(This one’s for you, Dan.)

Google’s getting into the sports information business and Shanoff notes the true value of doing so:

When my Gmail email app and my Gtalk IM app and my Google Alerts and my Google Docs and my Google News updates are all working seamlessly in a fantasy app, that’s It.

Which, honestly, someone could do (for the most part) right now with Google APIs, but it’s not quite the same as Google doing it for us.

Beyond that, though, Google’s jones for extensibility will push the envelope on fantasy automation and change the face of fantasy sports.  Imagine this:

“Computer, if you get a Google News alert that contains the name of one of my fantasy players prominently and “disabled list” in the text of the alert, move him to the DL on my fantasy team and move up the player that fits into that position for the next 15 days unless there’s someone better in my lineup I can slide into a util role because he’s hitting over .320.”

Except, you know, a script written by a bored and/or fantasy-obsessed college student that you can install with two clicks of your mouse.

Or:

“Computer, find the most popular Google searches and cross-check it against a database of ballplayers’ wives names.  Select one, automatically generate 300 words that contain at least one Children’s Television Workshop reference and one Fellini reference, insert two pictures from Google Image Search, and post to blog.”

Actually, that last one’s a horrible idea.  It will never work.  Ignore that one.  Look; Manny Ramirez’s wife!

(whew.  That was close.)

For those of you out of school for awhile, this may seem stunning.  For those of you currently or recently in school, you may not quite understand why death by chalk inhalation was once an omnipresent teaching danger of the 20th Century. 

However, we’re excited about an announcement last week by Microsoft that takes this notion of wall computing to a much more usable level: touchscreen wall computing.  No rear projection; no special pens; fully interactive.  Welcome to TouchWall.

Why do we bring it up here?  Remove the example under this gentleman’s finger and replace it with game film from last week’s loss to Alabama State.  Or how about a simply-written application that allows the coach to enter all the plays in and run them at any speed, stopping and moving a defensive back out of position to see how the play’s result changes?  How about loading all the team’s plays into that application and running pop quizzes with the players?

Now we’re cookin’.

And imagine being able to show the passing angles and spacing required for each offensive and defensive basketball play in three dimensions from ground level, only to then ‘grab’ onto the lower corner of the entire court and toss it downward, pushing the view to two dimensions from above and allowing the coach to use the more traditional X-and-O technique.  Visual learners will appreciate seeing plays in action from both angles.

Coaches afraid of shiny electronic objects (not, say, Saban) will appreciate the direct connection.  Players on the board can directly be manipulated, finally completing the journey started by coaches decades ago.  In fact, it may be hard to get the coaches to share the board once their fantasies have been realized.

Frankly, we expect to see these from Microsoft or HP or other vendors in the richest college football and basketball ‘classrooms’ in a year, bumping the old film sessions and whiteboards aside.  (Phil Knight is already on the phone, no doubt.)  NFL and NBA teams should already have theirs on backorder, along with those Euro footie sides.

This leads us to the obvious next step in sports simulation trainers:

I have a suggestion: let Stan Van Gundy win.

What other uses can you think of for this handy-dandy device in the sports realm?  (For example, “allow Adam Jones to safely seed the clouds from the privacy of his own home”.)