SWAC, SportStat to deliver video to mobile phones

The Southwestern Athletic Conference (SWAC) is the latest sports entity to deliver real-time play-by-play video clips, scores and statistics to mobile devices. The conference expects to use the system full time beginning with the 2006 football season.

The conference signed a deal with SportStat, the Detroit-based sports technology company run by founder Johnny Richardson and former Detroit Lions All-Pro receiver Herman Moore, to use the company’s patented SCORE (Statistics Created Online Real-time Everywhere) technology.

“The SCORE wireless application package provides schools, parents, students, alumni, coaches, scouts, and sports enthusiasts the ability to capture and access real-time information from any game at the professional, college, high school or league levels,” explained SportStat CEO and SCORE brainchild Johnny Richardson.

Richardson says the service will prove valuable to coaches, students and even parents. “The Southwestern Athletic Conference’s adoption of SCORE will provide a new tool to assist coaches in evaluating team and individual performance throughout the Conference. To be able to provide parents with real-time video clips of their kids’ performance through their mobile phones when they can’t attend the game in person, is huge.”

SWAC officials will beta test the technology with member institutions — Alabama A&M, Alabama State, Grambling State, Jackson State, Mississippi Valley State and Southern — during their current college basketball seasons and during the Conference Basketball Tournament in Birmingham, Alabama that runs from March 8 – 11, 2006. SportStat and SWAC officials will work closely with each university as this ramps-out across the Conference to ensure a graceful transition.

“Our goal is to make this a long-term relationship,” said SWAC Commissioner Robert Vowels. “We plan to introduce the SCORE technology league-wide for all SWAC sports, beginning with the 2006 football season. All in all, SCORE provides a highly-sophisticated and time-saving vehicle to access important information for all involved in a team’s success.”