Excerpt from today's Wired story.
WN: What advances do you see in the future of televised football?
Madden: Some day we're gonna have interactive television where you can pick the shot that you want. You can watch defense, or you can watch the end-zone shot, or you can watch an isolated shot of Terance Mathis or whoever you want to. Because right now, the only thing that you watch is what the producer or director decides to show you.
You oughta be able to pick anything that you want, and I think one of those cameras could be on the officials, too.
If you were at the 49ers game [where receiver Jerry Rice fumbled the ball, which was missed by the officials], you saw the official point, blow the whistle, and wave. Even when the Green Bay guy picked up the ball, you knew that that wasn't anything, because they were all waving their arms that the ball was dead.
With television you don't see that. That's the next thing we have to do.
I'm [also] trying to figure out a way ... you know that speed gun they have in baseball, where they can just point the gun at the pitcher and then tell how fast the ball is thrown? I'm trying to come up with something like that for football. People wanna know how hard something is. How hard was that hit? How fast was that ball? How far did that home run go? I know that in baseball, people are always interested in that. And there's probably the same kind of interest in football, but we've never gotten to it.
I'm not the technology guy that does it. But I tell someone we ought to do it. I think about it all the time.
WN: Does your partner Pat Summerall get to use the technology in the booth, too?
Madden: Well, no, I'm kind of the goofy one. I have the Telestrator, and I have the clicker, and I have all that stuff. Pat doesn't.
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Super Bowl's Other Lineup
21.Jan.99
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