designers added a single-layer synthetic material called Sprintskin, which makes up the shoe’s upper material. It took over two years to develop Sprintskin, and it was used in conjunction with TPU materials to give the upper part of the shoe added stability for quick lateral movements.

Finally, the 5 Star’s outsole — in this case, the shoe’s spikes — has a new stud shape called Traxion. McGillis said designers dropped a circular design of the studs in favor of a triangular one. That’s helped Adidas maximize acceleration in the cleat while reducing the possibility of a cleat getting stuck in the grass or turf.

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Forget Grass: Tennis Pros Head to Open Water

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Backdrop Like No Other

No, the most unlikely sporting event of the weekend wasn't a hockey game played in a football stadium. How about an exhibition tennis match played on water?

On Sunday, the top two men's tennis players in the world, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, battled each other on a tennis court constructed on the waters of Doha Bay in Qatar.

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A Backdrop Like No Other

Unique feats of sport are no strangers to this part of the world, as Federer once battled Andre Agassi on a "skycourt" several hundred feet off the ground, but this water-based court presented several unprecedented challenges.

Image: ATP/Roger Federer

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2010’s Top Sports Stories of the Wired World

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When Would-Be Wizards Became Warriors

It's been some kind of year for sports in 2010. From activities both mainstream and on the fringes, there were absolute highs and lows from all corners of the sporting world, many unprecedented and some that will pave the way for future developments we still can't foresee.

Here, we'll look back at some of the biggest stories of the year, all of which fell within the Wired spectrum in one way or another. From the rise of fictional sports to the intensive awareness of brain injuries, there was something for everyone in 2010.

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When Would-Be Wizards Became Warriors

If you look hard enough, there are no shortage of incredibly awesome fringe sports being played on this wonderful planet of ours. From road tennis in Barbados to cycleball across Europe, local pride frequently manifests itself in these oft-hidden and much-beloved acts of sport and ritual that the mainstream often overlooks, with a myopic eye often toward only what's trending on Twitter.

But beyond these fringe sports, which are often rooted in hundreds of thousands of years of history, once-fictional sports are now coming to life, imbuing the global sporting scene with new ways to compete in a communal spirit previously left to living room book clubs. Competitive Quidditch, the high-flying, broom-centric sport played by the young wizard wannabes of J.K. Rowling's wildly popular children's book, has led the way in this movement, popping up a mere five years ago on the campus of Middlebury College as a club sport for Harry Potter enthusiasts.

Today, it has grown into its kind of global phenomenon, which culminated this fall as thousands of people descended on New York City for the Quidditch World Cup, won (perhaps unsurprisingly) by Middlebury over the upstart Tufts Tufflepuffs. (Yes, that's their club name.)

There is a movement underway to petition the NCAA to make Quidditch a full-fledged U.S. collegiate sport, and if there's any justice, students around the country will soon be attending university on Seeker scholarships. Because, when you think about it, aren't we all after a Golden Snitch of some kind?

Image: Tina Fineberg /AP

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Yes, You Can Break a Clay Pigeon With a Golf Shot

Another incredible golf challenge comes to us by way of the European Tour, which brought four of its members to the arid sands outside Dubai to see if anyone could hit a descending clay pigeon with a typical, iron-struck golf shot.

After what seems like hours, England’s Simon Khan finally wins the prize: a lifetime of fame and glory on the interwebs. Congrats, Chaka!

But is it harder than hitting a floating mini-gong from 200 yards? Beats me, but I know I’d much rather take my golf skills (or lack thereof) to the lush Irish countryside.

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Notorious Soccer Prankster Nabbed After Facebook Update

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Finally, the Falcon has been snared.

For most of this year, a 23-year-old Italian soccer fan named Mario Ferri has been terrorizing stadium security and delighting fans on three continents with his antics (almost always involving Italian soccer) of running onto the field, either in the name of activism or for his own seemingly unending amusement.

However, Ferri may have been grounded for good, thanks to his loose lips and flair for the dramatic. Let's take a look back at the Year of the Falcon, and how he was ultimately undone by his own actions.

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The Falcon Takes Off

Ferri first made national news in May when he charged the field in Sampdoria during the club's Serie A match against Napoli. His shirt read "Cassano in Nazionale," which was a message to the coach of Italy's national soccer team to pick Antonio Cassano for the World Cup roster. (The coach ultimately did not.)

Since the incident, he's technically been under house arrest in his home country.

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Video: The Free Throw That Defied Physics

Honestly, I’ve never been what you might consider a huge basketball fan, but even I can appreciate that one of the great things about hoops on any level is that pretty much anything weird or amazing can happen in any given game, especially when you least expect it.

Exhibit A: Last week’s men’s college basketball contest between Idaho State and Utah State. Not even conference rivals, there was no reason to expect anything remotely newsworthy to come out of this game, lest someone score 127 points and slam down his final two doing six back-flips to the rim.

And true to script, Utah State was pummeling the lesser Idaho State in front of its home fans when Kamil Gawrzydek came to the free-throw line, his team down by 20 points, when this happened:

What the what? The ball bounces wildly off the back iron, taps the front of the rim and comes back, content to just sit idly and wait for the inevitable reaction from the 8,145 fans in attendance, all equally stunned by the apparent defiance of physics happening in front of them. Of course, as in all things eventual, the ball falls through for the point, a single point in a game that’ll be otherwise lost to the dusty bins of basketball scorecards. (Afterward, the Associated Press recap only ran 138 words on most wires, with nary a mention of what you just witnessed.)

But beyond the box score, we have the video evidence that for one brief moment, the game of basketball — and the sphere upon which all hoop dreams are cast and prayed upon — stood staggeringly still.

Why? Only science knows for sure, so let’s look at the basics of free-throw shooting. The hoop itself is 18 inches wide, and a regulation-size men’s basketball is just under 10 inches across, leaving more than four inches of buffer on each side of the ball if you dropped it straight down, or scientifically speaking, at a 90-degree angle.

However, as any basketball watcher knows, you don’t throw a free throw straight up as high as you can toward the rafters and hope it drops straight down through. You shoot free throws with the ball approaching the rim at an angle. Now, much of it depends on your height and free-throw-shooting technique, but even a generous parabolic angle of 55 degrees translates to about a circular clearance space of 2.5 inches — about as much as your pinkie finger.

But Gawrzydek’s shot didn’t even go that typical route. He clanged it off the back iron, where it shot up about three to four feet before bouncing on the front of the rim and coming to rest — where physical forces on all sides of the ball came into equilibrium for the most precise of moments.

We won’t begrudge you, the incredibly smart readers of Wired.com, if you’d care to posit your own (preferably) scientifically based reasoning for what we’ve witnessed, so have at it in the comments below.

The Mystery of the Amazing Free-Standing Free Throw deserves nothing less.

Image: Flickr/laffy4k, CC

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Lasers, Custom Putters Will Fix Your Short Game

Putting a golf ball is the dark art of sports. There are otherwise great golfers who can’t putt a bit. Sometimes, a world-class putter will suddenly and completely lose the ability to sink even the shortest gimme. There are the dreaded “yips,” where a golfer’s mind renders their body unable to make a smooth stroke, resulting in an almost stabbing motion. Putting tries men’s souls (and women’s).

Part of the lore of putting is the putter itself. Hand a golfer a mallet-shaped putter and he might make everything in sight. Switch him to a blade style and the magic might disappear. But maybe it’s not superstition or magic. Maybe different styles of putters work for golfers because they actually help the golfer aim better.

That’s the philosophy of David Edel, a putter-maker in Liberty Hill, Texas. He’s got a simple way of helping golfers find the right putter for them, so elegant that you wonder why no one thought of it before.

Edel or one of his fitters sets up a golfer with a ball, and asks them to line up a 6-foot putt. On the face of the putter, they attach a mirror, and instead of a regulation cup, there’s a laser beam shining back toward the putter. When the golfer thinks they’re aimed directly at the cup, the fitter removes the ball, so the laser beam hits the mirror.

A perfectly aimed club face would reflect the beam straight back to where it’s coming from. But that’s rarely the case. You see, most golfers aim to one side of the hole or the other, even when they think they are perfectly aligned.

That’s where the putter itself comes in. Edel has found that some construction and designs bias the aim in one direction. For instance, adding offset to a putter head will tend to aim most people more to the left. Conversely, the more circular the putter’s trailing edge, the more that some golfers will aim to the right.

Once you know which way your aim is biased, you can begin to construct your putter to account for it. For example, when I went through a fitting with Edel dealer David Balbi, I consistently aimed to the right of the cup with my blade-style putter. Using Edel’s system of interchangeable heads, hosels and shafts, Babbi changed the offset of the putter and put just one alignment line on the back of the putter.

Suddenly, when I did the laser test, I was straight at the hole every time. And the results have translated to the course. Since getting the Edel putter, my average number of putts has dropped by four per round, which is a huge improvement for a middling player like me.

Of course, there is still a lot more to deal with to make a putt — you have to read the break correctly and get the speed right. But knowing that I’m actually aiming the ball where I think I am has made a big difference to me and shows that there’s more to putting than psychology and superstition.

Want to learn how to putt? Check out our How To wiki page for tips and tricks.

Image: Mark McClusky /Wired

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Tecmo Bowl Fans Bring NFL Highlights to Life

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Sometimes, the real thing just isn't good enough.

For several years, a small group of dedicated football enthusiasts have taken to their Tecmo Bowl (NES) or Tecmo Super Bowl (SNES) emulators and devoted themselves to quick videogame re-enactments of actual NFL and NCAA highlights. The results, especially when paired up with the actual TV or radio call, can be pure lo-fi genius. Here are some of our favorites.

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DeSean Jackson's Game-Winning Punt Return for Touchdown

Though the Giants led 28-10 in the fourth quarter, Michael Vick and the Eagles stormed back Sunday afternoon to tie the game at 31 all. Then, as time expired, Eagles returner DeSean Jackson took this Matt Dodge punt all the way to the house as time expired for a thrilling 38-31 win at the New Meadowlands Stadium, putting Philadelphia firmly in command of the NFC East.

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