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TRACKING
CHIPS SIGNAL CYBORG NFL
Detroit Lion
Calvin “Megatron” Johnson lines up wide
left. Golden Tate is flanked far
right. Jeremy Ross sits in the slot.
Charles Tillman, of the Bears, gives
Megatron a five yard cushion. Tim Jennings
faces up Tate at the line. Matthew
Stafford looks at the defense, drops five
steps. Golden Tate streaks 24 yards
downfield in 2.8 seconds with Jennings
neck and neck. Megatron runs upfield,
fakes an out curl then streaks to the flag
as Stafford hits him sixteen yards
downfield then advances another six yards
before safety Ryan Mundy hits him but
doesn’t bring him down until Brock Vereen
knocks Johnson off his feet. Megatron
covers the 22 yards in 2.6 seconds. Brock
Vereen supported Jennings then reversed to
assist Mundy on the tackle. Vereen is
timed at 3.1 seconds. He covers 24 yards
up and back. And, oh yeah, Vereen’s
blood pressure is 132/80 and his heart
rate is 78. Wait a
moment. How do we know all this, the exact
seconds it took Megatron to advance
downfield before he was hit, plus his
blood pressure… plus readings on every
other guy on the field? We know it because
the NFL has gone even more high tech,
stuffing Zebra Technology sensing chips
into the shoulder pads of each player and
then placing motion detection sensors in
twenty locations throughout the stadium. And you
thought the NSA was snoopy. Now the
NFL has enough data on each player to know
if he’s hustling, loafing, taking plays
off, breathing hard, what he had for
lunch, if he piled on too much ketchup,
and how much space should the corner back
give the wideout now that we know the
fractions of seconds between their
reaction times. Why don’t we
just cyborg these players, wire them with
bionic legs and build special made skull
covers impervious to concussions? We might
as well. We’re taking all the purity, all
the guesswork and all the humanity out of
the game. You wanted X-Box played
out in front of you? We’re almost there. Zebra
Motionworks probably doesn’t share my
dystopian nightmare. They see their RFID
chips as helpful additions to the game.
Right now they equipped seventeen stadiums
with motion tracking equipment. The
shoulder pad chips will be zapping signals
into a matrix of devices. If you’re Neo
and you’ve taken the red pill on your way
to the concession stand, you’ll be able to
maneuver your way through the mass of
invisible lasers bouncing signals back and
forth off each other. The rest of us
uninformed will scurry about as radio
waves pass through our bodies so we can
know the velocity in which Matt Forte hit
the hole. It’s the
nerds taking over football. Forgive me if
I sound like a nostalgic curmudgeon but do
you think Dick Butkus would’ve found it
acceptable to place motion detecting chips
in his shoulder pads? Hell, no. Butkus not
only would have ripped the chips out but
he would have hunted down the nerd who
placed them there and shoved the chips
down his throat. Then he would have tied
him to a tackling dummy so that he can
personally observe the pounds per square
inches of thrust he’s getting smacked with
when Butkus repeatedly practices tackling.
And then, after the broken scientist has
downloaded all this info, Butkus will drop
kick him through the uprights. Yeah, I said
drop kick. That’s how nostalgic a
curmudgeon I am. Be my friend at facebook.com/stan.silliman |
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