A Bird's Eye View: Video, Eagle Eye, and Jumbotrons

A bird's eye view of the venue for the Brit' Pub Vault.  The photographer,
Wade Baird, thought it might be interesting to take an "aerial panorama"
of the event from above.  He went to the Doubletree Suites Hotel that is
next to Brit's and asked if he could take a photo through a window from the
hotel.  Those rooms were all booked, he was told.  "How about the roof,"
Baird replied. The manager said OK, and this photo is the result.
Photo by Wade Baird

Today's New York Times has a story about the use of modern video technology in high school football HERE.  Advances in the technology of  video equipment and delivery through cloud computing have brought video analysis and game films, a tool that has been a useful  for professional and college sports, down to the high school level.

In track and field the same technology has become common primarily in the field events.  The throws and jumping events are filmed by coaches and/or parents with a tablet computer.  At this weekend's Roy Griak cross country meet there will be a jumbotron that plays streaming video of portions of each race.  

Different advances in road racing came in the form of automatic timing equiptment that, decades ago, replaced the stop watch.  Today the races have chip timing that not only gives finish times, but splits and average pace per mile for all results.  St. Thomas track coach Steve Mathre and partner Dave Bodie started Eagle Eye LLC as a timing company, but as technology advanced in video, Eagle Eye has become a one stop shop for a variety of services.

The stated goal of Eagle Eye is "making video technology and specialized athletic equipment affordable for all schools, programs, teams, and club sports."  In conversations with NCAA and USATF official Bob Podkaminer, Eagle Eye found another market.  A video assist in the increasingly contentious area of protests in track and field.  The most public example of that being the protest at last year's USATF indoor championships women's 3K.  Podkaminer, who is the NCAA secretary-rules editor had noticed a trend in field events of what he called "strategic protests," i.e. protests that were not filed because of an obvious foul, but rather for "strategic" reasons.  

The long jump in particular seemed to be the target of many of these protests with the possible strategy to induce the targeted jumper to worry about fouling.  Plant the seeds of doubt.  The long jump also has different rules(the NCAA rules are different than USATF's) for determining whether or not a jump is a foul, which makes it doubly ripe for exploitation, said Mathre.  The difference between a clean jump and a foul can often be razor thin on athletes travelling at a high rate of speed.

So why not employ video technology to allow meet officials to quickly and easily determine if a jump was legal?  In addition to supplying video of all the events at the meet, Eagle Eye provides video "surveillance" of whatever event or events need such scrutiny.  Tennis, for example, uses Hawk-Eye, a video imaging service that follows the flight of a tennis ball and marks the spot where it lands.

Tennis players get a set amount number of unsuccesful "challenges" to calls on whether or not a ball was in or out.  When a challenge is made the replay of the flight of the ball and where it landed is played on video on the scoreboard in the stadium.  In addition to providing an objective view of where the ball landed, the instant video invariably attracts and audience response within the stadium as the anticipation of the ball in flight is greeted by an audible response from the crowd when it lands. Track's protests video is not broadcast to the stadium audience, but sometimes will get coverage within a scheduled broadcast where the only response is from viewers at home.

As the Times article pointed out, the advances in technology have created opportunities for sports on several fronts. Events, such as the Brit's Pub Vault, have shown how creative ideas on where to do an event have potential.  Using video at such an event could potentially add to the draw of the event even more.  A lot of the vaulters already use video for performance reasons, technique analysis.  Imagine a "jumbotron"/screen on a wall that features video of each jump, interviews with the vaulters. 

Some of the people at Brit's that night were not track fans.  Didn't even know that there was such a thing as professional pole vaulters.  But the atmosphere, location, and unique event caught their attention.  Ideatap studios made a promotional video about the event that could easily lead off the evening's festivities, and/or be played at track events and/or on social media leading up to the event next year.  Eagle Eye might even be able to develop a new market of providing services they could offer to the event.  

Just as the photographer Wade Baird got creative in order to get the "bird's eye view" of the Brit's rooftop,  others can use the existing technology to enhance an event.  Technology has been an integral part of helping the running boom in road racing, triathlons, and like events.  It also can contriubute more to the "legacy events" on the track.  The seeds merely need to be planted and nurtured to get them to grow.