Is the NFL Really Technophobic?

An article on The Wall Street Journal's website titled "Pick up the Phone, NFL: The Future Is Calling" implies that the National Football League (NFL) is stuck in the dark, that the league's approach to technology is "retrograde." 

This could not be further from the truth. The fact is that the NFL has been a very tech-friendly league for quite some time. 

When you compare professional football to the other three major sports, it becomes plainly obvious that the NFL has embraced technology with almost reckless abandon. Chuck Klosterman said it best when he wrote the "NFL adores new technology" in an article titled "A brilliant idea! (For now)." In that same article, he correctly points out that the NFL was the first league to embrace instant replay. The league also installed radios inside the helmets of quarterbacks and created animated first-down markers for television broadcasts while the other leagues sat idle.   

So while baseball managers still rely on a set of coded hand signals to relay messages to their players, an offensive coordinator can speak directly to his quarterback. That doesn't seem so retrograde. 

The notion that the NFL is "technophobic" because it "outlaws computers and PDAs on the sidelines" obscures all the aforementioned ways the league has used technology to improve the game.

One of the main "innovations" the author discusses is the idea of replacing the printed pictures players consult to better understand opponents' schemes with digital images and videos presented via iPads, an obvious improvement but one that hardly qualifies as game-changing in the way using instant replay to increase accuracy is.  

I blame the author's penchant for hyperbole on the fact that we live in a culture that gets collectively aroused every time a new tech product enters the marketplace, no matter how slight or inconsequential that product may be.  

The author also describes a proposed system that would wirelessly connect quarterbacks and defensive captains to all the other players on the field so that offenses and defenses would no longer have to huddle to call plays.  

Such a system would represent a tangible step forward in technology, but it would be a mistake. Americans are a languid people and the deliberate pace of professional football is much better-suited to our lazy Sunday afternoons than the nonstop chaos that is the un-beautiful game of soccer. 

Like our previous national pastime, baseball, which is also a deliberately paced sport, football's non- continuous action creates a predictable rhythm that appeals to the average American spectator. This similarity has made our transition from a baseball nation to a football one all the more seamless, and it is also one reason why basketball, hockey and soccer will never be as popular in America as football and baseball. 

The NFL's competition committee would be wise to consider the importance of maintaining 45-second breaks between plays before approving some sort of wireless system that could speed up the game. But if the NFL is intent on expanding into Europe, as co-owner of the 49ers, John York, has mentioned, perhaps the purpose of this system is to make football more appealing to European fans raised on soccer and rugby.  

But I digress. By the far the best part of this article is the fact that the author uses Brian Billick—Brian Billick!—as an example of a coach who moved "his former profession out of the hidebound world of overhead projectors and hand-drawn diagrams."  

Billick is a self-proclaimed offensive genius who couldn't build a shadow of a credible offense during his tenure in Baltimore. He won a Super Bowl ring because Ray Lewis and Marvin Lewis handed it to him on a silver platter by leading a defense that ranks second only to the '85 Bears in terms of sheer dominance.  

Billick is an awful coach and a self-aggrandizing broadcaster, and the fact that he embraces technology should make any NFL coach who is actually concerned with winning a few games think twice about bringing the latest gadgets into their locker rooms.  

There are two technological innovations the article describes that do seem somewhat credible. The first is the idea of embedding transmitters in players' helmets and mouth guards to track their movements and better understand the severity of the hits given and taken during the course of game.  

Given all we know about the danger of the concussive and sub-concussive impacts football players are exposed to on a regular basis, having better information about how many hits a player has taken could help coaches determine if and when to give that player a break. 

The other interesting idea is the notion that microchips could be embedded into game balls so that referees could definitively know when a ball has crossed the goal line or a first-down line. Considering the changes the NFL has willingly made just to increase fairness—think of the new playoff overtime rules—I have no doubt that league officials will give this idea due diligence.  

The skeptic in me believes that the idea of bringing more technology to our most popular sport has nothing to do with increased accuracy or player safety and everything to do with money. Consider the following sentences:

"

Motorola has been spending about $50 million a year to brand the coaching headsets, one of only two corporate names on NFL sidelines, according to a person familiar with the deal. (PepsiCo's Gatorade is the other.) IBM pays the league $10 million annually, but its services as the information-technology sponsor are far more limited and less visible than what the NFL wants from its next technology partner.

"

If the NFL can get IBM or some other corporation to shell out more money in exchange for increased technology and the opportunity to put logos in prominent places, I have no doubt that Roger Goodell and Co. will move forward with a deal.  

I also have no doubt that the NFL will put a team in London before my lifetime is half over. Such ideas don't always make the most sense, but they certainly can be lucrative.