So many games. So little time. So little attention span. What's a fan to do? Some sporting events are so exciting that fans would skip out on their wedding day to watch. Then there are games so painfully boring that fans can't believe they went to the bother of ordering in pizza for it. And raise your hand if you've ever missed a heart-pounder while sitting through a snoozer.
Well, the opposite of "snooze" is "Thuuz," and this new company wants to let you know when a great game is in progress.
Subscribers to the free service log on to Thuuz.com (a play on "enthusiasm") and input which leagues and teams they like watching. When a game gets really good, fans get an email or text telling them to tune in.
How does Thuuz know whether a game is good? The company has come up with a series of algorithms to analyze live feeds of play-by-play statistics, along with other factors like the pace of the game, the closeness of the score and the impact of individual plays. (Side note: Isn't "series of algorithms" the answer to everything these days? I bet guys are going up to girls in bars and saying "I'm working on a series of algorithms and all I need to complete it is your digits.")
Thuuz rates games on a 100-point scale, where 85 is considered a great game. (Apparently there are about 25 great NFL games each year, by this definition. We're afraid to ask how many great WNBA games there are.) But users get alerts whenever their "personal threshold for excitement" is reached, so you can dial down your "threshold" to 50 when the in-laws are in town. This way you can tell if the game was any good without knowing the actual details.
One weakness is the inability to tell if a specific player is doing great things in a lopsided game. That'll have to remain in the Twitter domain for now. But fantasy players should soon be able to enter their entire roster into Thuuz, and receive "excitement levels" for individuals rather than the games themselves. But most fantasy freaks are hitting refresh 400 times a minute anyway, and probably don't need to be told when Peyton Hillis scored a third touchdown.
So the next time you find yourself at the company picnic instead of on the couch, Thuuz has you covered. We just hope Thuuz will send us an alert when its "series of algorithms" can tell how good a game is before it even starts.
-- Follow Erica Orange on Twitter @ErOrange.
