The NFL is considering adding microchips and lasers (no, not those ones) to ensure ball spots, like the one’s that screwed the Texans on Monday night, are as precise as possible.
NFL Senior V.P. of Officiating Dean Blandino appeared on the NFL Network and revealed the league was exploring new technologies to prevent bad spots from happening in future games. Microchip fitted footballs and lasers that could make precise locations are being examined. Obviously, that wouldn’t stop the human element, like a knee placement, from making it hard to judge.
“There’s certainly new technology we can explore,” Blandino said on NFL Network. “We just have to be careful with these technologies because it’s not as simple as the football being at a certain spot. When was the elbow down? When was the knee down? You have multiple things we have to look at. In tennis it’s the ball on the line. There is no other factor. So you just have to look at the new technologies and does it make sense for our game, and that’s something that we’ll continue to explore as we move forward.”
With teams like the Texans getting hosed on bad spots, it’s encouraging to see the league being proactive about trying to get spots right. As long as the new technological advances don’t have any effect on the game or its pace, there’s virtually no downside adding a little bit of help to making sure spots are correct.
Officials don’t always get it right and that’s OK. But if the possibility of increasing the chances of a correct call happening exists, then why not?
