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RIP Chain Gang
By Kyle Pagan
Published:
First they came for the chain gang and I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t part of the chain gang. Sad day. A part of your childhood is gone forever. It’s like your childhood hero retiring. During the Hall of Fame Game last night we had our first look a the NFL’s new virtual measurement system and I can’t believe it took this long to implement it. So what do we say now instead of move those chains? Move those lasers?
That was quick. Took about 20 seconds. No waiting for the chain gang to run out there, no waiting for the ref to take the poles and stretch them as far as they can, and no player reaction, which I’ll miss the most. Some of the most electric reaction in sport is when the defense realizes they held on 4th and 1, or a QB fires a first down celly.
The chain gang is technically still on the sideline in a secondary capacity, in case Sony’s Hawk Eye Technology goes on the fritz. So you’ll still see them, but it won’t be the same. Tennis uses the same electric line-calling system and they had some controversy during Wimbledon after they eliminated line judges and solely let the robots call in and out. During one match the system was deactivated (by a human) and a wrong call against Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova almost derailed the entire match, via Ben Morse at CNN.com:
During the first set of the match between Pavlyuchenkova and Kartal, a backhand from Kartal went long but there was no “out” call from the electronic system, which has replaced human line umpires at Wimbledon this year.
Pavlyuchenkova, who was one point away from winning that game, stopped playing with the ball landing outside the court. Umpire Nico Helwerth called for the match to be paused, while the automated system said, “stop, stop,” leading to confusion from both players and the fans in attendance.
Helwerth informed the crowd that he was going to check if the system was “up and running” before spending time on the phone.
After a short delay, he said that the electronic system “was unfortunately unable to track the last point,” which was subsequently replayed.
Kartal went on to win the point and break Pavlyuchenkova to take a 5-4 lead. In the change of ends, the Russian could be heard saying to Helwerth: “You took the game away from me. … They stole the game from me. They stole it.”
The automated system did not pick up on balls landing out on three occasions in the game, with Helwerth calling the other two. The AELTC stated that Helwerth did not know the system had not been running.
If you watch the EPL, you know Hawk-Eye has also been used for VAR to determine offsides calls and goals and that’s been kind of a shit show:
Lets not act like the chain gang and ref calls were perfect either:
So will the Hawk-Eye tech be more likely to give the Chiefs a close call? Who knows. But if we’re going to have a virtual measurement system then there is no reason we can’t design a yellow line on the field for the people in the stadium. That should be the next technology breakthrough in the National Football League
Kyle writes blog posts and does Man on the Street-style videos all around Philadelphia. He graduated from Temple University (a basketball school) in 2015. contact: k.pagan@sportradar.com