Day 1 results are in from the Bassmaster Classic, and like last year, here's the analysis of the BASSTrakk board from today (click for larger image).
Overall, not a terrible start. They were within the margin of error on basically half the field. When guesses were off, they were much more likely to be under guesses (red) rather than over guesses (green). I did realize that when I reformatted the chart for better viewing, the average difference calculation got messed up. Instead of the -5.25 number shown, it should read -4.00, meaning that when averaged across the entire field, Bass Trakk was off by 4 pounds to the light side per angler.
Why do I make such a big deal about this each year? Beside just being a numbers geek, I really think that the best way to make the sport of bass fishing a "spectator" sport, and more interesting to the public at large, and especially the anglers, is via technology.
If I were running the Classic, I'd arrange for all boats to be GPS tracked and shown (as an icon) on a real-time "Google Earth"-type image accessable on your mobile device or computer. You could watch anglers 'on the move' as they ran to and from their areas, and moved between spots. By clicking on any anglers boat icon, you would be able to get a pop-up with their number of fish in the well and their estimated weight, perhaps even their 'speed over ground' (SOG). Here, a halfway accurate tabulation by observers/reporters in the boat would be important as relates to the weight.
I could even imagine this on a large holographic image, similar to what the news stations used for reporting the last election, with a host/announcer that could follow the action live on TV. Imagine the host pointing and clicking on an icon to report Iaconelli's weight, when all of a sudden he sees one of the boat icons zooming across the map. "Whoa, looks like KVD's making a move from the south end of the lake, and GPS has him 'balls to the wall' at 72.3 mph."
They can make cooking into an exciting TV sport, ala "Iron Chef", with Alton Brown announcing and roving reporters closer to the action down in the kitchen. Why can't we do the same with the Bassmaster Classic, or the FLW Championship?
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