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January 5, 2007

The Houston connection to the Alabama-Saban deal

The college football world is abuzz this week with the lucrative deal that the University of Alabama rolled out to attract Miami Dolphins head coach Nick Saban to Tuscaloosa, which is yet another example of the market distortions that result from the NCAA's excessive regulation of big-time college football. But that's an issue for another day. Turns out that, as usual, there is a Houston business connection to the Saban hiring at Alabama.

You see, Alabama fans were highly interested in the University's behind-the-scenes courtship of Saban, so Houston-based FlightAware.com -- a web-based company that allows users to track flight activity -- became one of the favorite sources of information for Alabama fans following the Saban saga:

Before Nick Saban announced Wednesday that he was leaving the Miami Dolphins to take over at Alabama, fans had flocked to FlightAware.com, a Web site that allows users to track flight activity. Was South Carolina Coach Steve Spurrier flying into Tuscaloosa Regional Airport? Was a plane owned by the University of Alabama departing for Norman, Okla., perhaps with university officials on their way to court Sooners Coach Bob Stoops?

“When you set out a vision for how you can help people, you can envision a whole lot of things,” said Daniel Baker, the founder and chief executive of FlightAware.com. “We’d like to claim we had unlimited foresight into how our service would be used, but this certainly is an unusual use for FlightAware.”

Coaching searches at other prominent college programs have also sent fans scurrying to glean information from online flight data. Internet message boards revealed that fans from Michigan State, Cincinnati and North Carolina State turned to the Web site. [. . .]

Baker and his staff could not have anticipated those uses by fans. Neither could Wayne Cameron, manager of the Tuscaloosa airport. He said that after Mike Shula was fired, he fielded dozens of inquiries about activity at the airport.

“Everybody in the country has been tracking the university’s plane and Paul Bryant Jr.’s plane,” Cameron said. Bryant, the son of the renowned Alabama football coach Bear Bryant, is a member of Alabama’s Board of Trustees and the board’s athletics committee.

“They would ask who I’d seen get off planes, or if I’d seen Spurrier, or if I knew where the university plane was going,” Cameron added. “It was kind of like a feeding frenzy there for a few days.”

John Howard, a 25-year-old Crimson Tide fan, created the blog hirebobstoops.blogspot.com after he determined that flight activity he traced on FlightAware.com indicated that Alabama may be interested in hiring Stoops from Oklahoma.

“You have a lot of activity between Norman and Tuscaloosa,” Howard said in an interview in early December. “I have no clue if it’s all connected, and I’m not saying it is.

“I just think it’s real interesting that all these planes and these cities are connecting.”

By this week, however, signals were pointing elsewhere. Flight data turned Alabama fans’ attention to Saban when reports emerged that Mal Moore, the athletic director, had flown to Miami.

Doug Walker, the university’s associate athletic director for media relations, said Moore and others involved in the search knew that flights were being tracked.

“We’re aware of it, but it’s not affecting the way we’re conducting our business,” Walker said. “We’re not trying to conduct a world war here, we’re just trying to hire a football coach.”

And Baker is only trying to operate a flight-tracking service. If fans visit his site, so be it.

“If it’s all in good fun and everyone’s happy, it’s always a good thing,” Baker said.

“But I wouldn’t be surprised if people are losing sleep by hitting refresh on the page.”

Posted by Tom at January 5, 2007 4:57 AM

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