I have 38 days, 8 hours, and 8 minutes left.
To launch the MVP for Rate Game; a mobile sports app that empowers sports fans to rate the games they love to watch.
How many sports games have you watched in your lifetime?
If you’re like me, that answer will probably take some time to estimate. My math has me at around 6,8061. Growing up in the historic New York sports market will do that to a fan. Here’s how I did the math:
Sports Leagues I follow: 5
NBA, NFL, MLB, CFB, CBB
Sports Teams I follow within Sports Leagues: 6
NBA: Knicks/Lakers (Huge LeBron fan so I assigned him to current team)
NFL: Jets
MLB: Mets
CFB: Georgia (my youngest sister is an alum)
CBB: Villanova
Number of Years I’ve been a Fan by Team:
Knicks: 27
Lakers/Lebron: 23
Jets: 25
Mets: 9
Georgia: 9
Villanova: 14
Regular Season
Average Games Watched by Team in Regular Season
Total Games in each Team’s Regular Season x Estimate % of games I watch2
Knicks: 82 x .85 = 69.7
Lakers: 82 x .30 = 24.6
Jets: 16 x .90 = 14.43
Mets: 162 x .50 = 81
Georgia: 12 x .95 = 11.4
Villanova: 31 x .10 = 3.14
Total Regular Season Sports Games Watched in my Life by Sports League
(Number of years watched x Average Games Watched in a Year)
NBA: 2,447.7
Knicks: 1,881.9
Lakers/Lebron: 565.8
NFL: 360
MLB: 729
CFB: 102.6
CBB: 43.4
Lifetime Total Regular Season Sports Games Watched: 3,682.7
Playoffs
[Average Total Playoff Games by League] x [Years I’ve been watching Team in League] x [% of Playoff Games Watched]5
NBA: 135 x 27 x .50 = 1,823 games
NFL: 25 x 13 x .95 = 308 games
MLB: 39.5 x 9 x .50 = 176 games
CFB:6
CFP Era (2013-14): 10 x 3 x 1.0 = 30 games
Bowl Era (2012-2006): 5 x 6 = 30 games
CBB7: 63 x 15 x .80 = 756 games
Lifetime Total Playoff Games Watched: 3,123
Lifetime Total Sports Games Watched: 6,805.7
Lots of Games, Even more Questions
Because my Fiancé will be reading this I will refrain from further analysis on how much of my time on Earth has been spent watching sports. But now that I have a number, I have some questions.
Questions like:
What was the best Jet’s game I saw while growing up?
What the hell happened during the Phil Jackson era with my beloved Knicks? (I have suppressed memories of names like Kurt Rambis and Derek Fisher)
What was the best regular season game I’ve ever seen LeBron play? How bout the worst?
What did I think about those mystical March Madness runs with Pittsnoggle and the boys from WVU?
Shaka was Smart. He caught lightning in a bottle. What’d I think of the those rugged VCU Rams those days? Those games!
Sure I can Wikipedia these things. ChatGPT will spit out some half baked information. I can always stir up the group chat with the boys and see just how far down the rabbit hole we can go.
But something is missing.
Why are my operating system and data stores limited to hardwired memories, group chats, and tweets?
Why can’t I keep track of the games I love (and hate)?
How will I know if I’ve watched a game that I’ll want to remember in 20 years time?
My entire Sports Watching existence, the unique moments in Sports History that I’ve been collecting, the very essence of what makes me a fan of Sport, are scattered across digital silos. Buried in Reddit threads. Forgotten on X. Spoken amongst friends (should a certain debate arise about a certain era/game/season) but never recorded. And certainly never Rated.
The hole in my football shaped heart needs to be filled. And I don’t think I’m alone.
I want need a place where other fans, watching the same game as me, having an entirely different opinion (and rating) than me, have a place to say so. Forever.
So A) what is that place? B) How do we do it? C) what will happen if we do?
A) That Place is Rate Game.
Rate Game is a mobile app where Sports Fans can rate the games they watch with their thoughts on the game. That’s it.
B) We do it together.
Rate Game’s mission statement is simple:
Watch. Rate. Repeat.
C) We Will Have Answers!
For me. For you. For us; The passionate, dedicated, addicted obsessed Sports Fans of the world. Since the dawn of Sport, we have embraced debate over the best Game 7’s, best Walk-Offs, buzzer beaters, Upsets, etc etc…and their place in sports history. But that’s as far as it ever goes. Until now.
As sports fans, we owe it to history, and most importantly to ourselves, to start rating games.
In the same way that we rate every aspect of our lives; the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the movies we watch, the person that drives us places, we will now rate the sports games that we love.
That is my vision for Rate Game. A mobile app that empowers fans to rate the game from 1-10, tell us why they chose the rating, and then do it again. That’s it.
Watch. Rate. Repeat.
OK WE GET IT. WHEN IS IT COMING?
See above. For the past 2 weeks I have been ALL IN on turning Rate Game from an idea that popped into my head while on my couch this past Championship Sunday…
(Chiefs/Ravens was a 6.5 for me, but that 49ers/Lions game….7.6. The Man Campbell 4th Down Failed Gambles, the moment swings, the slow and then ferocious crescendo of the crowd at Levi’s…you get it).
…into extensive research to see what’s out there, and then into my full formed vision.
A VISION THAT WILL BECOME A REALITY IN TIME FOR MARCH MADNESS
My promise to you, the Sports Fan, for Rate Game is this:
Simple, intuitive design.
Ease of use.
ALWAYS.
The purpose of this Substack is to keep a daily log of how it’s going.
To keep you informed. To ask you what you think. To hold myself accountable to my promise. And god-willing, make a product that you will use and love.
Who am I?
My name is Nick. I’m 33 years old and I live in New York City. I was laid off from my software sales job on January 18th so right now I have the time, the passion, and (hopefully 😅) enough resources to pull this off. Who I am not is an engineer, or someone who knows the difference Python (snake?) and Java (coffee?). I am also not at the beckon call of any sort of VCs. I am a lone wolf. I have hired a Dev Team on UpWork to build it, and am working with a creative agency on a site launch to try and get the word out (site launch coming next week!).
I'm putting all my chips on the table for this and operating with an extreme sense of urgency, newfound feelings of fulfillment, and levels of stress not felt since January 11th, 2011 (Antonio Brown with the 3rd down conversion in the AFC Championship, soul crushing).
So follow along and see what happens. Tell your fellow Sports Fans and take bets on the odds Rate Game succeeds ( Success +70000 | -10000 Failure at time of posting).
Whether you’re for me or against me, the next 38 days promise to be entertaining.
Rate Game will either be a One Shining Moment or a Malice at the Palace - there’s no in between.
Sincerely Sports Fan,
Nick
Actual number is 6,805.7. I rounded up.
Playoffs not included. Wouldn’t be materially different considering the historical poor performances of my favorite team, for the majority of my life. (Thank god for LeBron, the Dawgs, and those two magical Rex Ryan years.)
Recent NFL schedule increase to 17 games not included. And if I’m honest, having to watch an additional Jets game is more of a burden than a blessing.
For Leagues with Playoff Series formats, I took the average of most total possible games played (all series go 7 games) + least total possible games played (4-0 sweeps)
CFB is tricky. CFP was instituted in 2014-2015 and I’ve watched every single game. For the Bowl Era (2012-2013 season and before) I went conservative and started with 2006 (Rose Bowl) and assigned 5 total Bowl Games per year
CBB is even trickier with March Madness. I used Total Games in Tournament x Number of Years of watching it (I used to run a March Madness bracket that was exclusively paper entries in high school lol so 2008) x % of games watched. The “First Four” (2011) is excluded.
Ready to rate!!!