Zebra Technologies Corporation, has announced that it’s sports solution, which is used in every NFL stadium, was used during the College Football Playoff Semi-Final games on December 31st, and will be used tonight in Phoenix for the National Championship game between Alabama and Clemson.
To add its technology to the games, Zebra collaborated with the CFP and the four participating schools (Alabama, Clemson, Michigan State, Oklahoma) to implement its real-time, player tracking system that places tiny chips in the shoulder pads of each player.
The Zebra player tracking tech enables leagues and teams to gather insights about the movements of players happening on the field. These insights give location and motion performance data that can be used for play calling, injury prevention, roster management, broadcasting purposes and more.
In the NFL, Zebra outfits every NFL player with their sensors by placing them unobtrusively in the shoulder pads. In enterprises outside sports Zebra uses their tech for retail, manufacturing and healthcare.
For tonight’s National Championship game, Woody McCorvey, assistant athletic director for Football Relations, Clemson University says, “We were very excited to be presented the opportunity to work with Zebra Technologies and have its player tracking technology used in the Orange Bowl as well as in tonight’s game. This solution will help schools to evolve training, scouting and evaluation through increased knowledge of the game and player performance.”
At CES last week in Las Vegas Eric Petrosinelli, General Manager, Zebra Sports shared with us some interesting insights about their technology being used in the College Football Playoffs. “It was natural for us to expand beyond our offerings in the NFL and move to the power five conferences. In 2015 we deployed our player tracking systems for three schools across the power five conferences; SEC with Tennessee, Big Ten with Ohio State and Pac-12 with Washington.”
It was off of this platform with the NFL and those three college football programs that Zebra worked with the CFP to do player tracking for the most important games of the year.
Petrosinelli does make an important distinction between other player tracking companies, that he calls “one dimensional systems that are geared towards player performance,” and what Zebra is providing. “Our technology is a player tracking and athlete tracking system but also more of a sport tracking system so we can add dimension to the data gathered.”
In terms of how all of the data gathered by technologies such as Zebra’s can be used, Petrosinelli believes we are in the first quarter of a four quarter game. “We are starting to see how the data can be be used. We are starting to understand it better.”
