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Tech-Savvy NFL Teams Begin New Season of Contests
By Jim Banke
Senior Producer,
posted: 07:00 am ET
05 September 2003
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New Page 1From Liftoff to Kickoff: Space Technology in the NFL
This is part five of a five-part series looking at the many ways the space program has influenced the National Football League, and helped make it the success the game is today. CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Football has returned and once again all is right with the world. The New York Jets and the Washington Redskins met Thursday night to officially kick off the NFL season. President George W. Bush was the first this year to ask "Are you ready for some football?" and the night ended with the nation's capitol celebrating the Redskins' 16-13 win over the Jets. Scenes of opposing teams attempting to dominate the field will be played out week after week for the rest of the season, culminating with the Super Bowl on Feb. 1 in Houston.
But what is easily missed in all the hard hitting and displays of athleticism are the ways technology is employed in preparing for and playing the game.
The sideline communications gear that allows coaches to talk to each other, and to radio plays to a receiver in the quarterbacks helmet, is just the start of the technology that goes into a game.
Today's coaches and players are tech-savvy, fully wired in the office and at home with the latest flat-screen plasma monitors, laptops, DVD players and related software.
Digital Office Take the Jacksonville Jaguars, for example. Here's a team that has gone digital in just about every aspect of its game planning and execution.
During training camp this year every play practiced was recorded for review later. Now, there's nothing new about that as every team has done this for years using film and videotape. But the Jaguars are among the first to record it all digitally.
The day starts with a script of plays the team is going to run through. Everyone is working from the same script, including the videographers, and that script has been designed as an Excel spreadsheet detailing every variable of every play.
The resulting video is then processed so that by the time a coach leaves the field after morning practice, has a bite to eat for lunch and returns to his office, the video is waiting for him to call up.
It gets better: Not only does the coach have access to the video, but it has been linked to the contents of the Excel spreadsheet script. If the coach wants to review all third-down plays in which a particular player was given the ball, he just sorts the spreadsheet on those variables, double-clicks on a cell and that very play appears on the monitor.
No more fast-forwarding and rewinding tapes to find the right play. No more film to show in a room to a large group of people at the same time because there are only so many copies of the film or projectors to show it with.
| Extra Point | | The NFL announced this week new television deals that will keep orbiting satellites busy relaying more than 70,000 hours of NFL programming to 223 countries around the world. And for the first time since 1986, that includes China, where up to one billion people in 300 million homes will be able to receive the TV signal. | It's all digital, easily manipulated and available to every individual for viewing on their own laptop. Some players even have their "film" stamped on a DVD to review at home or on the road before an away game.
"The players have grown up in this techno-age of playing video games and what not. They're used to seeing it in that form," said Mike Smith, the Jaguars' defensive coordinator. "The days of a coach of getting up there and drawing on that chalk board or grease board doesn't capture their attention."
Smart Players Jaguars players that SPACE.com talked with agree that the technology helps them learn the game, understand their playbooks and even keep in touch with their families when on the road. Unlike the players of even just a generation ago, these relatively young men are much more comfortable using every gadget a company like Sony can think of.
"I think a lot of us now a days know how to deal with it. We can find our way around technology just because we did grow up in it," said Chris Hanson, the Jaguars' punter. "But on the football field it's more just 'go out and play.'"
And that's really the point.
Ultimately, technology is just like the rabid fans, cheerleaders and bratwursts that surround the game of football. It's meant to enhance the game, but never overshadow it. For every reason written in scores of stories through the years, football stands on its own as one of the greatest games ever played. Technology is a tool that supports the game and brings it into your living room -- but the appeal of the game is found in the heart, hard work and player's will to win by making one run, pass or kick at a time. "The bottom line is you come out here in the dirt, in the grass, in the elements and compete," said Jack Del Rio, Jaguars head coach. "It comes down to men sweating and battling one other, and that's the essence of football."
| NASA Astronaut First to Use Computers in NFL? CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- More than most people, NASA astronaut Leland Melvin knows how well technology and NFL football go together.
Melvin, a member of the 1998 astronaut class who hasn't flown yet, enjoyed a brief foray into the National Football League in 1986 with the Detroit Lions and Dallas Cowboys before an injury cut short his sports career and opened up a path to his space career.
At a time when players were just starting to figure out how to program the clocks on their new VCR's, Melvin was already able to program computers to help him learn his playbook.
"When I was at Dallas I remember I had a Zenith 171 laptop, with no hard drive and two floppy drives," Melvin told SPACE.com. "I was sitting there programming it in Fortran to act as a way I could learn my plays like flash cards."
He remembers a couple of linebackers came over and asked if Melvin could do that for them. That makes Melvin among the earliest, if not the first, to introduce computer technology to the NFL. But like today's coaches and players, Melvin agrees the game of football is still all about 22 guys on the field trying to hit each other.
"I don't care how much technology you have it still boils down to the fundamentals," said Melvin, whose current assignment is to help select the next round of educator astronauts.
"It's the same thing in the classroom. You can have all the computers, all the graphing calculators, but if you don't understand the fundamentals and the basics, you have nothing." -- Jim Banke | More from SPACE.com
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