You might think NFL football is all about the game on the field, but you might be wrong. That is because NFL Football teams just like all smart organizations these days use technology to help them be more productive and successful. Since we are only days from Super Bowl 48 when the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks clash at Met Life Stadium, we thought it might make sense to consider some of the ways that NFL football teams use, information technology. Here are just a couple of examples:
- Playbooks
- Long gone are the days of players lugging around 3 ring binders including all of their team plays. These days, most teams use iPads to communicate and update plays. So the players log in and refer to their plays all the time. For example, Baltimore Ravens players enter their usernames and passwords to unlock their team iPads. Then they enter another secret set of credentials to access their playbooks.
- Film Room
- We have all seen those football movies where the players are all in a darkened room watching an old movie projector shoot film on the wall of the previous week’s game. Well, that darkened room is now available for a lot of other things because coaches and players now use tablets and PCs, some large projection PCs to view videos of games and other teams they are scouting. Plus, with video on their tablets…players can review film any time. No darkened rooms anymore!
- Stopwatches
- Seriously, have you seen a coach with a stopwatch hanging around his neck recently? Long gone is the use of such devices. Teams use a lot of other technologies to measure speed of players. Last year, some teams put computer chips into shoulder pads of some players and then synched the data back to an application to get accurate data on player speed, distances covered and more!
Those are just a few of the ways technology has changed NFL football. Like a lot of organizations, the league does not rush to embrace it all, all at once. There are still some impediments to technology use in the NFL. For example, the league does not let teams use computers in the coach’s box during games. There remains a lingering fear that technology might give one team an advantage over another. That can only mean that it will happen in the near future! Enjoy the game!
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