Image via Complex Original
In 2001, futurist Ray Kurzweil postulated that the 21st century would see technology advance at a rate 20 times what was experienced during the 20th century. While we’ve still got another 85 years until we’ll know whether or not he was correct, it’s hard to argue with his prediction so far.
Over the past decade and a half, we’ve seen desktop computers shrink down to the size of a deck of cards, while simultaneously becoming unthinkably more powerful. We’ve witnessed a nearly boundless accumulation of human knowledge categorized and made easily available to anyone with an Internet connection. And we’ve seen just about every industry enthusiastically embrace these sweeping technological advancements in order to gain an edge.
Sports are no different, and as leagues, teams, and athletes seek out any advantage they can find, a niche has developed to support that appetite for innovation. Here are some of the most impressive breakthroughs that have occurred within just the past five years:
Wearables That Are More Powerful, More Affordable, and Smarter Than Ever
When Nike released the LeBron X sneaker in 2012, they allowed users to opt for an optimized version of the shoe that included sensors to measure vertical leap, foot speed, and workout intensity, among other things. Many at the time saw the technology as a gimmick, but just three years later similar forms of wearable technology have become wildly popular.
Individual athletes use wearables to measure exertion, track heart rate, and even reduce the likelihood of injury. And as hardware and software have become more powerful and more precise, professional teams have begun to embrace the technology in their training. Last year, many questioned Warriors head coach Steve Kerr for resting Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, and Andrew Bogut in a March 13 road meeting with the Denver Nuggets, despite none of those players showing tangible signs of wear. Golden State lost that game 114-103, giving them their 13th loss of the season, but Kerr had the team’s championship aspirations in mind when he made the decision.
For a long time, teams relied solely upon self reporting to know whether players were feeling sore or fatigued. But now, using wearables, they can use the data points the devices provide after practices to draw more precise conclusions about the health of their players. The Warriors were an early adopter of the technology, and when those four aforementioned players began to show signs that they were approaching their physical limits, the team’s director of athletic performance, Keke Lyles, suggested that Kerr sit all of them for the first outing of a stretch of three games in four nights. They did, and all four remained healthy for the team’s eventual championship run into late June.
Soon, we may even see the use of wearable technology in games become commonplace as well. In a Grantland article, Zach Lowe recently reported that the NBA is studying the utility and effectiveness of the devices should they be used by players during games. Last season, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants of the NBA Development League became the first team in a major American sport to wear these devices during a regular season game, primarily measuring fatigue along with other metrics. The league would likely need the support of the NBA Players Association in order to approve the use of wearables during games, but with the two sides set to come to the table soon to discuss an extension of the league’s collective bargaining agreement, that could happen in the very near future.
Helmets That Reduce Trauma During Contact Sports
Amazingly, the first 50 years of American football’s history were largely played without helmets. And even once primitive leather headgear became more common in the 1920s, many players refused to wear it, even through the late ’30s. Around that time, a company named Riddell introduced the plastic helmet, but it wasn’t for another two decades that their use became commonplace in the NFL.
For a long time, those original polymer helmets remained largely unchanged, and it wasn’t until 2004 that the NFL banned the use of single-bar facemasks, even then allowing players who had used them previously to continue doing so under a grandfather clause. But with so much data coming out about the seriousness and extensiveness of head injuries in the sport, the league has turned to technology for help.
If you’re a fan of the NFL or of college football, you’ve probably noticed players wearing helmets this season with a large hexagonal groove just above the facemask. This is a model Riddell calls SpeedFlex, and it’s one of the most advanced pieces of protective headgear ever made. It’s designed, as the name would suggest, to provide some give and flexibility upon impact, reducing G-force trauma by over 50 percent versus more primitive helmets on the market.
But it’s not just the ergonomic design and advanced materials used in the SpeedFlex helmet that make it so much safer, it’s also a technology called the Sideline Response System that is built into the helmet itself. Six sensors measure acceleration and G-forces created by impact, recording location, magnitude, duration, and direction and transmitting that information wirelessly to the sideline. This data gives team medical personnel valuable information that allows them to discover potential head injuries even when players and professionals are unaware of their severity.
Moving the Game Off the TV Set and Into Your Hands
From February 2012 until just this past summer, I worked for the Philadelphia 76ers, writing for their official website and co-managing their social media accounts. I remember when I first started with the team that sharing video via Twitter was a nightmare and that even putting photos in tweets required the use of third-party sites like YFrog and TwitPic. Now, just three-and-a-half years later, Twitter has become the go-to second screen experience in the world of sports. And people are no longer just using the service as a place to read commentary; they’re also going there to get highlights in real time.
In October 2012, Twitter acquired Vine, a sharing service for videos under six seconds that originally limited users only to content shot within the app itself, launching it officially in January 2013. More recently, Vine has allowed users to upload video content into the app, giving fans, teams, and leagues alike the power to share highlights that play directly within users’ Twitter feeds. In the same way that Twitter changed the way in which news was spread––most notably in terms of speed––Vine and Twitter’s newer longform video-sharing features have done the same for multimedia.
In March of this year, Twitter launched Periscope, an app in development it had acquired two months prior that offered a platform for live video streaming. Like Vine, it was designed to work harmoniously with its parent app. And while leagues have been hesitant to fully embrace it, due in large part to objections from traditional broadcast partners, Periscope offers a platform that could change the way we watch sports. It remains to be seen whether that comes in the form of games eventually streamed directly through the app, or in the form of behind-the-scenes content that supplements the first screen experience. But no matter what the future holds for apps like Periscope, the future of sports viewership is sure to change as a result.
The Increased Use of In-Game Player Tracking Data
For a league in which so much emphasis is placed upon individual statistics, the NBA was, for a long time, devoid of much nuance when it came to metrics, specifically on the defensive end of the floor. But since 2013, when the NBA partnered with STATS to install SportVU player tracking cameras in all 29 NBA arenas, there is almost too much information out there to digest.
These cameras run at 25 frames per second, recording each player’s location on the floor as well as the location of the ball and using that information to spit out data regarding speed, player separation, possession, passes, play types, and defensive assignments. Using complicated formulas, it can provide esoteric numbers such as LeBron James’ unassisted field goal percentage on shots between 11 and 15 feet from the basket when defended by players 6-foot-5 or shorter, standing within at least three feet of him. And while that information may seem worthless at first, when combined with a whole bunch of other metrics it can paint a detailed picture that allows teams to better strategize their acquisitions, rotations, and playing style.
Player tracking has made its way to the NFL as well, where a company called Zebra Technologies has partnered with the league to outfit players, referees, and first-down markers with RFID transmitters and 18 stadiums with 20 strategically placed receivers. Using triangulation, Zebra’s system is able to determine the location of all 22 players on the field within six inches at all times. Imagine if the tablet devices players and coaches use on the sidelines could provide real-time visualizations, or even calculate which decision by a quarterback would have had the highest probability of success on a given play. That is the future of the NFL, and it’s a future that’s not far away.
