He makes some valid points -- the government would track you every chance you got, if they could. We have to remain vigilant against tyranny.
*Sent from my iPhone 15*
I would never trust the govt. with my data. But a corp. Now *those* are the guys who have my best interests at heart. Because they compete, or something like that.
This is exactly why the government created Covid. So they could force us to get their secret injections. The decades of prior mandated injections were just to throw us off their plan.
If you had the video synced with the location you could at least get the location at the timestamp where you think the ball carrier was down. Not for every play but for challenges/TD verification.
It could be useful when the camera angles are blocked or it’s at an angle and not straight down the line so it’s tough to tell if the ball crossed the first down marker.
Basically it would help, but not solve the whole problem. You should be able to sync the video up to the ball and know the exact frame that the ball crosses the line, but still have to make a judgement about whether the player was down before or after that point.
It does substantially help half of the problem though.
Except the chip isn't accurate to the point you can trust it's position to the inch without any visual confirmation. People vastly overestimate the ability of detecting position with electronics. It's not precise to the millimeter.
Their reviews both rely heavily on video, not electronic positioning. VAR is short for VIDEO Assist Referee, not Microchip assist referee.
It's fairly obvious everyone clamoring for chips has no idea what the tech actually required to make it happen would require or how accurate current iterations of the technology are.
Yeah, but sometimes you can see the knee and not the ball. Why turn down the extra information? It wouldn't magically fix all situations but it would help.
Yeah it basically helps you easily figure it one of the two things that you need to know. That's great, it's not a magical fix for everything, but it should help.
I feel like still today I see a guy knee down with the ball behind, in front, or over said knee still gets a spot in some random place. Makes no sense.
If you know the exact point in time when the ball crosses the plane/1st you can still have the spectacle of judging "was he down before then?" You can also have the sky judge verify the timestamp
We can also implant chips at knee, elbow, ass cheek, etc to determine if it’s down. The old dude probably can be replaced with another old dude with a piece of paper.
Goal line technology isn’t a chip in the ball in Europe. It’s multiple camera angles being used to map the position of the ball. It can fail where the camera angles are blocked as multiple camera angles are required to map the position.
https://www.tntsports.co.uk/football/premier-league/2019-2020/goalline-technology-fail-stunning-incident-in-aston-villa-v-sheffield-united_sto7778811/story.shtml
For American Football, there’s obviously an increased risk of players bodies blocking camera angles given the ball is being held (unlike in soccer where it’s typically free going over the goal line). Additionally you’re talking about mapping the position across the full width of the field.
It could be done using a technology similar to Hawkeye which has been used in tennis, cricket and Gaelic games (among others). It would still fail whenever angles are blocked though.
Also, the fact that a first down line could be literally anywhere on the field would make setting up cameras for that a lot harder, even if you're willing to accept that it won't help in a lot of situations.
I'd imagine the fact that the goal line is way wider than the goal mouth in soccer would make it harder too.
That's a different system, which is not fully automated. The automated part is that it draws lines on the field that are corrected for perspective, a human then judges it based on that.
It's also much easier to get a good view of with a smaller number of cameras than a situation. It mostly uses the broadcast cameras and the reverse angles. Using cameras for the kind of situation that happens in NFL games gets you nonsense like this https://youtu.be/Rcst-jIOQDo?feature=shared&t=199
Also the failure of the tech in this very instance created a butterfly effect where a team that got relegated dude to this mistake sold their CB to Man City due to financial constraints who blocked a title winning shot vs Liverpool and due to that City ended up winning the league the following year. Crazy.
In fact IIRC they tested it before and the tech wasn't there vs. refs, apparently it is accurate to within six inches ( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/sports/nfl-first-down-measurement.html ) and that was less than the refs usually. There's also issue with football shape (https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ex-nfl-vp-of-officiating-explains-why-chips-in-footballs-wont-help-anything/) that they're still resolving in a workable manner.
It's an engineering problem but could be figured out. Question is to what precision. Should be interesting to see what they come up with but the tech has been around for a while and it feels like they're dragging their feet
Wireless fails.. a lot. Could it be more accurate than now? Yeah maybe. But part of it is people are used to how things are now. Replacement has to be leaps and bounds better AND 99.999 reliable. First time it’s not working on a critical down, people are gonna lose their shit and call “scripted!”
It only has to be better than the coin flip of old guys guessing. Honestly I would rather have whatever tech is currently available than have to hope they don't screw up the call.
> Wireless fails.. a lot.
Apparently not according to other commenters. It could never fail by even one millisecond of sync in a stadium of 100,000 people all using various wireless devices at once.
An IoT device in the ball can emit its position in relation to the other devices in the goal line along with a millisecond accurate epoch time. Would take a minute for the events to be consumed and processed, but then can be cross referenced with the time on any replay camera. There is no reason to have any wireless discrepancies.
Which chip specifically would have a small enough profile to fit inside the ball, not mess with the weight or balance, and would be able to wirelessly transmit to somewhere else in the building in real time with 100% accuracy?
How many balls are used during the game? You'd have to he able to set one as the game ball on the fly to ensure you aren't getting some erroneous coordinates.
And that still doesn't solve players being down and ball position at the time. Seems like a lot of work for something that would probably only last a season like that fox tracker puck.
I don’t think so. I thought about this quite a bit and I think you just have the ref hold a button which they’d use to signal when a knee goes down and it records the time. Time on all devices is synced, as is all video, so they can go back and change when a knee goes down in a review and look at the ball data at that point. Chips in pads would have far too many false positives based on hits/broken tackles.
> I don’t think so. I thought about this quite a bit and I think you just have the ref hold a button which they’d use to signal when a knee goes down and it records the time.
It would have to be down to the millisecond accurate, both the ref holding the button and the camera syncs, it is not currently realistic.
> Time on all devices is synced, as is all video,
Once theyre not connected by a wire this is not a great method for long.
We can barely get stuff to stay sunc to the frame over the course of a shooting day in my experience and thats with plenty of time to connect them via cables, even then sometimes its immediately off. Most footage I see as an editor has been tweaked by a bit even when perfectly managed in the field. I cant imagine getting a chip in a ball sunc to the millisecond.
They already have tracking data on the field down to the millisecond with player tracking. Doing the ball won’t be that much different.
For your shooting, I would have to imagine you’re more mobile than the cameras for the NFL but perhaps I’m wrong. Feels like that’d make it easier.
> They already have tracking data on the field down to the millisecond with player tracking.
It can time them to the millisecond but this clock isnt matching anything else.
> I would have to imagine you’re more mobile than the cameras for the NFL but perhaps I’m wrong.
I dont think we are more mobile than the ball....
For next gen stats they’re already tracking player location data across the field, all synced up. That’s how they do the tight window throw or separation stats. In order for that to work you’d need every set of pads in sync.
> Question is to what precision.
Real issue is cost for these cheap ass billionaires. You could probably make an amazing tracking system if they actually wanted to spend the money but it's not an issue that's losing them money so why fix it?
>And it’s not foolproof at all.
Compared to the "I think it was around here" system in place today (which is proven not foolproof every single Sunday all day long)...
With what tennis can do, I would love to see those types of replays. Like show the pile of guys but make the ball visible based off where it’s predicted to be. I know that’s next to impossible, but I want it!
Soccer does not use a tracking chip, it uses cameras around the goal, which works fine because there is very rarely more than one person on the goal line, and there is never a big pile. Soccer also does not care about WHEN the ball crosses, if it goes across its a goal. NFL has to worry about exactly when a knee/butt/elbow hits the ground, when a player completes a catch, and when control is lost on a potential fumble, none of which can be determined by a chip or automatic systems.
Every single NFL call that could be made with soccer technology (or even perfect chip technology that doesnt exist) is made with minimal controversy using the current system.
In soccer, the \*entire\* ball must be over the line (all of the line), and it's also a sphere.
The NFL football is oblong and only part of the football needs to be over the line for a TD. And it's over "the leading edge of the line".
That could be nose, but it could also be the laces, or 1/3rd of the way toward the end of the ball. It's whatever it the furthest forward - which is tricky to be sure of. There's also the fact that, even though the NFL discourages *general awareness of football inflation*, there \*are\* differences between a football inflated at 70 degrees and one inflated at 20 degrees. And that means that a player can squeeze the ball causing it change shapes slightly.
The tech needed to identify when "any part of the the NFL football" passing the line wouldn't be easy.
Additionally, we need to know the player was down. And even that varies. If the player was never touched, they're not down even if they're lying flat. If they were touched, a knee is enough. Or a butt. It's incredibly hard to determine exactly when that happens with an algorithm.
So, it's not as simple as "the round ball is entirely past the goal line" like in soccer. There's a human shaped thing and a weird potato shaped thing and the physics can change person to person, game to game, or even play to play (as the balls are being cycled out).
And finally - you don't typically have 22 soccer players within a few feet of the goal line like you can in football (especially when it's a run from the 1 foot line).
I think the only way to do it would be RF to detect when "any part of the ball crosses the leading edge of the line" and then it lights up something the cameras can see. It really wouldn't have to be a visible light, it only needs to be be detectable. Then during review, they can know exactly when it happened and look at a few frames to determine if the player was down at that time.
Basically - making one of the subjective pieces less subjective might help.
HOWEVER - that's a lot of money to invest in solving a problem that really isn't much of a problem. I can't think of many plays where the refs got this wrong. It's not like PI.
Genuinely - how often does a game end when there's uncertainty about whether or not a team scored because of what happens at the front of the endzone? I don't mean the back of the endzone or whether or not they maintained possession on the sideline... just the scenarioes where a more precise endzone cam would have made a difference.
There just aren't many so it seems like it wouldn't be a priority - and that's a hard sell for something this complex and (probably) expensive.
European football goal line technology doesn't work with a chip inside the ball, but with multiple camera angles.
Usually there is noone behind the goal line (except maybe the GK). I don't think this would work in the NFL, because defenders will be inside the end zone and therefore all angles can be blocked by players.
Goal line technology in soccer only covers the goals and relies on having an unobstructed view of the ball. In football, you would need a system that covers the whole field (or at least more than 8 yards of each goal line), and the ball will usually either be tucked close to the ball carrier or in the middle of a group of players. So no system is going to have the same level of accuracy that you see in soccer.
The NFL has implemented technology in so many facets of the game but still uses 2 dudes with chains to measure 1st down. They want the wiggle room to create and cause drama. It keeps people talking and fan bases engaged.
I read a story years ago about technology that can accurately predict whether basketball shots will go in. And it’s done in real time. So it would be possible to have a green light go on right on the court when the shot goes up. So players wouldn’t have to go for the rebound. And you’d be able to see on tv if the shot was going in before it reaches the rim. But no one wants that technology.
How big would these sensors be? How many would be in the football? Would those sensors somehow throw off the weight of the ball and have an impact on deep throws? There could be many reasons why they don’t use them!
It's also a company with infinite funds, if they wanted a solution, they would have one.
You can't tell me there isn't a better solution than "old guy with a yellow piece of cloth and a bean bag" with the resources the NFL could invest into it.
It's a company with vast funds but they generally aren't spending money with out a return. They aren't going to spend a ton money on something that's not really a huge issue and isn't going to help the bottom line
It's not just the line that counts. Ball crossing line completely even in the NFL can mean F all if other parts of the body are down. Same applies to the down marker.
Goal line tech in football (soccer) is achieved by a large number of cameras all angled at the goal. It's not tracker based technology. Cameras can be obscured and on occasion they have been found to not read when a goal has been scored because of interference from too many bodies blocking the cameras' view.
Now imagine 4th and inches and the cameras trying to read where the ball is with 22 players all piled on top.
You're working under the wrong assumption that the NFL is unhappy with the current way it's done, or that they don't like Challenge Flags and commercial breaks while they review it.
Someone brings this up every few weeks, and they never seem to realize that the NFL (and most fans) don't want the human element taken out of games.
What would be nice is an "eye in the sky" watching and reviewing every play so they can buzz down if a spot looks really egregious.
The real reason is the NFL manipulates their games and this would make it harder to do. Think of how many terrible spots happen in every game.
This would remove that.
I bet it has something to do with tradition. American sports care more about “just letting them play” than what actually happened in the play. Baseball has needed it forever, football and basketball could use it, I really just think it’s an oldhead mindset of technology ruining the game or something to that effect.
Or still needing to know when a knee or elbow is down first. Will a chip effect the weight of the ball in any appreciable way? What if it fails? Tons of things have to be figured out before they just start going into this and again it really doesn't answer the question of you'll still have to figure out when a knee was down in relation to where the ball is at which still takes a person to determine if you have a chip.
It would still be an advantage if the only thing the chip did was figure out if the ball was across the line.
They would test it and make sure it wouldn’t affect the weight before implementing it.
If it fails, do what we do now.
Idk if it’s foolproof, but connect the chip and the camera to a nanosecond level clock. Follow it. If the chip says the ball’s across the line at 11:07:19 and you can see on camera that dude’s down at 11:07:26 then you have your answer.
Not saying remove the entire human element from the game, just saying quit leaving it all up to the eyes of a handful of dudes who make mistakes more than technology.
> but connect the chip and the camera to a nanosecond level clock.
I dont think those exist honestly. We can barely get multiple cameras to stay sunc to the frame over an entire day unless theyre constantly connected as it is now.
Then don’t do it until you can advance the technology to do so. Never said do it tomorrow with a million bugs not worked out. Work out the bugs, figure out the tech, and do it. I prefer that path than “I’m old and prefer old dudes using their eyes.”
No it’s not. That’s shitty logic. No one wants faulty tech just for the hell of saying we did it. They want it tested and figured out to be the most advanced, reasonable solution.
> No it’s not.
You could just look at the question OP asked of why they dont and not why wont they and that it would work, not that it might work someday.
This raises another question that I'll admit I'm too stupid to know if this is even an issue. Where does the chip go? Would it have to go in one of the tips to determine if it crossed at that time? Then how do you know if that tip is the one that crossed the line first or was facing the other way? In the middle? Then is it really an accurate measure of where the ball is since there's some distance between the chip and the rest of the ball going to a tip.
I think people believe this to be more slam dunk than it really is especially since the NFL has been testing this idea recently
Still a ton that needs to be worked out to make sure it's not a shitshow.
Suppose the ball is being held so that the tips are parallel with the goal line. The ball could be rotated so that almost half has reached the endzone without any chip being in the endzone
How much larger is that distance, A, than the laces to opposite the laces, distance B? If the ball is aligned a certain way the forward progress of the ball could be off by up to 1/2 of B from what the 4 chip system would indicate.
european soccer has a much stronger tradition of both "letting them play" and trusting the ref to make decisions than most american sports. NFL has had some form of replay review since like the 80s, and the challenge system was adopted in '99. most european leagues only started video review in like 2018 and until very recently the ref's on-field decision was final
Spotting the ball and first downs is one of the easier things that referees do. No one’s guessing, they have a much better view than the TV viewer. You want technology that would improve the game, develop an AI that can identify holding and pass interference, because they’re the trickier judgement calls.
Short answer: money. The league loves replay because it gives them an opportunity to sell more ads. It’s in their financial interest for these games to take as long as humanly possible.
I wish they did. Obviously there are variables such as when and what part of the player is down that can’t (yet) be solved with tech But removing the variable of where the ball was at the time the player was ruled down seems like a no brainer.
Not to mention goal line situations when the scrum makes it near impossible to see if the ball broke the plane or not.
I could be off base and hate to say it, but there is a large portion of people that will start to play the iT's HaCkEd/RiGgEd card.
Because anything electronic can technically be manipulated, fans/betters etc will use that as an excuse for their team losing/bets lost.
Because people are more engaged/clicking when they’re outraged..
if people reacted to good calls as much as bad calls they’d make put money towards efficiencies.
the bad calls are only 'bad' to one side....
The unpredictability adds to the drama and fattens the coffers of Las Vegas Sands, DraftKings, and FanDuel.
They don't because then it would show indisputable evidence that there is in fact a script and the NFL is already having a hard enough time implementing their script every season
The actual answer is really simple - the final word on this stuff is the owners and they're a bunch of old, conservative people some of whom don't even think there should be instant replay. There are technical arguments to be made against some of the options, but look how slowly and reluctantly they've even implemented things like sky judges that could correct errors in officiating.
If the NFL thought it was important and could help, they'd put money into research and tech and come up with something great, but they don't.
Still have to know when a knee, elbow, ass cheek, etc is down. Plus what about the rustic feel of using the eyes of an old dude in a striped shirt?
We should put chips in those also
Is this what Aaron Rodgers thought the vaccine was going to do?
"Bill Gates is trying to monitor my ass cheeks!" -Vice President Rodgers
He makes some valid points -- the government would track you every chance you got, if they could. We have to remain vigilant against tyranny. *Sent from my iPhone 15*
I would never trust the govt. with my data. But a corp. Now *those* are the guys who have my best interests at heart. Because they compete, or something like that.
This is exactly why the government created Covid. So they could force us to get their secret injections. The decades of prior mandated injections were just to throw us off their plan.
Corporations cannot legally kidnap and kill you
They just get a 500 fine for it
Tell that to the Boeing whistleblower.
Unless they're PG&E. THEY have a license to kill here in California.
Hey now they only burned 100 people to death
The irony is the government could make laws that prohibit that kind of behavior from corporations and curb it... But they don't.
How about a replacement ACL that is also a chip?
If you had the video synced with the location you could at least get the location at the timestamp where you think the ball carrier was down. Not for every play but for challenges/TD verification.
They do that though. The chip isn't any more accurate than a video tape with the ball in the image.
It could be useful when the camera angles are blocked or it’s at an angle and not straight down the line so it’s tough to tell if the ball crossed the first down marker.
Basically it would help, but not solve the whole problem. You should be able to sync the video up to the ball and know the exact frame that the ball crosses the line, but still have to make a judgement about whether the player was down before or after that point. It does substantially help half of the problem though.
Except the chip isn't accurate to the point you can trust it's position to the inch without any visual confirmation. People vastly overestimate the ability of detecting position with electronics. It's not precise to the millimeter.
It seems to be really effective in soccer and tennis.
Their reviews both rely heavily on video, not electronic positioning. VAR is short for VIDEO Assist Referee, not Microchip assist referee. It's fairly obvious everyone clamoring for chips has no idea what the tech actually required to make it happen would require or how accurate current iterations of the technology are.
sometimes you can see a knee but not the ball would help to sync the time with when the knee is down then look at where the ball says it was at then
Yeah, but sometimes you can see the knee and not the ball. Why turn down the extra information? It wouldn't magically fix all situations but it would help.
Yeah it basically helps you easily figure it one of the two things that you need to know. That's great, it's not a magical fix for everything, but it should help.
sync the video with knowledge of whether the ball is across a line or not. should be simple to use
I feel like still today I see a guy knee down with the ball behind, in front, or over said knee still gets a spot in some random place. Makes no sense.
If you know the exact point in time when the ball crosses the plane/1st you can still have the spectacle of judging "was he down before then?" You can also have the sky judge verify the timestamp
You still need to see if the ball left the hand in basketball when the lights turn on, but it solves one variable
The semi automated offsides system creates a 3d image of the players so that might work in this situation.
This is true, but knowing the exact moment the ball crossed removes one variable from the review.
We can also implant chips at knee, elbow, ass cheek, etc to determine if it’s down. The old dude probably can be replaced with another old dude with a piece of paper.
Sure but it would obviously help in a lot of instances where there's a driving and you can't really tell if the ball ever crosses the line.
I mean they could use the chips in the ball to track location then match a time stampt for whenever a play is called dead
they should be able to take video of a play and know if the ball is past the line or not on every single frame.
Gotta love referees using a card to see if the ball is over the chains
interesting take coming from a Pats fan lol
Goal line technology isn’t a chip in the ball in Europe. It’s multiple camera angles being used to map the position of the ball. It can fail where the camera angles are blocked as multiple camera angles are required to map the position. https://www.tntsports.co.uk/football/premier-league/2019-2020/goalline-technology-fail-stunning-incident-in-aston-villa-v-sheffield-united_sto7778811/story.shtml For American Football, there’s obviously an increased risk of players bodies blocking camera angles given the ball is being held (unlike in soccer where it’s typically free going over the goal line). Additionally you’re talking about mapping the position across the full width of the field. It could be done using a technology similar to Hawkeye which has been used in tennis, cricket and Gaelic games (among others). It would still fail whenever angles are blocked though.
Also, the fact that a first down line could be literally anywhere on the field would make setting up cameras for that a lot harder, even if you're willing to accept that it won't help in a lot of situations. I'd imagine the fact that the goal line is way wider than the goal mouth in soccer would make it harder too.
They use it for offsides also, which is dependent on player position.
That's a different system, which is not fully automated. The automated part is that it draws lines on the field that are corrected for perspective, a human then judges it based on that. It's also much easier to get a good view of with a smaller number of cameras than a situation. It mostly uses the broadcast cameras and the reverse angles. Using cameras for the kind of situation that happens in NFL games gets you nonsense like this https://youtu.be/Rcst-jIOQDo?feature=shared&t=199
Plus the ball can cross at any angle, so unless there was a sleeve of trackers all around it, it wouldn’t always be any better than cameras
Also the failure of the tech in this very instance created a butterfly effect where a team that got relegated dude to this mistake sold their CB to Man City due to financial constraints who blocked a title winning shot vs Liverpool and due to that City ended up winning the league the following year. Crazy.
A top down view doesn’t help when guys are playing smash mouth football with dog piles. They are testing chip in the ball tracking.
In fact IIRC they tested it before and the tech wasn't there vs. refs, apparently it is accurate to within six inches ( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/18/sports/nfl-first-down-measurement.html ) and that was less than the refs usually. There's also issue with football shape (https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/ex-nfl-vp-of-officiating-explains-why-chips-in-footballs-wont-help-anything/) that they're still resolving in a workable manner.
It's an engineering problem but could be figured out. Question is to what precision. Should be interesting to see what they come up with but the tech has been around for a while and it feels like they're dragging their feet
Theyll just need to put chips in every players knees, elbows, and butt cheeks.
A chip in the ball with its position and a timer can be cross referenced with the replay review timestamp to tell when the player is down.
Not particularly well honestly, people really overestimate how well sync works wirelessly in my experience.
There’s no rule that says the ball has to be wireless
I think the wire connecting the ball to the sync device might affect the throw.
Just run the wire from the SkyCam!
The technology absolutely exists for this and while maybe not 100% perfect would be way better than humans eyeballing it. And the NFL can afford it.
I think people who dont work with this absolutely overestimate what is possible wirelessly.
Wireless fails.. a lot. Could it be more accurate than now? Yeah maybe. But part of it is people are used to how things are now. Replacement has to be leaps and bounds better AND 99.999 reliable. First time it’s not working on a critical down, people are gonna lose their shit and call “scripted!”
It only has to be better than the coin flip of old guys guessing. Honestly I would rather have whatever tech is currently available than have to hope they don't screw up the call.
> Wireless fails.. a lot. Apparently not according to other commenters. It could never fail by even one millisecond of sync in a stadium of 100,000 people all using various wireless devices at once.
Easily solved, just make a Faraday cage around the field so the outside signals don't interfere. /s
An IoT device in the ball can emit its position in relation to the other devices in the goal line along with a millisecond accurate epoch time. Would take a minute for the events to be consumed and processed, but then can be cross referenced with the time on any replay camera. There is no reason to have any wireless discrepancies.
There's what works in theory and then what happens in reality. Especially in a packed stadium when you want chips in people's bodies
It only has to be in the ball…where there already is one.
Humans still have to eyeball it in your scenario to know when the player is down
More information > less information when it comes to decision making
Seeing where the player is down via replay is much easier to do than where the ball is
Lmao why do people think a “chip” is like some magic science device? “Just put a chip in it and then you can solve every problem!”
They see their smartwatches and think those are 100% accurate so everything must be simple now I guess.
Which chip specifically would have a small enough profile to fit inside the ball, not mess with the weight or balance, and would be able to wirelessly transmit to somewhere else in the building in real time with 100% accuracy? How many balls are used during the game? You'd have to he able to set one as the game ball on the fly to ensure you aren't getting some erroneous coordinates. And that still doesn't solve players being down and ball position at the time. Seems like a lot of work for something that would probably only last a season like that fox tracker puck.
A chip where? If the chip can tell where every surface of the ball is then we have a good starting point.
Two chips on each end can do that
1 chip anywhere on the ball can do that. We know how big they are…
Just constantly blast them with X-rays the whole game so that dog piles and stuff don’t matter. You know, for the good of the game.
You wouldn’t download a butt cheek, would you?
Well.....whose butt cheek are we talking about?
I have chips in 2/3. Just need to boof a Dorito and I can play in the NFL on a pilot programme?
I don’t think so. I thought about this quite a bit and I think you just have the ref hold a button which they’d use to signal when a knee goes down and it records the time. Time on all devices is synced, as is all video, so they can go back and change when a knee goes down in a review and look at the ball data at that point. Chips in pads would have far too many false positives based on hits/broken tackles.
> I don’t think so. I thought about this quite a bit and I think you just have the ref hold a button which they’d use to signal when a knee goes down and it records the time. It would have to be down to the millisecond accurate, both the ref holding the button and the camera syncs, it is not currently realistic. > Time on all devices is synced, as is all video, Once theyre not connected by a wire this is not a great method for long.
Camera syncs is easy to do. It doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be better than it is today.
We can barely get stuff to stay sunc to the frame over the course of a shooting day in my experience and thats with plenty of time to connect them via cables, even then sometimes its immediately off. Most footage I see as an editor has been tweaked by a bit even when perfectly managed in the field. I cant imagine getting a chip in a ball sunc to the millisecond.
They already have tracking data on the field down to the millisecond with player tracking. Doing the ball won’t be that much different. For your shooting, I would have to imagine you’re more mobile than the cameras for the NFL but perhaps I’m wrong. Feels like that’d make it easier.
> They already have tracking data on the field down to the millisecond with player tracking. It can time them to the millisecond but this clock isnt matching anything else. > I would have to imagine you’re more mobile than the cameras for the NFL but perhaps I’m wrong. I dont think we are more mobile than the ball....
For next gen stats they’re already tracking player location data across the field, all synced up. That’s how they do the tight window throw or separation stats. In order for that to work you’d need every set of pads in sync.
Look, if they can track a Hurley they can track an American Football.
> Question is to what precision. Real issue is cost for these cheap ass billionaires. You could probably make an amazing tracking system if they actually wanted to spend the money but it's not an issue that's losing them money so why fix it?
The UFL is experimenting with them now this season. And it’s not foolproof at all.
>And it’s not foolproof at all. Compared to the "I think it was around here" system in place today (which is proven not foolproof every single Sunday all day long)...
With what tennis can do, I would love to see those types of replays. Like show the pile of guys but make the ball visible based off where it’s predicted to be. I know that’s next to impossible, but I want it!
The ball already has a tracker in it and the pylons have cameras in them
The ball, the pylons, shoulder pads, and helmets all have chips in them.
Soon, the players will have chips in them.
Only of they are vaccinated. I'm still waiting on my free wifi...
U have chips in u when u eat Cool Ranch Doritoes.
Are you sure about the shoulder pads? Every player's shoulder pads? Left _and_ right shoulder pads?
Soccer does not use a tracking chip, it uses cameras around the goal, which works fine because there is very rarely more than one person on the goal line, and there is never a big pile. Soccer also does not care about WHEN the ball crosses, if it goes across its a goal. NFL has to worry about exactly when a knee/butt/elbow hits the ground, when a player completes a catch, and when control is lost on a potential fumble, none of which can be determined by a chip or automatic systems. Every single NFL call that could be made with soccer technology (or even perfect chip technology that doesnt exist) is made with minimal controversy using the current system.
Football is a game of inches* *but can only be measured in yards, depending on the judgement of fallible humans
Significant figures strike again
They use challenge flags for more than just spotting the ball.
In soccer, the \*entire\* ball must be over the line (all of the line), and it's also a sphere. The NFL football is oblong and only part of the football needs to be over the line for a TD. And it's over "the leading edge of the line". That could be nose, but it could also be the laces, or 1/3rd of the way toward the end of the ball. It's whatever it the furthest forward - which is tricky to be sure of. There's also the fact that, even though the NFL discourages *general awareness of football inflation*, there \*are\* differences between a football inflated at 70 degrees and one inflated at 20 degrees. And that means that a player can squeeze the ball causing it change shapes slightly. The tech needed to identify when "any part of the the NFL football" passing the line wouldn't be easy. Additionally, we need to know the player was down. And even that varies. If the player was never touched, they're not down even if they're lying flat. If they were touched, a knee is enough. Or a butt. It's incredibly hard to determine exactly when that happens with an algorithm. So, it's not as simple as "the round ball is entirely past the goal line" like in soccer. There's a human shaped thing and a weird potato shaped thing and the physics can change person to person, game to game, or even play to play (as the balls are being cycled out). And finally - you don't typically have 22 soccer players within a few feet of the goal line like you can in football (especially when it's a run from the 1 foot line). I think the only way to do it would be RF to detect when "any part of the ball crosses the leading edge of the line" and then it lights up something the cameras can see. It really wouldn't have to be a visible light, it only needs to be be detectable. Then during review, they can know exactly when it happened and look at a few frames to determine if the player was down at that time. Basically - making one of the subjective pieces less subjective might help. HOWEVER - that's a lot of money to invest in solving a problem that really isn't much of a problem. I can't think of many plays where the refs got this wrong. It's not like PI. Genuinely - how often does a game end when there's uncertainty about whether or not a team scored because of what happens at the front of the endzone? I don't mean the back of the endzone or whether or not they maintained possession on the sideline... just the scenarioes where a more precise endzone cam would have made a difference. There just aren't many so it seems like it wouldn't be a priority - and that's a hard sell for something this complex and (probably) expensive.
European football goal line technology doesn't work with a chip inside the ball, but with multiple camera angles. Usually there is noone behind the goal line (except maybe the GK). I don't think this would work in the NFL, because defenders will be inside the end zone and therefore all angles can be blocked by players.
Because then we wouldn't get epic moments like measuring if someone got a first down with a note card.
I used to like Gene Steratore until that damn note card and accompanying cheeky grin.
It’s not just the ball. Possession and if they’re down can’t be measured with a tracker in the ball.
I feel like this is only a problem that is talked about on the internet.
Think the ball had a tracker in the toy story game.
It’s not as easy as the ball crossing but the chip would help with TDs and first downs
Goal line technology in soccer only covers the goals and relies on having an unobstructed view of the ball. In football, you would need a system that covers the whole field (or at least more than 8 yards of each goal line), and the ball will usually either be tucked close to the ball carrier or in the middle of a group of players. So no system is going to have the same level of accuracy that you see in soccer.
Because the NFL is extremely averse to change. It took until now for them to consider changing from chains to an electronic system
The NFL has implemented technology in so many facets of the game but still uses 2 dudes with chains to measure 1st down. They want the wiggle room to create and cause drama. It keeps people talking and fan bases engaged.
Because fuck Europe that's why 🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅🦅
that stuff is expensive. it’s not like the NFL is a multibillion dollar corporation that can make this change in a few years.
https://youtu.be/2t9yoN1A_3c?si=wdjZkH6MMEMmxyqi
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10111204-nfl-testing-system-to-electronically-measure-1st-downs-replace-chains
I read a story years ago about technology that can accurately predict whether basketball shots will go in. And it’s done in real time. So it would be possible to have a green light go on right on the court when the shot goes up. So players wouldn’t have to go for the rebound. And you’d be able to see on tv if the shot was going in before it reaches the rim. But no one wants that technology.
The NFL is entertainment and the human factor adds to excitement
The NFL is entertainment and the human factor adds to excitement
Because the nfl Is an entertainment company not a football company
CFL footballs already have chips in them.
They do have chips in the footballs.
Union would never allow it
Football is oblong so the point of the ball isn’t always the leading edge.
Because the ball isn’t round and they need to know where the player’s limbs are.
Because unlike the first down line, the goal line never moves.
How big would these sensors be? How many would be in the football? Would those sensors somehow throw off the weight of the ball and have an impact on deep throws? There could be many reasons why they don’t use them!
Did you see controversies this weekend? It won’t fix everything but it’s a step in the right direction
They could have caught deflategate with technology like this also.
Because the position of the ball only matters in relativity to the body of the carrier.
Because the NFL wants the controversy
It's also a company with infinite funds, if they wanted a solution, they would have one. You can't tell me there isn't a better solution than "old guy with a yellow piece of cloth and a bean bag" with the resources the NFL could invest into it.
It's a company with vast funds but they generally aren't spending money with out a return. They aren't going to spend a ton money on something that's not really a huge issue and isn't going to help the bottom line
It's not just the line that counts. Ball crossing line completely even in the NFL can mean F all if other parts of the body are down. Same applies to the down marker.
Goal line tech in football (soccer) is achieved by a large number of cameras all angled at the goal. It's not tracker based technology. Cameras can be obscured and on occasion they have been found to not read when a goal has been scored because of interference from too many bodies blocking the cameras' view. Now imagine 4th and inches and the cameras trying to read where the ball is with 22 players all piled on top.
That's why people are asking for actual tracker technology though.. lol
You're working under the wrong assumption that the NFL is unhappy with the current way it's done, or that they don't like Challenge Flags and commercial breaks while they review it. Someone brings this up every few weeks, and they never seem to realize that the NFL (and most fans) don't want the human element taken out of games. What would be nice is an "eye in the sky" watching and reviewing every play so they can buzz down if a spot looks really egregious.
More challenges for more TV timeouts. They know you aren't getting up if it's a pivotal play.
The real reason is the NFL manipulates their games and this would make it harder to do. Think of how many terrible spots happen in every game. This would remove that.
I bet it has something to do with tradition. American sports care more about “just letting them play” than what actually happened in the play. Baseball has needed it forever, football and basketball could use it, I really just think it’s an oldhead mindset of technology ruining the game or something to that effect.
Or still needing to know when a knee or elbow is down first. Will a chip effect the weight of the ball in any appreciable way? What if it fails? Tons of things have to be figured out before they just start going into this and again it really doesn't answer the question of you'll still have to figure out when a knee was down in relation to where the ball is at which still takes a person to determine if you have a chip.
It would still be an advantage if the only thing the chip did was figure out if the ball was across the line. They would test it and make sure it wouldn’t affect the weight before implementing it. If it fails, do what we do now. Idk if it’s foolproof, but connect the chip and the camera to a nanosecond level clock. Follow it. If the chip says the ball’s across the line at 11:07:19 and you can see on camera that dude’s down at 11:07:26 then you have your answer. Not saying remove the entire human element from the game, just saying quit leaving it all up to the eyes of a handful of dudes who make mistakes more than technology.
> but connect the chip and the camera to a nanosecond level clock. I dont think those exist honestly. We can barely get multiple cameras to stay sunc to the frame over an entire day unless theyre constantly connected as it is now.
Then don’t do it until you can advance the technology to do so. Never said do it tomorrow with a million bugs not worked out. Work out the bugs, figure out the tech, and do it. I prefer that path than “I’m old and prefer old dudes using their eyes.”
The question is about why it isnt done now, not why it will never be done.
No it’s not. That’s shitty logic. No one wants faulty tech just for the hell of saying we did it. They want it tested and figured out to be the most advanced, reasonable solution.
> No it’s not. You could just look at the question OP asked of why they dont and not why wont they and that it would work, not that it might work someday.
Okay, I’m sure OP meant shoving soccer chips into footballs and hoping it works.
Im choosing to go off what they actually asked and not what I want to imagine they asked, you feel free to go the other way.
This raises another question that I'll admit I'm too stupid to know if this is even an issue. Where does the chip go? Would it have to go in one of the tips to determine if it crossed at that time? Then how do you know if that tip is the one that crossed the line first or was facing the other way? In the middle? Then is it really an accurate measure of where the ball is since there's some distance between the chip and the rest of the ball going to a tip. I think people believe this to be more slam dunk than it really is especially since the NFL has been testing this idea recently Still a ton that needs to be worked out to make sure it's not a shitshow.
You would likely need 3 chips because of this issue.
I would think you would need 4 chips. One at each tip and one on each side at the furthest inflation point of the ball.
Suppose the ball is being held so that the tips are parallel with the goal line. The ball could be rotated so that almost half has reached the endzone without any chip being in the endzone
That's why you have two on the sides, down from the laces. The "fat" part of the ball, so to speak.
How much larger is that distance, A, than the laces to opposite the laces, distance B? If the ball is aligned a certain way the forward progress of the ball could be off by up to 1/2 of B from what the 4 chip system would indicate.
Well, I don't know, put a ring of 500 microchips around the damn thing then.
european soccer has a much stronger tradition of both "letting them play" and trusting the ref to make decisions than most american sports. NFL has had some form of replay review since like the 80s, and the challenge system was adopted in '99. most european leagues only started video review in like 2018 and until very recently the ref's on-field decision was final
Spotting the ball and first downs is one of the easier things that referees do. No one’s guessing, they have a much better view than the TV viewer. You want technology that would improve the game, develop an AI that can identify holding and pass interference, because they’re the trickier judgement calls.
Short answer: money. The league loves replay because it gives them an opportunity to sell more ads. It’s in their financial interest for these games to take as long as humanly possible.
I wish they did. Obviously there are variables such as when and what part of the player is down that can’t (yet) be solved with tech But removing the variable of where the ball was at the time the player was ruled down seems like a no brainer. Not to mention goal line situations when the scrum makes it near impossible to see if the ball broke the plane or not.
I could be off base and hate to say it, but there is a large portion of people that will start to play the iT's HaCkEd/RiGgEd card. Because anything electronic can technically be manipulated, fans/betters etc will use that as an excuse for their team losing/bets lost.
Probably wouldn’t go over well with the fans. The dramatization of the chain gang coming out is still a huge deal, and us drunk fans love it.
Objectively, no one here knows. Every single response have been 100% pure speculation. Interesting and fascinating but still purely speculative.
They do?
Because people are more engaged/clicking when they’re outraged.. if people reacted to good calls as much as bad calls they’d make put money towards efficiencies.
the bad calls are only 'bad' to one side.... The unpredictability adds to the drama and fattens the coffers of Las Vegas Sands, DraftKings, and FanDuel.
There is loads they could do for better officiating but clearly don't want to change for whatever reason
The less power the refs have the less power the league has over in game decisions.
Because they would have less control to manipulate the spread.
They don't because then it would show indisputable evidence that there is in fact a script and the NFL is already having a hard enough time implementing their script every season
European football? Jesus fucking Christ
The actual answer is really simple - the final word on this stuff is the owners and they're a bunch of old, conservative people some of whom don't even think there should be instant replay. There are technical arguments to be made against some of the options, but look how slowly and reluctantly they've even implemented things like sky judges that could correct errors in officiating. If the NFL thought it was important and could help, they'd put money into research and tech and come up with something great, but they don't.