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    • Who is to blame for why the NFL doesn’t have pole cameras at every game?
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    Who is to blame for why the NFL doesn’t have pole cameras at every game?

    Online Niel Posted on

    The NFL’s reliance on networks

    Here’s Fox Sports rules analyst Dean Blandino getting into the issue on a podcast.

    “I remember in the early 2000s we were looking at it that way. I remember the coaches saying we should have cameras on all the boundary lines, right? All the goal lines should be covered, all the sidelines, the end lines, and we still don’t have that,” Blandino told NFL Spotlight’s Ari Meirov. “We still use the networks to provide cameras, and the networks do a great job, but not every crew has pole cams.

    “There are costs associated with this. I don’t know all the ins and outs, but yeah, some games just don’t have the post cam, and that was a play where if you looked at the line, I don’t think he scored, but you couldn’t change it to depending on the angles we had. And so yeah, if you can get post cam, if you can cover every boundary line, then I think you avoid those situations.

    “I think the league is looking at it. I think they’re working on it where, you know, in the near future, we’re going to have those looks because sometimes a long play, an explosive play that stopped at the entrance of the 40. You’re not going to have a camera. sitting on the goal line. This is not a pole camera, it is a static camera. And I think that’s something the league will continue to look at.”

    So here it is. The NFL does not mandate the use of post cameras and relies on the networks to make their best judgment.

    The next logical question is, how many network games don’t have pole cameras? So I asked.

    All nationally televised games have mainstays. TNF, MNF, SNF, and game of the week on CBS and Fox are all covered. However, with Fox and CBS often airing seven or eight games a week each, an unknown number of production teams do not have the pole cameras. The total number of cameras used in a show can fall between 14 and 40.

    The bottom line is that less-watched games, available regionally or through Sunday Ticket, provide Fox and CBS production teams with fewer cameras.

    Does the NFL deserve the blame?

    Obviously, this affects teams, coaches and players. Awful Announcing said that almost all teams will ask before the game about the post cameras so they know about possible use for challenges. We’re also told that officials absolutely loathe a game where they know there’s no post cam.

    “It’s totally unfair to subject some officiating teams to not having the safety net of critical angles for replays,” an individual who works in team operations told Awful Announcing. “They get killed online and harassed when they lose huge calls and the networks and the NFL just let it happen. This is a competitive fairness thing not just for the officials, but for the teams themselves.”

    “The NFL and the networks not realizing this is absolutely crazy,” said another former longtime game production person. “The Falcons could end up winning the division and hosting a playoff game because of this. Think how important this is from a competitive and revenue point of view. Are we going to let a team host a playoff game because someone couldn’t pay for a camera?”

    Bill Belichick recently joked that maybe the NFL could hold a charity car wash to raise money for the league to cover the right angles similar to the ones he has. done several times in past years.

    Should individual leagues or franchises take the lead and make the cameras available? Or do you mandate it to the networks? Some say yes.

    “There are certain areas of the field — especially the goal line and the rest of the end zone — where the league needs to take responsibility for providing the equipment to capture the angles necessary to make definitive calls on scoring plays,” Brandon Costa said. , the digital director of the sports video group. “In my view, it is unfair that so much of the responsibility for having the right cameras in the right places falls on the broadcaster. Other known elements such as the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) in the FIFA World Cup or the Premier League or the Hawkeye in a Grand Slam tennis tournament are infrastructures established at venues by the governing bodies.

    “The technology is available and the standard has been set for how video can best support NFL game officiating, but not every game can be covered by a broadcaster with the resources of a playoff game or even a regular season game in prime time. . This is a problem not unique to the NFL in the United States, but these days, the biggest league in the land has an inequity in the ability to properly officiate a game based on the equipment the game broadcaster brings to cover the game. is, in my opinion, no longer acceptable.”

    Most people I’ve talked to think the networks should install the cameras themselves, but I also think the lack of a standard falls at the NFL’s feet.

    “If the NFL relies so heavily on these camera angles for replay, why aren’t they helping with the financial burden?” a source asked. “You know the answer to that.”

    Awful Announcing has learned that the NFL has increased minimum production standards (including cameras) as part of their latest broadcast deals, but that didn’t appear to specifically include pole cams.

    How much does it actually cost?

    How much the networks and leagues save by not needing pillar cam was hard to determine. The closest we got to a number was a source saying “It’s more than you think, but it’s still pennies for the networks and the NFL.”

    I did learn a lot about the history of the pillar cams though.

    Pylon cams started about a decade ago, with ESPN developing a version and a company called Admiral Video releasing their own version. The first Super Bowl to use pillar cams was Super Bowl 50 in 2016 on CBS (Broncos vs. Panthers). Not long after, they began being featured on more shows and quickly became common place to the point where many watching a house were confused as to why one wasn’t used in that game Falcons-Buccaneers.

    While Admiral was initially the early supplier of most pole cams, other larger companies have invested in the space. At some point. The admiral soured on the technology because of “liability concerns” and now their website he calls them “terrible” and says the patents are for sale (though apparently they helped the owner buy “a nice boat”).

    These days, field goals and first down markers are commonplace, not just in the NFL, but in college football as well. The two companies that seem to own this space are C360 (now owned by COSM), which ESPN released for the 2016 College Football Playoff and NEPwhose cameras are used by CBS, NBC and ESPN, the latter of which uses 7-10 pole cam sets for college games each week.

    If you’re wondering how ESPN can afford 7-1o sets for college football but other networks can’t for the NFL, there seems to be a good answer: sponsorship. ESPN sold pole camera sponsorships to brands to help cover costs.

    CBS seems to have a sponsor for their cameras as well as college football.

    Could the lack of NFL mainstay cameras be because Fox and CBS couldn’t find sponsors? Or maybe they are not allowed? That seems impossible. Are you telling us Chili’s wouldn’t skip this? Did you even call them?

    It seems that brands would gladly pay for sponsorship, as evidenced by college football, which would make it financially possible for networks to have ubiquitous pillar cameras, making everyone happy, including referees, players, owners, viewers and fans.

    It is possible that NFL’s existing agreements with Microsoft include some kind of technology sponsorship exclusivity that prohibits sponsorship is an assumption. Who knows.

    We’d like to think there are enough smart people out there to realize that the apparent frugality in play isn’t worth the headache. Not to mention it’s a terrible and indefensible look for a league that’s incredibly popular and disturbingly profitable. Let’s hope the right people get in a room and put an end to this madness.

    Online Niel
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