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Update: The NFL has decided to table this proposal and sideline video won’t be instituted for the 2016 season.
In 2013, Microsoft and the NFL kicked off a $400-million deal that was set to usher football into a new, more technological era for America’s most popular sport. Among other things, the deal would allow for special NFL content on the Xbox One (Microsoft’s gaming console) and the usage of Microsoft Surface tablets on NFL sidelines. The sideline-presence of Surface tablets has given NFL teams the opportunity to make better in-game decisions, and an upcoming vote by NFL owners has the potential to further enhance team’s’ decision-making capabilities with the devices.
The measure that owners will be voting on is whether or not teams should be able to watch video footage on their Surface tablets on the sidelines as opposed to viewing just pictures, which is all teams have ever been able to do to this point. If NFL owners determine that sideline video is an agreeable step to take, the vote would represent a monumental step into the future for a sport that is slowly, but surely, embracing technology. Due to their inability to watch video, NFL teams have always been at a disadvantage relative to those watching games from press boxes or at home on TV because live, in-motion footage says infinitely more about the state of a game than a collection of photographs does. And NFL players and coaches seem to agree with that sentiment — the NFL tried out sideline video during a preseason game between the Indianapolis Colts and St. Louis Rams prior to the 2015 campaign, and the experiment was met with rave reviews.
What is to be expected of sideline video, though, if it does become a staple of football, which has never granted coaches or players that level of in-game power before? Simply put, sideline video would allow for the smartest of coaches and players to fundamentally change their game plans with the understanding that, mid-contest, decisions can rationally be altered and mistakes can be fixed thanks to unprecedented comprehension of what is happening at any given moment. Sideline video could cause a paradigm shift in what makes both coaches and players “good” at football — theoretically, talent could become less relevant as the ability to make real-time calculations and adjustments tips the game in favor of the intellectually strong. This isn’t to say that sideline video would transform football entirely; rather, that it would just evolve the sport into a multi-faceted game that involves an even great focus on brain power.
Perhaps the biggest danger to adding sideline video to NFL games is simply the decision’s logistics. The marriage between the NFL and Microsoft has not been perfect, and sideline video would introduce a host of potential dilemmas into the world of NFL tech. But if owners, coaches, and players all believe that sideline video has more merits than disadvantages, it absolutely has a place in the professional football world.
