Is 'Glow Puck' technology the answer for football touchdown questions?
Remember the glow puck? Why doesn't football use it? The ball doesn't need to glow all the time, only when the spot is in question - TDs and first downs. Sync it with the knee down camera shot on a split screen if you have one.
There is probably an even better technology. Someone reading this blog has the solution. How do we make this happen?
Mostly, I think it would be cool to see where the ball is in the goal line pile.
Go Blue!
November 28th, 2021 at 12:15 PM ^
There are plenty of different sensor technologies out there such as near field and differential GPS. The question is what would motivate the leagues enough to use it?
November 28th, 2021 at 12:30 PM ^
Well, getting the call correct.
November 28th, 2021 at 12:18 PM ^
Isn't "glow puck" the little toy my girlfriend bought that came in the plain brown wrapper?
November 28th, 2021 at 12:22 PM ^
Embed sensors in the football, and install a companion sensor system for the goal line. You'd still need officials and occasional video review to evaluate whether a knee was down before the sensor was triggered, but I don't see why it couldn't be implemented. I believe it will be eventually anyhow.
November 28th, 2021 at 12:31 PM ^
Sensors in the knee pads that go off after ~50 pounds of pressure.
Sensor goes off, you look at where the ball was at that moment in time. Could also be used to spot 1st downs. Or "bang-bang" plays where it's unclear if a person's knee is down
November 28th, 2021 at 12:35 PM ^
I'm not sure this is feasible due to the players needing to be down - how would the system know when the runner is down?
Only think I can think of is a button in the refs hands that shuts the system down when they see the man down. Last location of the ball at the time the botton is hit is the ball location. Still not sure it's worth it except for goal line situations and 1st downs?
November 28th, 2021 at 12:24 PM ^
This would be a lot like soccer's VAR goal line technology or tennis' "eagle eye" tech. Could be done. Won't be foolproof.
November 28th, 2021 at 12:39 PM ^
Hawk-Eye wouldn't work for football. It is a multiple camera system that requires a clear view of the ball, often not the case for football. Second, it is a trajectory based system, which works for a ball traveling though the air after being hit or kicked, but not being carried like in football where the "trajectory" of the ball obviously fluctuates. It could be used to check if extra points and field goals went thru the uprights or not, but disputes over that have been extremely rare.
November 28th, 2021 at 12:27 PM ^
I don't think it would be accurate enough to identify the EXACT size/dimensions of the oblong ball and where it is in relation to the field. There are some videos on youtube of Foxtrax (aka glow puck) and the graphics don't follow the puck all that well (even when hardly moving). It wasn't pinpoint accurate it was just able to identify the approximate location of the puck, which is pretty much what refs do now anyways.
November 28th, 2021 at 12:35 PM ^
I don't know anything about Glowpuck but I know quite a bit about sensors and I can tell you with 100% certainty they could easily install linear strips along the field that would sense the ball location with near infinite precision. The sensors could be placed in the center of the FB or in the center and one at each end if we truly want this to be a game of inches.
November 28th, 2021 at 1:05 PM ^
You would want a sensor in each ogive with the football outer mold line digitally mapped.
November 28th, 2021 at 1:46 PM ^
It gets a little tricky with the fact that footballs are not an exact uniform size and are supplied to teams a week before gameday for equipment managers to break in and adjust to their QBs liking (and their preference may change based on the weather). For example college football requires balls to have circumferences of 27.75" to 28.5" and 20.75" to 21.25" and a length of 10.875" to 11.4375". A ball on the small end of those specs vs the larger end is noticeably different. The NFL allows less variance, but no matter what it would be tricky to have a super accurate reading, though using a generalized football size would probably suffice lol.
November 28th, 2021 at 12:36 PM ^
Honestly, if tennis can come up with a technology to have a bunch of cameras calculating trajectory and speed to get the call 99.99 percent accurate or off by 1 mm, I have a hard time believing football can't do something similar.
November 28th, 2021 at 12:40 PM ^
Someone with much more experience or idea on how the technology works may answer this question. Would RF tags or chips be a straightforward thing to implement and, depending on the accuracy, make it very easy to calculate if the ball broke the goal line or line to gain?
Here's a video of how "Glow Puck" or FoxTrax worked.
November 28th, 2021 at 1:09 PM ^
Short answer: yes
Commercial products exist where the football field, the football and ancillary hardware could be installed over a weekend to achieve absolute positioning of the football at any point on the field.
RFID wouldn't be the appropriate technology for this application fyi.