NFL Exec VP/Football Operations Troy Vincent can see an NFL future with a "developmental league" and coaches "using tablets on the sidelines to call plays," according to Barry Wilner of the AP. Vincent said, "Each of us shares the responsibility for preserving and growing the game." He added, "We need to keep the pipeline of talent flowing, and that means for all areas of our game: players, coaches, scouts, game officials. I am responsible to look at whatever the competition committee looks at, and that includes a developmental league. For all this football talent around, we have to create another platform for developing it. Maybe it's an academy. ... Maybe it's a spring league; we'll look to see if there is an appetite for it." NFL Europe, the "last such league," folded in '07. Meanwhile Wilner noted Vincent "gets animated talking about upgrading technology, noting how his eighth-grade son watches cut-ups of plays on an iPad, yet NFL coaches and coordinators on the field and in the coaches' boxes upstairs still use printouts." He "chuckles when recalling how the still photos sent down to the field could get wet and sticky and be virtually useless in bad weather." Vincent: "We just have to be sure we are not harming the true elements of the game" (AP, 4/27).
