The weather has been hot days, but really cool nights for the past week in Dayton, Ohio. So, instead of running the central air, I have been opening the windows at night and running fans to circulate the cool air.

The past several years, you may have noticed that appliance makers have been putting shorter and shorter cords on things, presumably to save costs. I’m sure if you did the math, you might discover that a manufacturer could save million — maybe even billions — just shaving an inch off the cord. Who would notice! The problem with this kind of thinking is the next quality team that comes in trying to save a buck a year later would shave another inch off the cord, save more millions until finally the consumer is left with a cord that is exactly 33 inches long and just barely reaches the wall plug.

I guess the next step is to make the assumption that all consumers have extension cards and they can supply their own cord from the fan motor to the wall. After all, I only paid $19.99 for the fan!

I tell you this so the following makes sense. I hit my personal quality nexus this morning, the point where cheap cost and quality meet. I was attempting to redirect the fan with a fresh cup of coffee in my hand. When I went to turn the fan, the cord did not follow and pulled the fan, dumping the hot coffee all over me. If the cord had been a foot longer, this would not have happened and the fan would have moved easily.

Our advice: When looking to increase profitability for your tournament, be careful what you cut into. Make sure that you don’t start shaving off the core things that make your customers attracted to your event. If it is critical to the operation of your tournament (like a cord is to an electric fan) leave it alone.. or better yet, figure out how to provide more functionality with the same or fewer resources. Don’t just cut inches off your cords; they are the lifelines to your success.

I was reading a set of rules for an event that is happening soon, just to make sure the tie-breakers were consistent with the rules. Instead of the fairly standard points, head-to-head, goal differential, goals against, goals for, penalty kicks I was accosted by this complicated set of bonus points based on the GD being a particular spread and then the GD would be applied bonus points….

Arrgghh!! Stop the insanity on these arbitrary and creative tie-breakers. We all understand that the purpose of these complicated tie-breaking rules is to avoid the dreaded shoot-outs at the end of pool play, but this creative math that is different at almost every tournament is making it more difficult for software to support your rules.

Our advice: Simplify and standardize. Take a look around at other tournaments in your target market and try to standardize your tie-breakers so that they will be less confusing for the coaches AND PARENTS. Coaches can do the math easily, but parents don’t — and won’t — do the math. They just want to know who’s first, second, etc. And, there are a lot more parents than there are tournament directors at the event! You may also find that by simplify and standardizing, there will be fewer challenges to your math ability outside your HQ. You may also want to take more time in attracting and seeding teams to ensure ties (draws for the soccer purists) don’t happen.

STATE ASSOCIATIONS and US SOCCER: Mandate a standardized tie-breaking formula. Tournaments will become more and more of your members activities in the next several years and it is in your best interest to standardize NOW when the number of events in manageable. And, while you are at it, you may also want to take a look at standardizing the rules as well.

Yesterday, I received an email from YATL (Yet Another Tournament Listing) web site called The Scoreboard News at www.scoreboardnews.com. In their invitation, in big red letters, they said: [Please do not … refer us to any other web site for additional information]

I found that mildly entertaining, but also a glaring indicator of just how bad most tournament web sites are. How many times have you been told: Just go to our web site for information on that.. and when you get there, you’re left staring at the site, wondering how you would get to that bit of information about the scores or tryouts or a news item on the club, etc, etc.

The Scoreboard News, whose entire existence depends on information about tournaments, camps and leagues is begging its posters to please not send them a reference to their web site. Just fill out the online form they provide for you.

Our Advice: Giving people the Just go to our web site.. is the same thing as saying just down the road, can’t miss it. It hardly ever is just down the road and 90% of the time, you will miss it. Unless you have a TourneyCentral.com site.

In the web industry, we have what is known as the bounce rate. That is the number of folks who come to your front page and don’t go deeper into your web site. I think it is poorly named.

Our TourneyCentral.com sites have a sightly higher than average high bounce rate. But, that is good because when you go to one of our tournament web sites, you can immediately see the Who, What, Where, When, How Much at a glance. We don’t leave your visitors staring at the screen, wondering which link will get them where they need to go.

If you miss what you are looking for on our sites, it probably only means that you have become conditioned to ignore the useless front page most sites put up and start clicking without reading. But, that is ok too, because our About, FAQ, Application, etc. pages all have the Who, What, Where, When, How Much info on them as well.

Today is Friday and with it comes the flood of email to tournaments going on tomorrow from coaches who suddenly can’t make registration night for their teams. My favorites are emails that say: I can’t make it to registration tonight. We’ll see you on Saturday. and then leave it at that.

Wow! How arrogant and self-centered. For tournaments that host more than one team (oh, you all do?) that presents a challenge. Do you stand firm, take a hard stance or allow this team to register on Saturday morning? If you take a hard stand, they may not show up. If you cave, other teams are going to find out and do the same.

Our advice: Don’t cave. But have an option. This is a negotiating tactic and should be treated as one. First, the coach sending this email on a Friday morning assumes that you will be away from your computer and on the fields setting up. Don’t be. Assign someone to pick up email and response immediately back with your pre-determined response. Secondly, have a pre-determined response. One of my favorite no responses would be to offer to check the team in on Saturday morning, between 4-6am, for an additional $100.00 cash per team. Oh, and offer them a free cup of coffee while they wait. If it truly is an emergency, they will be there early in the morning, with cash in hand. If not, greet them warmly on Friday night! (But if you guess wrong and they actually do pull out of your tournament over this issue, never, never, never refund their money. But thank them for their donation.)

As an afterthought, it amazes me as a soccer parent that the first thing the coach does is read us all the riot act about being on time for practice, games etc., yet these same coaches assume the rules of a tournament do not apply to them.

I’m cheating when I look up scores for the TourneyCentral tournaments that are running in the current weekend. I set up some scripts that pull and refresh the scores continuously every 10 seconds. When I am away from my desk, I get them non-stop on my Treo. This is the way I keep track of how the tournaments are doing with posting scores, etc.

While I don’t play favorites with our tournaments (they are all great!), the two tournaments going on Mother’s Day weekend, Sidney Mayfest Classic and the Novi Jaguar Invitational were OUTSTANDING in reporting scores in almost real-time. It was almost like being there (and, with several parents taking and upload photos, it was even more real.)

Our Advice: Report your scores as close to real-time as possible. If you have a TourneyCentral System, you already have the tools to report quickly, even if you don’t have Internet at the fields. Several tournaments call the scores in to someone hanging out in their living room, entering scores from their laptop in front of a large screen TV! Because it is Internet, the scoring input is always available, anywhere in the world. And, you just never know who is watching your tournament… could even be someone blogging and bragging about you!