
Can an Astrophysicist Change the Way We Watch Sports? - ecopoesis
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/can-an-astrophysicist-change-the-way-we-watch-sports/
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EA
By the time the video of the sporting event is transmitted through the air,
satellite, or internet, there is already a time delay between when the viewer
sees an event happen and when that event really happened. When you watch an
NFL football game on cable or satellite, you are really watching something
that happened dozens of seconds ago, if not a couple of minutes ago.

That is plenty of time to inject post-event meta data into a broadcast to
enhance the viewing experience. There is no need to predict if a basketball
shot is going to be a miss to the viewer at home. We can simply wait for the
event to occur and then the broadcaster can inject the results between the
time the event occurs and the when the viewer sees the event.

I guess not many people watch sports from a DVR, but imagine if you had an
hour to two to computationally enhance the sport event's display.

Or maybe you could watch an episode of The Walking Dead and elect to see real
time Twitter/Instagram/Facebook reactions alongside the broadcast or on your
second screen.

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Steko
So what's the main benefit of a live system like this? Wirelessly signal
players to rebound or not? I guess we don't have to worry about that, it's not
like one of the owners is developing this.

> There are three names on the patent application: Matthew L. Ginsberg,
> Navarre S. Ginsberg and Mavericks owner Mark Cuban

/facepalm

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Animats
The "yellow line" in football mentioned was developed by Stan Honey's company,
Sportsvision. That was the most popular innovation in that space. The visual
hockey puck trail, not so much. He later did the America's Cup graphics,
including the "flag on the water" effects. (He's very much into sailing.) It's
possible to generate many more sports graphics than are currently being used,
but it's also easy to overdo it.

Honey previously did Etak, the first car navigation system. No GPS, just a
rate gyro, 2-axis tilt meter, wheel counters, and map data from a cassette
drive. Worked quite well.

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yellowstuff
I have no particular insight, but it seems like this would be most useful for
training, not playing or broadcasting sports. For example, imagine practicing
free throws or pitching with a buzzer that goes off when any part of your body
deviates from correct form.

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bigethan
The camera science is fancy, but to me the bit at the end: "At the very least,
he doesn’t want this tactic available to just one team."

A week or so ago there was a discussion sparked by advanced curling brooms
here about how sports shouldn't be "enhanced" by technology (eg: the sharkskin
swimsuits are cheating). What if a team had every player wore a device that
told them things:

\- the shot is not/is going in \- the pass is coming to your area of the field
\- jump! duck! \- etc

Would that be different than having a good coach vs. a bad coach? A
communicative teammate vs. a silent one?

~~~
hugh4
In Formula 1, where these sorts of things are both technologically easier and
very useful, many forms of driver aid have already been banned. Because
viewers want to see men drive cars, not robots.

So I can't imagine the governing bodies of lower-tech sports getting on board
with these sorts of things.

~~~
bigethan
Formula 1 is especially amusing to me. Rather than saying "no tech" it says
"not this tech" which just invites loophole finders. eg. the so called
"F-Duct"
([http://www.formula1-dictionary.net/f_duct.html](http://www.formula1-dictionary.net/f_duct.html))
- you're not just watching drivers drive, you're watching engineering teams
compete with the world's best drivers at their disposal.

What would a Serena type athlete be able to do with even more information?
It's not steroids, it's data. What would Tim Duncan and Greg Popovitch be
capable of with even more knowledge? I'd kinda like to know and see.

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hackuser
I could see teams using this to gain an advantage; they look for every edge
they can get. If you think it would be too contrived, consider this example:

In a 1951 baseball playoff game the New York Giants (who later moved to SF)
contrived an advantage over the Brooklyn Dodgers (who followed the Giants to
the West Coast): If I remember correctly, the Giants placed someone in center
field (outside the field of play, behind the wall) with binoculars. He would
read the catcher's hand signs to the pitcher, indicating the next pitch. They
buried a wire from center field to the first base or third base coach, which
would vibrate something under his foot signaling the pitch to him, and he
would signal the batter. Nobody knew until 2001 that when Bobby Thompson hit a
legendary game-winning home run off of Ralph Branca, sending the Giants to the
World Series, Thompson knew ahead of time what pitch was coming (a very large
advantage for a batter).

Would a team use 2015 technology to gain an advantage? They wouldn't even need
to bury a wire.

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lazyant
> Then do something interesting with that fact

Looks like a solution looking for a problem, I don't mind waiting one or two
seconds to see if the ball goes in or not (that's part of the emotion of the
game), but then again I've been very wrong many times before and a younger
generation may like this.

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comrh
FoxTrax was basically a bandaid because hockey is really hard to watch in my
opinion without an HD TV. The k zone is interesting too because non-fans of
baseball I've talked to seem to really like it because the strike zone is very
mystifying.

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hyperion2010
Now tell me who is going to get the rebound on the missed shots.

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strommen
The next step is to predict where the rebound will go on a missed shot. And of
course, trigger an according haptic notification on a wearable device.

