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Today At A Glance:

The NFL is often laughed at for its inability to embrace modern technology. Tennis, FIFA, and even Major League Baseball have seemingly pulled ahead in the race toward innovation. So today’s newsletter breaks down exactly where the league stands and what the NFL’s future might eventually look like. Enjoy!

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Friends,

The National Football League (NFL) brings in nearly $20 billion in annual revenue, and this year’s Super Bowl will be watched by about 150 million people worldwide.

Yet it sometimes feels like they are living in the stone age.

Officials determine the spot of the football with their eyes, and a group of people known as the “chain gang” use physical chains to measure first downs — and when you compare this to other sports, you start to realize the problem.

Many professional tennis tournaments use tracking technology in place of human line judges to determine if balls are in and out. For example, the U.S. Open and Australian Open use an optical system called Hawk-Eye Live, which relies on 12 cameras to track the tennis ball through space and has nearly 100% accuracy.

FIFA also rolled out new offside tracking technology at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Their technology uses a microchipped ball and 12 tracking cameras around the field that capture players’ movements 50 times per second. The ball’s chip can accurately tell video match officials exactly when a ball is kicked, and the cameras can confirm if any part of a player’s body is offside at the point of a contested play — this enables referees to make accurate offside calls within seconds.

Heck, even Major League Baseball is pushing technological boundaries with its new radar tracking device, which places 3-D doppler radar technology above home plate to identify a pitch’s location as a ball or strike.

So why is the NFL so far behind? Can the world’s most profitable sports league really not figure out the technology? Well, it’s complicated — so let’s dive in.

Wait…There’s A Chip In The Football?

The debate around the NFL’s inability to adapt to new technology popped up again last week when NFL Next Gen Stats pointed out that quarterback Tyler Huntley of the Baltimore Ravens was 0.6 yards short of the goal line when he fumbled the ball.

Next Gen Stats @NextGenStats

How close was Tyler Huntley to crossing the plane with the football? According to the chip in the football, the closest the ball got to the end zone was 0.6 yards from the goal line. #BALvsCIN | #RavensFlock | #RuleTheJungle

3:54 AM ∙ Jan 16, 2023

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2,151Likes308Retweets

Many people were surprised to learn NFL footballs *already* had chips in them. “A chip in the football? Very interesting,” Pat McAfee tweeted to his 2.7 million followers.

But this technology isn’t new — it has been around for nearly a decade.

Since 2015, the NFL has been working with a company called Zebra Technologies to track player movements by placing RFID tags in shoulder pads.

For context, “RFID” stands for radio frequency identification, and it’s the same wireless communication technology used by your credit card (tap to pay) and Apple Airtags.

The NFL then started to implant chips within the football itself for test runs at the 2015 and 2016 Pro Bowls, and this experiment was later expanded to cover the 2016-17 preseason and Thursday Night Football games as well. And after seeing initial success across those test runs, every ball in every game — preseason, regular season, and postseason — from the 2017-18 season onward has been implanted with a chip.

In total, it’s estimated that Zebra chips are used in about 20,000 footballs across NFL games and team practices each season. And the NFL also uses chips from Zebra Technologies for other things, like end zone pylons and yardage measuring sticks.

Ok, But How Does It Work?

These RFID chips measure several different variables during games, including acceleration, deceleration, distance traveled, rotation, and ball location and proximity.

For example, when an NFL broadcaster refers to a player’s top speed during a touchdown run or the average separation between a receiver and defender on each catch or incompletion, that data is being pulled from Zebra’s RFID chips.

The chips weigh just 3.3 grams — less than 1% of the football’s weight — and are about the size of a nickel. They wirelessly broadcast the data to various recorders around the stadium, and the football’s signal is triangulated to determine its location.

These chips are placed between the inner air bladder and the outer leather shell of an NFL football, and a small bit of padding is also set around the circuit board for an extra layer of protection.

The NFL’s equipment partner Wilson Sporting Goods puts a chip in each football during the manufacturing process. But don’t expect the ability to buy an “official NFL football,” rip it apart, and examine the tech yourself — because due to the proprietary chip technology, actual NFL game balls are not sold to the public.

How Accurate Is The Data?

The RFID data collection and analysis process is pretty robust.

The chip is wirelessly turned on before a game’s kickoff and shut down immediately after the game to save battery power. The chip also throttles down its power source and data transmission when a ball isn’t moving, and throttles back up the power and data transmission once it’s picked back up. Zebra Sports has three staff members in the press box to monitor all 54 footballs used during each NFL game (including those used in warmups), and each chipped football is made to last an entire season. 

This process creates a significant amount of data for the NFL and its fans, although there is still room for improvement.

For example, chipped footballs are accurate within six inches of the actual spot and guarantee accuracy within ten inches. That might sound ok, but it’s the main reason the NFL hasn’t been able to use chips to spot first downs and touchdowns.

The Zebra chips also don’t account for a player’s knee or elbow being down, and the current technology has no way of determining if a player even has possession of the ball in the event of a potential dropped pass or fumble.

So while RFID chips can produce interesting statistics and are sometimes used to spot a punt that goes out of bounds, the NFL still uses visual spotting and chains for first downs — but that doesn’t mean we won’t eventually get there.

The Future Of NFL Technology

The simplest way to think about the future of technology across the NFL might be by examining one of its competitors: The United States Football League (USFL).

The USFL initially launched for three seasons during the mid-1980s but shut down and eventually made its return last year. Eight teams played a three-month schedule from April to June, and the average game was watched by more than 700,000 people.

Of course, this is nowhere near the NFL’s average per-game viewership of 16 million plus. But it was considered a successful first season for the USFL— and more importantly, they showed that they could potentially test future NFL concepts.

For example, the USFL introduced a technology called Bolt6 to spot the ball. Bolt6 uses eight optical cameras in the stadium to measure a ball’s placement on the field *after* the official spots the ball.

The system uses light detection and lidar technology to spot the ball’s placement and provides accuracy within millimeters. However, the system does not use a chip — it’s a fully optical spotting system. So with the help of light detection and lidar, the cameras capture all angles of the ball where it is spotted, upload those feeds to the cloud, then the system uses those video images to figure out the ball’s position.

If there’s a spotted ball in question, the USFL referee can defer the call to Bolt6 for a final decision. Here is an example of the tech being used:

USFL @USFL

First down measurements that are more accurate than ever 🔥 Take a look at the first down technology that will be featured this season in the USFL ⬇️

2:05 AM ∙ Apr 9, 2022

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2,202Likes313Retweets

The USFL also uses a lime green “First Down Laser Line” for first-down markers. The laser is visible on the field and “uses a combination of sensors, cameras, and receivers positioned around a stadium and under the field to measure ball spotting within a sixteenth of an inch” — in coordination with a tracking chip in the football.

Now, this technology isn’t new. The initial prototype was developed over a decade ago by inventor Alan Amron and the late Pat Summerall and was pitched to the NFL.

But they decided not to proceed, and there were also reports last season that USFL players did not like the ball — the chip reportedly made the ball four to five ounces heavier, and the weight wasn’t evenly distributed throughout the ball.

“Pissed is an understatement,” an anonymous source told Frank Rossi.

So while it doesn’t seem like the NFL will simply just rollover what the USFL is currently using today, the bottom line is clear: the world’s most profitable sports league is testing new technology; they have already said they eventually want to go chainless, and the game may end up looking different than it does today.

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Huddle Up is a 3x weekly newsletter that breaks down the business and money behind sports. Subscribers include investors, professional athletes, team owners, and casual fans. So if you are not already a subscriber, sign up and join 82,000+ others who receive it directly in their inbox each week — it’s free.