Tracking Technology in Professional American Football
Cameron Seams
925-918-2610
University of Southern California
Viterbi School of Engineering
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While league officials have long debated the use of technology in professional American Football, slowly technology is creeping into the game. Both soccer and tennis have introduced ball-tracking devices, allowing for referees to make the correct call in critical decisions. Professional American Football leagues, specifically the National Football League, have slowly followed the lead of tennis and soccer in incorporating technology into the game. RFID chips have been inserted into footballs, in an effort to track the movement of the ball anywhere on the field. However, a microprocessor along with an antenna proved to be more reliable, transmitting real time data for coaches, players, and fans to view. The National Football League has even begun to track the movements of the players with condensed versions of these microprocessors, providing the players with training tools. League officials can also review the real time data to measure the physics of the game, providing them with statistics that could possibly be used to implement rules that improve player safety.
Cameron is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University of Southern California. He is from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he wishes to return to upon completion of his degree.
KEY WORDS:
Ball, Tracking, Technology, NFL, Football, RFID, Devices
Technology’s Introduction in American Football
American Football, specifically the National Football League, has grown not only in popularity but also in net worth. Today’s major professional sports leagues in America are worth billions of dollars, transforming the sporting leagues from small entities into corporate businesses. The pressure of making the correct call in a game has led to using instant replay in many of these sports to aide the referees in making their decisions. However, there has yet to be any placement of technology on the physical football or players themselves. This technology would generate real time statistics of both ball and player movement, providing the players with a training tool as well as supplying league officials with information to improve player safety. The benefits don’t stop there: the media would be able to supply real time ball and player position data for viewers watching at home or online, enhancing the viewing experience for everyone.
How Technology Goes Inside the Ball
RFID, radio frequency technology, allows for data to be transmitted wirelessly between a reader (receiver of location) and a tag (transponder of location), which may be located on anything from a piece of clothing to a credit card. These RFID tags allow for both the tracking of stolen objects and wireless payments at the checkout line of retail stores, or in the case of the National Football League, it could be used for tracking the football. However, there are problems that arise due to the various weather environments American football games are played in.
David Wyld, a professor who specializes in RFID technology, blames these shortfalls on the fact that in order for RFID to work on the football field, receptors (transponders) would need to be placed underneath the field. As he says, the problem with this is that bad weather could cause the field to be torn up, which will result in damage to the transponders. Another problem he points out is the interference of other signals in the stadium. With all of the wireless camera, cell phone, and radio frequencies inside an NFL stadium, there is a high chance that the RFID technology would fail at times. As shown in Figure 2, the signal between the transponder (transmitter) and the reader’s antenna (receiver) would weaken as signal interference increases [2].
Dr. Priya Nirasimhan, the founder of Yinzcam (a mobile streaming platform for professional sports), believes she has developed a superior way to track the football. She, along with others at Carnegie Melon, developed a small circuit board that could be placed inside the football to wirelessly locate the football anywhere on the field. The board has an antenna and micro processor to display and send this information wirelessly, along with a magnetic coil that allows for the circuit board to charge itself, eliminating the need for any recharging of the ball tracker. The antenna, she claims, is strong enough to transmit data from inside large pile-ups or scrums, with a much lower failure rate of RFID technology. ‘ "We've readied this ball to withstand the impact of an NFL game, especially with people beating up on it," Narasimhan said. "We have mechanical engineers in place to figure out the impact. We've had designers whose job was to design the technology to withstand the impact. Electrical engineers were put in place to make sure the technology did not circuit out" ‘ [4].
Currently the NFL is still in the testing phase of placing RFID technology inside the football. Due to the unreliability of the technology available for ball tracking, including RFID technology, the NFL has yet to accomplish a successful platform for tracking the precise movement of the football. Although the NFL is not as far along as it hopes to be in establishing ball tracking, it still has plans to fully achieve it. "Long-term we know where we want to get to: tracking all 22 players and [the] ball with a precision that is to the inch level is the ultimate goal," Schroeder said. "How we get there is still something we need to figure out” [2].
Ball Tracking Becoming Mainstream
Before the NFL decides to use ball-tracking technology such as RFID, the league is watching very closely how successful the technology is in other professional sports. Both tennis and soccer have introduced ball-tracking technology that is used during competition in order to help officials properly officiate the games.
Unlike football, the sport of soccer has no instant replay, or in other words, whatever call the referee makes is the final call (there is no way to change a call on the field). This has been an issue in games where the ball can be seen crossing the goal line on television, but the referee does not see this and makes a call of “no goal”. A possible solution to this would be introducing ball tracking software inside the soccer ball to quickly see if the ball completely crosses the goal line, aiding the referee in making the correct call. In 2005, the RFID companyCairos ran tests on how effective RFID technology is inside of an Adidas brand soccer ball. According to ESPN’s Amy Nelson, Cairos partnered with FIFA and IFAB to introduce this concept of RFID into soccer balls being used in professional games. Similar to the thoughts of David Wyld, the technology proved to not be 100 percent reliable, failing to recognize some instances where the soccer ball crossed the goal line, resulting in the a goal not being counted. For this reason, FIFA sought out another company that specializes in a different type of ball tracking called Hawk-eye tracking. Hawk-eye Innovations supplies the sport of tennis with ball tracking, where the exact location of where the ball hits is shown electronically and geographically. Because the tennis balls are moving at high speeds, it can be very difficult for the judge to make the correct “in or out” call. A 3-D representation of where the ball lands precisely allows for the judge to use technology to make the correct call. This introduction of Hawk-eye technology proved to be more reliable than RFID because it does not rely on remote sensors under the field to track the movement, but rather cameras above the field, which are more weather resistant. Seeing sports like tennis and soccer implement this tracking technology has opened the possibility of introducing it to the NFL [2].
From Ball Tracking to Player Tracking
The same microprocessor that Dr. PriyaNirasimhan believes could be inserted inside the football could be attached to players clothing to allow for tracking of a players movements. The microprocessor would need to be condensed into a smaller microchip, but the benefits could be huge. For example, a wide receiver could track the exact route he ran and use it as a training tool. The technology would geographically display where the receiver was on the field, which allows for coaches to correct the player if the route were ran incorrectly or not on the correct timing. This is critical in the NFL, where just a matter of steps can make the difference between a catch or an interception [4]. Nirasimhan also notes how the tracker inside the ball could aide quarterbacks. "I think there is tremendous value for coaches to use it for scouting and training purposes. Every single time you use it, it gives you hard data on ball location. So you can tell if you're throwing the ball in the right place or catching it the correct way. You use it and then tweak your throw, kick or catching style off the data," Narasimhan said.
Player tracking through wireless devices would also help provide a higher standard of player safety. In, August of 2013, the NFL started to require players to randomly wear tracking devices in practice. The Buffalo Bills, a Buffalo based professional football team, has been using the technology for over a year now, acknowledging that tracking a player allows for both player performance and player safety improvement. The devices the Bills players often wear, as shown in Figure 3, “will track and monitor various data such as velocity, acceleration, deceleration, distance traveled, changes of direction, jumps, heart rate, and more, as anywhere from 50-100 variables can be measured for each player” [5].
A review of this data by coaches allows for corrections to be made in players’ routes or direction of running during play. For example, a coach could see how a running back is routinely running outside, when the play is designed to go inside, and then correct the running back on where to run. A review of this data by league officials, specifically the velocity and acceleration, would allow for rules to be implemented to prevent collisions of high velocities that are likely to lead to concussions or a decline in player safety [5].
ESPN writer Amy Nelson writes about the potential effects tracking devices would have on the media. The combination of ball and player tracking would greatly aide the online tools available to see games online. While the games are not streamed online, the scores and play-by-play analysis are provided. To enhance the experience online, a 3-D representation of each play could be displayed online due to the introduction of tracking devices. In her example, she describes how a touchdown pass by Peyton Manning could be displayed online for viewers. She believes the display of the location of where the touchdown pass was caught by the receiver, along with the trajectory of the ball and the after-the-catch run of the receiver, could show how a play precisely happened on the field in a 3-D realm (with symbols representing players on a virtual field) without even watching the live streaming of the game[2].
Will tracking devices ever be endorsed by the NFL?
The future of GPS tracking devices entering the NFL seems to be bright, but the technology still has not been fully established. In the fall of 2013, the NFL gave four companies (PVI, SportVision, STATS LLC, and Cairos Technologies AG) permission to install optical cameras in several stadiums to allowing for in-game player tracking. However, the device mentioned by Nirasimhan was not the one installed. Rather, the NFL allowed these companies to place optical cameras inside the NFL stadiums, which use the same technology as Hawk-Eye technology in tennis to track the players on the football field. The player and ball locations detected by these optical cameras are displayed on computers, allowing for analysts to see individual player performance in real time during the game[2]. This seems to be the introductory step for the NFL, whether they stick with this technology or decide to rely more upon the individual chips placed on players to track movement in a game remains uncertain. Whichever software they decide to use, however, it seems it is only a matter of time before both ball and player tracking devices are introduced in American football.
References
[1] E. Bridge, J. Kelly. University of Oklahoma: RFID for Birds. [Online]. Available:
[2] A. Nelson. (2010, February 05). ESPN: Technology Could Produce Unique Data. [Online]. Available:
[3] M. Derby. (2012, April 01). Indoor Wireless Path Loss. [Online]. Available:
[4] International Business Times. (20120, August 10). Ball Tracking Technology Headed for the NFL. [Online]. Available:
[5] No Author. (2013, April 26). Field Technologies: NFL to Use GPS Tracking on Players. [Online]. Available: