Will GPS eliminate instant replay in football?

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

A Carnegie Mellon University professor is working on a project to develop a ‘smart football’ with a GPS device built into it to produce 3-D, real-time position readings that would help referees make the right call in determining the correct position of the football on the field of play.

The idea started when Priya Narasimhan, a professor at the university’s electrical and computer engineering department, moved to Pittsburgh and caught the football bug. She’s been known to throw things at her TV when her team gets a bad call.

So she and her students have been using their brain power to develop a tiny GPS navigation unit inside a football to see if it can accurately track where a ball should be marked on the field. They are also working on ‘smart gloves,’ with 11 electronic sensors in each glove to track when or if a player catches a ball.

There’s still plenty of bugs to work out. First, the ‘smart football’ weighs 3.5 ounces more the NFL’s limit. Second, the GPS doesn’t work very well when the ball is in a spiral and it loses track of the satellite signal. And it’s still a long way from being able to provide an accurate placement on, say, a 4th-and-inches play, the professor said.

But it’s early in the project, and Narasimhan says there will be more updates on the university’s website.

-- Barry Stavro