Patty and the KC Cheats time up?

[George Cantstandya]

(01-27-2025, 09:51 AM)SunsetBengal Wrote: I can remember reading an SI article 40 some years ago that was envisioning the future of officiating in the NFL. One of their visions of the future had the ball with a GPS device inside of it, so that progress of a play could be accurately measured in instances where the ball was visually obscured from view of the officials.

The NFL does have RFID chips in footballs and in player equipment to track things like location and speed.  It's what NFL NEXT GEN stats uses. The chips are detected by readers positioned around the field. One problem is when it comes to spotting the ball the refs also have to decide when a player's knee or other body part that rules the player down touches the ground.  So a chip wouldn't help for that unless players had sensors pretty much all over their body as well.  Also the tech isn't super accurate right now and there is a margin of error of a few inches. But in your example where the ball is obscured I think the data could be useful. Perhaps with AI advancing to where it is they will find a way to pair the RFID location technology with visual spotting of the players body position during the play in question. 

Or the NFL will just not try to incorporate more technology and continue to enjoy the human judgment aspect of calling games. After all the drama while fans wait for an important contested call to be reviewed is part of the show like it or not.