Keith Hayes got his love for writing in the 6th grade where he began writing sci-fi stories for classmates and friends, while continuing to write over the years as a personal hobby.
In 1991 after purchasing WebTV, he caught the Internet bug and began writing on various message boards and newsgroups under the pseudonym Mista Sinista. His posts became popular as he covered movie reviews, the New England Patriots, WCW and WWE (formerly WWF) wrestling. Just do a Google search for Mista Sinista or Sinista1 under groups, and you'll discover enough material to read for months.
As his debating talents developed online, he became vocal in his local newspaper, the Enterprise. He began submitting Letters to the Editor, and most of his pieces were printed on a regular basis. He also had similar success with his letters to the early years of Patriots Football Weekly. After generating some buzz and catching the eyes of readers, Keith was contacted to write for wrestling web site Wrestlenutz.com. He was then later contacted to write for a New England Patriots fan website PatriotsFootball.com, which is now known as PatsFans.com.
When covering the Pats, Keith kept his Mista Sinista attitude and reviewed the games with his "tell it like it is" style. The Patriots experience soon took off, and allowed him to meet various players, travel to a Pro Bowl in Hawaii, a Super Bowl in New Orleans, several away games in the Meadowlands, and some great games in Foxboro, where he has been a season ticket holder since 1990.
Today, he covers the New England Patriots for eSports and as a 12th Man correspondent for PatsFans.com. You can read his political and local debates on his hometown site Brockton Forums. But for a real treat, you can also see the twisted side on his moniker web site Sinista1.com, where he has some great spoofs like "Barbie and Ken's True Hollywood Story," and "Celebrity Survivor."
Most recently, Keith has become a co-host on two hit radio shows at WXBR 1460 AM in Brockton (formerly WBET). On Fridays, Keith can be heard during the "On the Mark PI Show," with his host Private Investigator Mark Chauppetta, who has his own reality television show in negotiations, and a role in the upcoming horror film Frightworld where he plays an FBI Agent hunting a serial killer who has killed his wife.
Keith is now following in his host’s footsteps after scoring a part in Walt Disney's upcoming movie "The Game Plan," starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. In the movie, Keith plays a football player on QB Joe Kingman’s (Dwayne's character) Boston Rebels rival team the New York Dukes. Also joining Keith on the show is defense attorney Ken Diesenhof, and Brockton Police Officer Frank "Czman".
On Saturdays, Keith can be heard during "Krashing Into the Bigfield/The Lock Up" from noon to 4 p.m. talking sports with Enterprise writer Kevin Tocci, and aspiring actor Tom Mariano, cousin to "Boston Rob" of "Survivor/Amazing Race" fame. The show also features guests Matt Futrell, Peter Czymbor, Dennis Harris, and is produced by former Indie wrestler Mike Pavia. The South Shore Sports Show is growing, as the first two hours cover sports (professional and local), while the second two hours cover the best talk in professional and Indie wrestling.
Sport games have been a major staple for the video game industry, and in order to have a successful gaming console you have to have a successful sports title, and over the years that title had been the Madden series put out by EA Sports, and Tiburon programming.
For those who can remember, the 8-bit Nintendo system, 10 Yard Fight was all the rage until Tecmo Bowl hit the scene. Tecmo ran the table until the 16 bit systems hit the market. That is when the EA Madden series jumped from the PC onto gaming consoles like the Sega Genesis. The Madden series exploded, and took the football title year after year reaping accolades from the sporting world and media.
It wasn't until the Sega Dreamcast hit the scene with its NFL 2K series that people and critics began to talk. The developers at Tiburon/EA Sports weren't all that worried because Sony's PS1 was dominating households, and almost every one of those households owned a copy of Madden every year. It wasn't until the Sega Dreamcast went online and brought the newest 2K with them. The buzz was huge, and the online play was a success over the 56k. The Madden series felt a singe but continued to put out a sub par product with minor upgrades to game play and the graphics sticking with the "if it ain't broke" motto. EA knew they had faithful buyers and didn't give them anything in return as this writer-jumped ship when the first Sega 2K hit the market.
With the Dreamcast fading from existence the PS2 hit homes with a vengeance, and EA decided to rest on it's laurels by taking a year off, and proved costly when the XBox rolled in. The XBox came with a horrible Microsoft game NFL Fever, and since Sega removed themselves from the console wars they were able to concentrate on only software. Sega unleashed the 2K series on the XBox and wiped out the competition. It's was such a domination with the addition of successful online play that ESPN dropped it's own line of games and signed on with Sega/Visual Concepts in a last minute deal before the 2004 season began. The move was a huge success and gave Sega what they needed to take on EA.
This year the ESPN series dropped the hammer on EA early by offering a better game for cheaper money, a game that also allowed the user to do much more especially with the XBox version. EA's Madden had no "wow" additions to their game this year, and graphically the game lacked since EA catered its graphics to the lesser-powered PS2. Those who purchased Madden on XBox were robbed, and soon some of those people were going back and trading their copies of Madden in for ESPN.
EA felt the heat, and began to offer several deals to move Madden of the shelves, by November they gave in and dropped the price of Madden to compete with ESPN who was now selling all of its sports titles for $19.99. EA has now responded with this deal that NFL Players Union Director Gene Upshaw claimed was being talked about months before ESPN hit the shelves earlier this year. This statement from Upshaw would be a serious contradiction since back on May 3 of this year The Sports Business Journal and ESPN Magazine had broke a report that EA was set to pay Players Inc.1 billion dollars for exclusive rights coming out to 250 million a year for 4 years. Gamespot News on May 18th reported that a moderator for the ESPN Videogames.com contacted the NFLPA, and they denied the deal. The NFLPA also went as far as accusing the story as being false and forced the Sports Business Journal to run a retraction article. EA Sports contacted Gamespot News, and had them confirm the retraction.
Now here we are seven months later, and the deal is real. So real that it's all over the Internet, ESPN and all of the stock reports since EA's stock took a big jump after the announcement and ESPN reported this quote from Gene Upshaw.
"This exclusive relationship will maximize the value of NFL players through EA's continued commitment to bring fans closer to the game,"
What could the NFL and NFLPA be thinking with a five year deal with a videogame company?
I understood it when they signed an exclusive deal with Reebok, and got rid of some of the smaller entities that held licensing rights, but this move will only hold consumers hostage to a "one game-one price" mentality. EA will be able to charge whatever it wants knowing the consumer that has supported them over the years will continue to and those who didn't will be forced to since it will be the only game with actual players, uniforms and stadiums.
This deal to me is bad news, and I wonder how some of the players feel since some supported the ESPN series like two time Super Bowl MVP QB Tom Brady. Tom performed QB digital motion capture work for the ESPN series two years in a row as did other players like Brian Urlacher, JJ Stokes, Tim Rattay, Tyrone Wheatley, and Ahman Green. With one game on the market that's only one extra paycheck compared to what players were getting from games like NFL Fever (Microsoft), NFL Blitz (Midway), NFL Gameday (989 Sports), and the successful NFL Backyard series for kids on the PC combined.
This is a marketing coup and already there is an online petition with over 5,000 signatures that when completed will be sent to the NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue expressing the thoughts of consumers who feel they have just been burned in a deal that only favors EA and no-one else.
EA, which is called the "evil empire" in some circles is rolling in glory now that they have three exclusive deals. For over a year they have had NASCAR and PGA in their pockets, and this year they jumped on board for XBox Live when they realized it's online subscriptions topped the one million mark. This was something Sony wasn't even close to accomplishing on the PS2.
With 2005 approaching Sony and Microsoft are planning on releasing their next-gen consoles, and if EA is still holding on to the rights they will rake in money from both consoles and consumers won't have any right to choose.
Comments? Hit me up: Sinista1@msn.com