NFL

4 Articles

Cute NFL Standings Tracker Uses Little Mini Helmets

August 18, 2022 by 20 Comments

If you’re a die-hard sports fan, there’s nothing you love more than staying abreast of developments in the league, from top to bottom. [Kiu] had a family member that was big into NFL, so set about building them a remarkably cool ladder tracker.

The tracker displays the NFL league table with a ten-minute delay, thanks to a paid live data feed from MySportsFeeds.com. When an update comes in, miniature helmets representing each team in the competition are moved into the correct order. The helmets sit on little plastic tags that make moving them easy, reliable, and repeatable. Built using parts familiar to the 3D printer world, this tracker relies on steppers and V-rails for linear movement, under the command of an Arduino Nano.

It’s a build that would look great in any games room, and we bet a scaled-up version would look the business in an upmarket sports bar. Let’s be honest – the league’s top quarterbacks will all be fighting to have one of these sooner rather than later. That’s not to say it won’t sting to come home to your team’s helmet scooting down the board after a painful loss!

We’ve seen some other interesting sports tracking projects over the years, too. Video after the break!
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The Internet Of Football

January 31, 2020 by 37 Comments

While football in the United States means something totally different from what it means in the rest of the world, fans everywhere take it pretty seriously. This Sunday is the peak of U.S. football frenzy, the Super Bowl, and it is surprisingly high-tech. The NFL has invested in a lot of technology and today’s football stats are nothing like those of the last century thanks to some very modern devices.

It is kind of interesting since, at the core, the sport doesn’t really need a lot of high tech. A pigskin ball, some handkerchiefs, and a field marked off with some lime and a yardstick will suffice. However, we’ve seen a long arc of technology in scoreboards, cameras — like instant replay — and in the evolution of protective gear. But the last few years have seen the rise of data collection. It’s being driven by RFID tags in the player’s shoulder pads.

These aren’t the RFID chips in your credit card. These are long-range devices and in the right stadium, a computer can track not only the player’s position, but also his speed, acceleration, and a host of other statistics.

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Scorigami Bot Charts NFL History In The Making

January 22, 2020 by 6 Comments

NFL Football is a curious game to those who live beyond the borders of the continental United States. Its rules are many and complex, and its scoring system is built on arcane magic. This system means that there are many possible final game scores that have never actually happened in practice. For fans keen to hear of any first-time scores as they happen, Scorigami bot is here to help.

Charting and researching these is the practice of Scorigami, an idea first posited by Jon Bois, and is explored in this SB Nation video. It covers the many impossible scores in NFL, such as 1-0 and 1-1, as well as the possible-but-extremely-unlikely, like 6-1. To keep track of the state of Scorigami means following every score of every NFL game as its played. The ‘bot makes this easier; scraping the NFL livescores page with some nifty Javascript, it tracks each game live for potential first-time scores; the most recent as of writing being the Chiefs beating the Texans 51-31. Not only that, but the ‘bot estimates the most likely possible scorigami scores of games in progress, keeping fans on tenterhooks until the final whistle is blown. Or is it a siren in NFL? Inquiring minds need to know.

Code is naturally available on Github if you want to independently audit the Twitter feed; obviously the sanctity of scorigami results is absolutely paramount, and ensuring as such is a community responsibility. We’ve seen other live-score projects before, like this glowing Super Bowl football.

NFL To Experiment With Chipped Balls

July 30, 2016 by 29 Comments

NFL preseason starts in just a few weeks. This year, it will come with a bit of a technological upgrade. The league plans to experiment with custom microchip-equipped footballs. Unfortunately, this move has nothing to do with policing under-inflation — the idea is to verify through hard data that a narrower set of goal posts would mean fewer successful kicking plays.

Why? Kicking plays across the league have been more accurate than ever in the last couple of seasons, and the NFL would like things to be a bit more competitive. Just last year, extra point kicks were moved back from the 20 to the 33-yard line. Kickers already use brand-new balls that are harder and more slippery than the field balls, so narrowing the goal from the standard 18’6″ width is the natural next step. A corresponding pair of sensors in the uprights will reveal exactly how close the ball is when it passes between them.

The chips will only be in K-balls, and only in those kicked during the 2016 preseason. If all goes well, the league may continue their use in Thursday night games this season. We couldn’t find any detail on these custom-made chips, but assume that it’s some kind of transmitter/receiver pair. Let the speculation begin.

Main image: Field goal attempt during the Fog Bowl via Sports Illustrated

[via Gizmodo]