The Canada West hockey season gets underway tonight with eight men's teams and eight women's teams playing eight gamea across the western Canadian map. The only teams not in action are the University of Manitoba Bisons teams, but they'll kick off their seasons next week. Because we're back to Canada West hockey, that means The Rundown will return on Sundays on this blog, but things are going to look remarkably different on that weekly article this year if athletic departments continue down the path they walked last season. We saw virtually every school last year fail to produce highlight reels for games they hosted, and, if they're unable or simply too lazy to promote the athletes they recruit to come to their schools to play hockey and bring pride to the communities and campuses this season, I have even less obligation to do so.
I spend way too much time writing The Rundown for very little appreciation. That's not to say that I don't appreciate the feedback given by players, fans, and staff of Canada West teams, but giving up an entire day on my weekend to write recaps of games where I'm promoting athletes and teams more than the schools or Canada West themselves makes no sense. I want people to go to games, but it seems I work harder than the schools and the conference to make that happen and that's now going to stop.
I made it a point to take shots at the nine schools if they didn't post highlight reels last season, and only one was consistent in its effort to make highlight reels - the Calgary Dinos. The 2023 defending national champion Mount Royal Cougars didn't do it, the two-time Canada West champion UBC Thunderbirds didn't do it, and no one else bothered. I posted a lot of GIFs last season in place of highlight reels, but it's becoming glaringly evident that Canada West schools don't give two hoots about promoting their athletes while Canada West as an organization is happier to use generative AI stories than using real video highlights to promote teams and athletes.
Being that this is the case in Canada West, my efforts in trying to promote these schools' athletes will now mirror those schools and that conference. If schools don't bother posting highlight reels to YouTube, the recaps for those games will no longer be written. There will be a placeholder where the recaps normally are found, but I feel like a lot of people will be disappointed in seeing that this placeholder looks like. That's entirely the point of this change.
I want readers to be disappointed. I want those same readers to express that disappointment at the people who made the decision to cut budgets, eliminate gameday staff, and abandon the marketing aspect of their roles at those universities. It's time to hold people accountable for the poor decisions they've made by demanding more. I may not force change to happen, but I'm also not carrying all the baggage for eight women's hockey teams in Canada West.
To the Calgary Dinos, you deserve all the kudos for making highlight reels all last season when, apparently, there was no directive from Canada West to do so. I will celebrate the Dinos and their gameday staff at every chance I get this season if they continue to produce highlight reels, and that will go for every other school who follows that same path. If a school gives no effort in promoting its athletes, I have zero obligation to make that school look good with a fun recap.
Some will complain that I'm hurting the athletes by making this decision, and there's some truth to that. I find no happiness in trying to force athletic departments to be better, but these are questions that should be asked by athletes and parents to those administrations to find out why the athletes aren't being promoted more. Change is often messy and I apologize to the athletes here and now, but I've put far too much effort into promoting athletes' efforts and skills without help from the schools themselves for too long.
With hockey starting tonight, I'll be reminding teams to make highlight reels on Twitter, but I suspect my tweets will disappear into the ether assuming they're even read. Sunday will see The Rundown return to HBIC, but it may look drastically different for those of you who stop by to read it. We'll see how the schools react - I already assume they won't - but this is where you can ask for change to see Canadian university women's hockey get a little better. Highlights matter when telling a story, so what story is your school telling?
Demand more, folks. It can be better if people start asking.
The Hockey Show, Canada's only campus-produced radio show that strictly talks hockey, is back tonight with a pile of stories as we sit on the precipice of another hockey season starting! NHL hockey and university hockey get started this week and weekend while a pile of other leagues are already underway, and The Hockey Show will do its weekly looka round the hockey world for the biggest stories that need some discussion! We'll bounce around hockey on the show as we get you set for another long season in rinks and in the stands tonight on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT!
There will be no Wilson Phillips on the show tonight, but we're one day away from both NHL hockey and Canada West hockey, and both of those topics are in play tonight as Teebz and Jason look at the length of preseason games and the number of stars who have been injured, Utah setting a new standard for concessions, Canada West news including why one team may excel and one player who is chasing a dream, there's a Rhyah Stewart update, we have PWHL camp dates, there's a fun ECHL rule this year which could be chaotic, and we'll see if we can squeeze anything else into the hour! It's a busy show as per the agenda, so make sure the radio is tuned to The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT on one of 101.5 FM, Channel 718 on MTS TV, or via UMFM.com!
If you live outside Winnipeg and want to listen, we have options! The new UMFM website's online streaming player works well if you want to listen online. We also recommend Radio Garden if you need an easy-to-use online stream. If you're more of an app person, we recommend you use the TuneIn app found on the App Store or Google Play Store. It's a solid app.
If you have questions, you can email all show queries and comments to hockeyshow@umfm.com! Tweet me anytime with questions you may have by hitting me up at @TeebzHBIC on Twitter! I'm here to listen to you, so make your voice heard!
Tonight, Teebz and Jason talk injuries and meaningless games, eating inexpensively, bad decisions, good staffing choices, big opportunities, make the most of opportunities, rules and chaos, and much more exclusively on 101.5 UMFM and on the UMFM.com web stream!
It doesn't seem to matter anymore when it comes to getting your news. At one point in time, journalists would bring you the news of the day with integrity and objectively as facts were reported without opinions. Some of you may still believe that happens, but what was your visceral reaction when you found out that Sports Illustrated magazine - once the pinnacle of sports journalism - was caught publishing stories generated by artificial intelligence? If you didn't like it, get ready for another dose of "no thanks".
Announced today by the conference itself, Canada West has partnered with Fanword, embracing the AI phenomenon to be the "first-of-its-kind storytelling tool that makes it easier than ever to create powerful and authentic feature stories". If you like stories written by generative AI, this will surely have you excited.
However, if you're someone like me who appreciates the effort by student journalists and broadcasters chasing down a story and putting their sweat into getting those facts right, this move by Canada West is yet another reason why I honestly believe the people who run the athletic conference have zero interest in pushing the athletes and its member schools into any sort of mainstream conversation.
"We are extremely excited to partner with FanWord as we look to increase our storytelling capacity," said Jamin Heller, Associate Director, Communications & Marketing for Canada West. "We have so many incredible student-athletes across all 17 member institutions that are doing remarkable things both on-and-off the field of competition. Being able to leverage FanWord's unique tools will allow us to share their stories in captivating new ways."
What you should know is that Jamin is lying to you.
Rather than having the schools themselves promote those students and their stories, you'll hear stories of athletics departments slashing budgets and being unable to cover these stories due to a lack of staffing. This will happen despite all of these schools having school newspapers and most having campus radio stations where these stories could come alive with a little cooperation, so Canada West has decided to empower their schools by harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to generate stories about their students.
You may be wondering where the drawback is, and it comes in the form that generative AI doesn't tell you the whole story in any capacity. According to the release, "Canada West will leverage FanWord's cutting-edge storytelling software to craft compelling stories with greater ease," but there was never any difficulty in crafting those stories before. It simply took a journalist or a broadcaster a few moments with an athlete to get his or her story, and the time required to build that story into an article or piece that stands on its own.
I'm not one to pat myself on the back for the work I did on Canada West broadcasts during my time working for one of the schools, but there are stories that needed to be told for people to have a greater understanding about some of the incredible things that athletes were doing. One of those athletes was Bailee Bourassa of the Saskatchewan Huskies who raised a pile of money for Haven Kids' House while honouring Rhodes McNairn, a young boy battling cancer.
Would that story have the same emotion and feeling if it was an AI-generated text story? Probably not. Does it matter to hear Bailee tell her version of the story? Absolutely, in my view, because those are her honest thoughts about not only the game, but helping to change lives in Saskatoon. Would you get the visuals and the audio if this were an AI-generated article? You would not, and that's why having the Huskies use the HuskiesFan app to have their stories told is, in my opinion, so vitally important for those athletes' stories and messages to become part of the discussion.
I get that artificial intelligence isn't going away and is, in fact, becoming more and more prevalent in daily life. Whether it be Apple introducing a learning AI through Siri or TV and movies scripts being generated by ChatGPT, artificial intelligence is likely here to stay. I can't fault those who use it, but there are some jobs that require a little more heart and a little more humanity than what AI can deliver.
When it comes to journalism, there are codes of conduct and standards of professionalism that human journalists follow. AI isn't bound by ethics or morals when it comes to knowing or respecting the rights and dignity of sources and subjects. AI doesn't provide context, analysis, or interpretation of any statistics nor will provide insight into comments made or responses given by the athletes whose stories are told. In short, there is a need for human interaction when it comes to emotional and intelligent storytelling, and AI simply isn't human enough to do that.
I've been critical of Canada West on this blog before because of all the shortfalls it employs when it comes to promoting its teams and athletes, but this might be the biggest failure on their part of them all. All this opportunity does is allow athletics departments to feed information into the FanWord AI machine and wait for the results. Yes, there may be some massaging of the stories to give them more humanity, but these athletic departments could save themselves a pile of headaches by simply partnering with their campus newspapers and radio stations to produce engaging stories about their athletes.
On a broader scale, if generative artificial intelligence is still being investigated when it comes to how it will affect education by most schools in Canada, having the sports branch of western Canadian universities using it with no limits should pose a moral and ethical issue for most schools. After all, if it's being banned for use in classrooms by some professors, how can those schools employ generative artificial intelligence to write stories about the very students who are prohibited from using it?
Everything about this announcement from Canada West today just indicates that they're willing to take the easy road when it comes to self-promotion. Nothing about this partnership should excite anyone, and it should make a lot of athletic departments a little more cautious when it comes to protecting their athletes. Generative AI is cutting edge, but the list of expensive errors is well-documented. They include:
Grok, the AI chatbot featured on Elon Musk’s X social media site, falsely accused NBA star Klay Thompson of throwing bricks through windows of multiple houses in Sacramento, California in April 2024.
Attorney Steven Schwartz used OpenAI's ChatGPT to find prior cases to support a case filed by Avianca employee Roberto Mata for injuries he sustained in 2019. At least six of the cases submitted in the brief didn't exist.
Microsoft released Tay, an AI chatbot, on Twitter in 2016 to learn about human interactions. Within 16 hours, the chatbot posted more than 95,000 tweets, and those tweets rapidly turned overtly racist, misogynist, and anti-Semitic tweets, prompting Microsoft to shut down Tay.
A 2024 demo video for OpenAI's SearchGPT failed to provide the correct dates for a festival taking place in Boone, North Carolina despite this information being easily findable online.
Delivery parcel service DPD closes its online chatbot in January 2024 after a customer shows in a post on X that it can easily be manipulated into swearing and criticizing the company and itself.
MSN news was in trouble after an AI headline dubs the late Brandon Hunter as "useless at 42" following the NBA star's sudden death. The headline forced Microsoft to admit that it has been quietly removing badly written AI articles from its site for some time.
No one is saying these types of errors will happen with FanWord, but there's no guarantee it won't happen either. As a guy who is currently working with experts on an AI option at my current job, I can honestly say that for all the benefits it may bring, errors are far more costly when it comes to reputation and legacy than any of the benefits may bring. And that doesn't include any financial setbacks if legal action is taken over those errors.
Maybe my standards are too high. Maybe I just care more about the athletes who wow me with their athletic and academic abilities than Canada West does. Maybe I just know more about AI problems than I should. Whatever the case may be, this decision by Canada West will lead to the loss of student journalists doing longer pieces on athletes, lead to more cookie-cutter articles about athletes, and potentially lead to inaccurate or false information being spread about these athletes if people aren't careful. None of that would happen if humans were filing the stories, but Canada West has opted to allow its 17 schools to wander into uncharted territory.
To put it bluntly, Canada West has failed its athletes. Again. Unsurprisingly. I guess my standards are indeed too high.
I know it started as a trend in coffee, but I have zero use for pumpkin spice (or pumpkin pie spice) in anything that isn't pumpkin pie. The image to the left is real - there are bags of pumpkin spice microwavable popcorn out there - but there are also a pile of other pumpkin spice products that range from Oreos to adult beverages to Spam. I don't know who is to blame for this phenomenon becoming bigger than it ever should have been, but you won't find it in any product in my house. Putting pumpkin spice in foods where it shouldn't be needs to be made illegal.
For those wondering, pumpkin spice is literally five ingredients: sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger. All of those things individually are pretty good, and putting them together in pie form is something I wholely endorse. I know people take sugar in coffee to reduce the bitterness, but I've tried cinnamon in coffee and I wasn't a fan of it. The other three spices - nutmeg, cloves, and ginger - wouldn't even be considered for a cup of coffee.
Seattle-based Starbucks capitalized on the pumpkin spice phenomenon greatly by offering overpriced pumpkin spice lattes, and that popularity led to nearly every other restaurant offering a pumpkin spice offering for their coffee products. Being that coffee was only one practice in the food industry, it clearly spread to other foods as companies looked to capitalize on their own share of the phenomenon including ramen noodles, Spam, gum, sausages, and hummus. If you can dream it, you can pumpkin spice it, apparently.
While I understand that pumpkins are harvested and become part of popular culture during this time of year thanks to Halloween, I'm not a fan. I'm not saying you can't be as everyone has their own tastes and preferences for food, but we've been subject to pumpkin spice since mid-August as everyone brings their "limited-time" products back to market. Get those products while you can, and you can even take my share because pumpkin-spiced anything is borderline trash.
With pumpkins becoming far more available at markets and grocery stores now, let's get back to using pumpkin spice for pumpkin-based baking such as pies, muffins, and cookies. Leave the almonds, dog treats, and kettle corn for someone else to bring home, and let's get back to making pumpkin spice just what it is: a mix of five spices.
October is officially here, so hockey will start this week and we'll get more and more pumpkin references throughout the month. With the temperature dropping and more pumpkins being brought in off fields, it's feeling more and more like autumn every day. I don't need reminders in August that fall is on its way with another pumpkin spice marketing campaign from a thousand different products.
Just to make matters worse, it might be October, but expect to see Christmas stuff coming out at stores in the next few weeks. The doldrums of winter skies and sub-zero temperatures are upon us, folks, so make sure you get your pumpkin spice whatever-it-is before it's gone again!
Posts
