The Sports Footage You Won't See Today On TV 277
Hugh Pickens writes "As sports nerds settle in today after Thanksgiving dinner for NFL and college football Reed Albergotti writes that there is some footage you will never see as he argues that the most-watched game in the US is probably the least understood. During every NFL game there are cameras hovering over the field, lashed to the goalposts and pointed at the coaches, but you will never see a shot of the entire field and what all 22 players do on every play which is considered proprietary information available only to teams and coaches. For decades, NFL TV broadcasts have relied most heavily on one view: the shot from a sideline camera that follows the progress of the ball. Anyone who wants to analyze the game, however, prefers to see the pulled-back camera angle known as the "All 22." While this shot makes the players look like stick figures, it allows students of the game to see things that are invisible to TV watchers: like what routes the receivers ran, how the defense aligned itself and who made blocks past the line of scrimmage and gives fans a 'bird's eye view' of the game to dissect team strategies, performances, and keys to success. Without the expanded frame, fans often have no idea why many plays turn out the way they do, or if the TV analysts are giving them correct information."
Whiners (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder.. (Score:0, Insightful)
The money spent on sports in this country...
Could fix the entire country in 5 years. Easily.
All our bitching about budgets and funds are tiny compared to the yearly cash pissed away on GAMES. Alternative energys and everything else we won't do because it's expensive... And yet... lol
I wonder why we do that... I have a theory. but it's not popular i'm sure.
Re:proprietary? (Score:5, Insightful)
More generally, how do they keep somebody from livestreaming it -- or, at the very least, recording it and streaming it later.
We have cameras that are the size of a pack of cards that record very blurry 1080p video, after all.
You can put as many megapixels as you want into a camera, but the 1/4" lens is still going to make it look like it was taken by a disposable camera and digitized at the local 7-11.
Re:Whiners (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I wonder.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, one big difference is that video gamers don't generally get millions of dollars in tax money to build enormous facilities to play video games in.
Re:proprietary? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is Slashdot. We generally don't care about sport, but we're always up for a meta-argument.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand the point of a contact sport. But usually contact sports involve padding so that the players don't receive any permanent, life-altering injuries. I see no reason to have a contact sport without protective gear, unless the goal of the sport is to satiate fans' bloodlust.
NFL flushes money down the toilet (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand why the NFL isn't selling access to video libraries containing all these streams. With all the football fans, fantasy football and otherwise, obsessively analyzing the game, don't you think they could sell subscriptions? I'd buy. Give me a searchable archive. Let me find all targets at a receiver in a given year, or all fumbles of a players, or all INTs, etc.
The problem of delivering video on demand is already solved. They've got the content. It's just money in the street, waiting for them to pick up.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
If you just want to watch people get career ending broken bones and possibly fatal concussions..
Aussie rules and Rugby have less injuries than American Football because you don't have padding. You learn to wrap and tackle properly.
Re:Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
And they don't hit as hard because they don't use padding. In American Football you have idiots running into each other full tilt because they're wearing so much padding. But in that 1/20 chance that you hit wrong you get a serious injury.
If I told you to run into a wall as hard as you could and I'd give you $10. You'd do it at a certain velocity wearing no padding. If you strapped on a helmet and shoulder pads you wouldn't hit just as hard as you had been hitting, you'd start hitting it harder. And most of the time you'd be fine, but occasionally you'd hit it wrong or have your hemet at the wrong angle and hurt yourself. Or in Football you'd hurt the other person because you were hitting that much harder.
In addition there are rules to how to tackle in Rugby (Not sure about Aussie Rules). You HAVE to wrap in a tackle. You can't just body check someone out of bounds. You also have to do something the entire game. American Football you burst for 10 seconds then rest for 60. You don't have people hitting as hard because you have to get up and ruck. You have to be there for the next play because play hasn't stopped.
I'd say almost none of these tackles are legal. [youtube.com] You have someone picking up and dumping, body checking, leading with the head, etc. They have fewer injuries because of the laws of the game AND because they don't use padding. If they started using more padding they'd hit harder.
Re:Wow (Score:2, Insightful)
I think this idea should be applied to automobile safety. People are idiots on the road because they feel so safe inside their cars with high crash safety ratings. If light contact between cars were very likely to be fatal, people would be much better drivers.
Re:Wow (Score:4, Insightful)
I only watched a few minutes of the first video, and that was pretty pathetic. Most of those hits aren't even as bad as a home plate collision in baseball.
But more importantly, why the fuck do you consider it a selling point that people get hit hard in a sport with no padding? If you just want to watch people get career ending broken bones and possibly fatal concussions, go watch MMA or boxing. Stop pretending you care about the skill and athleticism, and accept that you'd have been happier living in Roman times.
Having all the padding/armour, helmets or whatever it is that American Football players wear actually makes it a lot more dangerous in the long run. The more ridiculously hard challenges you receive without immediate injury, the worse you will potentially suffer over your career.
My understanding is that there are a lot of American football players with brain damage, as their (well protected) heads get sloshed about a lot more than in a sport like AFL or rugby where an equivalent hit would probably take you out of the game and is therefore better regulated
Re:And in Rugby too (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a distinction that we can all understand:
Rugby is an RTS.
American Football is turn-based.