Earlier this year, prior to the settlement of the CBA situation between the NFL and its players, there was some anxiety as to whether or not fans would re-embrace the league, consumers would continue to purchase NFL-related paraphernalia and marketers would continue to activate.

This may be jumping the gun a bit - typically these annual prediction pieces come out in that slow week between Christmas and New Years - but I figure it's good to get these out now so you can do more important things that week (like eat a lot of unhealthy food!).

Last year at this time, I put together my list of the most important life lessons one could take into the new year; each expressed in three words. In keeping with the end-of-year themes towards benevolent giving and introspection, this year's installment focuses on what we might expect in the world of sports marketing in 2012.

How will be golf be remembered in 2011? Was it Rory McIlroy's Masters collapse and then record-breaking performance at the U.S. Open? An undoubtedly magical moment for the game of golf. Or was it how Hurricane Irene disrupted The Barclays, the first event of the PGA Tour FedEx Cup to the point of essentially cancelling. Or perhaps what's most top-of-mind is Tiger Woods's continued slump, which continued until just this past weekend with his victory at the Chevron.

The passing of former heavyweight boxing champion Joe Frazier on Nov. 7 brought to light another passing: That of professional boxing itself.

The past week has not been a stellar one for the wide world of sports. As the story has unfolded out of Penn State University, maybe we're witnessing the worst example of what "win at all costs" means in college athletics. Certainly, the horrific news surrounding the much-vaunted PSU football program has tainted what had been built up over many decades as one of the nation's top-tier college football brands.

Conducting research for a variety of sports properties and brands that activate around them affords me the opportunity to look at sponsorships with a fresh and unique approach, every time a client or agency calls us in. Yet it confounds me that for such a large and potentially high profile endeavor as investing in a sponsorship or sports marketing program, few still go beyond a fairly standardized approach of assessing potential exposure levels, translating these into GRP or CPM equivalents and, voila...out comes an empirical valuation. I get and subscribe to the K.I.S.S. principle but, time-out, there's so much more …

It appears to my wife, kids and co-workers that I've recently been on tour, the "Digital Media Fall-a-Palooza Tour of 2011," featuring Tech Crunch, OMMA Global, SportsBusiness Journal and, most recently, iMedia Connection's Breakthrough Summit in Las Vegas. During the few days of talks and roundtables in Vegas, I had the opportunity to hear many amazing professionals in our field, but one speaker's message stood out to me (probably because it's the freshest in mind, no disrespect to the other speakers).

Just because the NBA games stopped didn't mean that the pro basketball marketing machine was waiting for a resolution.

Buzzwords certainly make the Internet go 'round. From general categories like mobile and social, to the more recent consumer digital media phenomena like social games and daily deals, the Web churns out a constant stream of user experiences that enable new (and old) companies to connect with audiences in a meaningful way. There is one Internet buzzword, however, that has its roots firmly entrenched in old media, yet continues to grow wildly across all elements of the consumer Web: Video.