Tag Archives: football

November 5, 2008, 11:44 am

Digital video and football

Sports Illustrated columnist Peter King has an interesting entry in his Monday Morning Quarterback article this week on how digital video has changed the NFL.

“Two mouse clicks,” said Tennessee defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz during a break in preparing to face Green Bay the other day, “and I have every two-point-conversion play the Packers have run since 2006, and I can watch them, one after the other. That’s how advanced our video systems are now. You’d be a fool not to use it for research.”

Schwartz prepped for Indianapolis two weeks ago by watching every red-zone snap of the Colts since the start of 2007 — 234 plays. He watched them in succession, without a break, just to see what habits the Colts had inside the 20. And last week, he looked at all 182 red-zone snaps of the Packers since the start of last season.

Some 25 years ago, teams would have had to splice film together …

August 30, 2008, 2:58 pm

An outside look at college football

By Robert Talbert

At Culture11, Alex Massie muses on an unlikely sports obsession for a Scotsman: American college football. Here’s one of several insightful observations, appropriate for this opening day of the season:

There is [a] permanence to college football that is comparable to European soccer or rugby. True, sports teams in Europe have owners, but their sides are held in trust, beholden to the supporters and the communities that hold them dear. It is all but unthinkable that their teams could be moved as a result of an owner’s whim. Even in an age in which sport has become big business, there’s an identity and belonging that endures, rooted in a keen sense of place. College fans know this feeling, because it is their feeling too.

Read the whole thing. It makes me think back to the four years I lived in South Bend in my first job out of graduate school. Those Saturdays when there was a Notre…