Football - 1st Down Line

Jan

13th

2008

Filed Under Engineering, Sports
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Anyone who watched the Packers/Seahawks game last night noticed an unusual (for football, not for Green Bay) addition to the game…SNOW. And a lot of it. My buddies and I also noticed that the 1st down yellow line was missing for much of the game. We had a short discussion on how it is generated, and knew the snow had something to do with it, but couldn’t get much further on an exact reason.

Being a football fan and engineer, I felt I needed to investigate this further. The idea was first proposed by John Madden, and the technology was developed by a company called Sportvision. It debuted in September of 1998. Similar technology has also been deployed in the production of hockey games. But who really cares about hockey?

Basically it uses several computers, smart cameras, color palettes, and some cool technology to superimpose the yellow line on to the video feed. The snow on the field prevented the yellow line from being shown because it is “filtered” so that it is only displayed on a green surface. This is why players, referees, etc seem to block the line, which makes it look like it is painted on the field.

There’s a great article here.