TBC, I don’t watch or care anything about the sport. I am curious why it hasn’t gone to full military tech style communications between players and augmented heads up display style interfaces. It certainly isn’t due to a lack of money. It is like the ultimate battle tech. What could possibly be more American than mock battles over an inflated pig carcass with military tech shit? Like drone view of every player, in helmet view, isolated coms, and off site real time strategy. Sounds about as potentially popular as a consul or first citizen hosting naval battles in a coliseum IMO.
Football happens so fast all that extra input wouldn’t help. These guys are generally pretty smart, have to be to calculate what’s happening in real time. Guess I’m saying their bodies and minds are already running full throttle, more data would be overwhelming.
My bf was a high school All State offensive linemen, told me those were the smartest guys on the team, and I’ve heard that elsewhere. He could explain it far better, and that conversation was 20-years ago, but they have outstanding pattern matching skills, are able to make split second decisions and have dozens, maybe hundreds, of play patterns memorized. Think I’ve heard the center is the smartest guy next to the QB? Looks like a bunch of pushing and shoving, but that’s because they’re pros on both sides of the line, and both sides deny advantage. Point being, they’re already observing and calculating quickly, more input would be a hindrance.
So how would they benefit? It’s not like the enemy is hiding, he’s right in front of you. Any player can see the whole field and they shout instructions before the ball snaps. I don’t think even the smartest QB could be dodging defenders, looking for a receiver or a hole and still watch his HUD.
The coaches OTOH are certainly using tech and I believe they still have radio contact with the QB?
tl;dr: Too fast to be comparable to ground combat.
(Damned interesting question OP!)
Yeah. I imagine the lag in time for a coach to determine a good passing target, communicate that to the QB, have the QB find that player to throw to, and time the throw correctly would add seconds to the play. You’re also now relying on a coach’s reflex, which is something they aren’t selected for.
Watching the game, there are many times when it is obvious that a receiver is a few steps ahead from an overhead perspective. Abstracting what I’ve seen when I played in HS, the view from up field obscures the real time separation in this kind of instance. It would be very possible the show an overlay of color that indicates how well each receiver is covered in real time along with the ideal pass to intercept distance and speed tailored to the physiology of the QB, i.e. max pass right line 33 yards 2.5sec 2.4sec 2.3sec… This would not be additional information to process specifically, but more like color overlays like the target location to throw is a green-yellow-red pin in view with all players doing the same and an audible system of alarms to indicate dangers and action required in the pocket. The point in AR here is not to add new independent information, it is to firm up and clarify the information the individual is intuitively processing at the human brain’s very limited frequency. Microcontrollers are time machines that turn seconds into luxuriously long days by comparison of available clock cycles. Accessing those extra days worth of time to do research and assess the situation should prove useful to the limited biological compute system playing the game. We are well beyond the point where all of the surrounding information in the game can be sensed and processed autonomously.