Carmine Picardo, coordinator of football officials for the
New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association said recently the
statewide athletic association is exploring the possibility of implementing a
pilot program in which select schools would voluntarily participate in use of
video replays to help officiate game.
According to Picardo, only schools who use HUDL Sideline, a
wireless program that allows game action from press box and end zone angles to
be instantly replayed on a tablet device, would be eligible.
Picardo said NJSIAA Assistant Director Jack DuBois will be
reaching out “in the next couple of days” to the National Federation of High
School Associations, whose approval for replay review at the scholastic level
is required.
Locally, just three weeks ago, a running back for an Elk
Grove Unified School District team broke off on a 60-yard run for a touchdown.
Following the customary body bumps, hugs and high-fives, he headed to the area
behind his bench and punched up a video replay of his touchdown run on a HUDL
Sideline interface his team had set up. He anxiously commented to teammates
within ear shot how good he looked running for six points.
That part of the touchdown celebration is becoming more and
more common, too. For the football programs that have roughly $10,000, the
money needed for cameras, wireless transmitters and receivers, Microsoft
Surface tablets or I-pads and the HUDL Sideline app, that is.
It wasn’t but four years ago that NFHS approved the idea of
instant video replays on the sidelines, according to Sac-Joaquin Section
assistant commissioner Will DeBoard.
“It’s legal,” DeBoard said of the video aids. “If a team
wants to use electronics on the sidelines to coach their kids, they are allowed
to do that.”
The NHFS currently allows coaches to utilize video review on
the sidelines during games as a teaching tool for players who come off the
field following a specific down or series of downs. Texas and Massachusetts are
the only states whose athletic associations currently prohibit coaches from
reviewing video with their players on the sidelines.
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Coaches and players convene in front of a large video
monitor behind the Elk Grove football team’s bench during a recent game to
watch re-plays. More and more High School football teams are purchasing
this kind of equipment that almost instantly replays game action to monitors
and hand-held devices on the sidelines.
New Jersey’s proposal submitted to the NFHS would be for
permission to review only plays involving fumbles, catches, touchdowns and
out-of-bounds calls. Picardo said he believed the NJSIAA would ask the NFHS for
permission to review play calls in select scrimmages and regular-season games
for the first year of a proposed pilot program, with the hope of expanding the
program in future seasons. Picardo said he believed the proposal would allow
each coach to challenge one play per half and to possibly allow officials to
review any plays in the final two minutes of a game. Picardo said a replay
official would not be required and that game officials could review the play
using one of the team’s tablets on the sidelines.
While that debate is ongoing, there is another question
arising out of the use of this kind of technology during football games: “Is
there a competitive disadvantage for the teams that don’t have instant video
playback capabilities?”
DeBoard just isn’t certain.
“I’ve seen schools out there with every imaginable device
with all the bells and whistles out there lose to schools that doesn’t have
anything, with the exception of one coach talking on a headphone to another
coach in the press box,” he said.
He says it’s a bit like the school with 15 coaches on the
sidelines playing the school that has one or two football coaches.
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Most high school football programs now have video cameras
posted on tall periscope monopods in the end zone. The two small white plates
on a pole in the left portion of the photograph are wireless communicators
which send the videos from the camera instantly to another similar device in
the bleachers where there is a second camera, or even, a third camera. Coaches
with computer tablets on the sidelines can view the videos instantly.
“I could see where (video on-demand) could be a bit of an
advantage, but it depends on how you use it,” DeBoard said. “I also see a lot
of our very successful programs in our Section who have some money who choose
not to go down that road with all the electronics.”
He also figures that there are ways to coach against all the
electronics.
“If I was on the other side and know that they could see
what I do, with say, my tight end, I may line up with the tight end in that
spot, but run something different,” DeBoard said.
But, as one EGUSD coach who asked to remain nameless, said:
“It wouldn’t help us because we’re not that deep. Our guys are staying out on
the field. For the team that has that depth and can pull all eleven guys off
the field to watch video, then (the sideline video equipment) is for them.”
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