Would you be for "Eye in the Sky" officiating?

[GoBills808]

1 minute ago, Royale with Cheese said:

 

This is the way I feel.  

Then stop asking me questions you already know the answer to

[Royale with Cheese]

1 minute ago, GoBills808 said:

Then stop asking me questions you already know the answer to

 

You're not the only one I'm seeing.

[Mango]

I think coaches should have unlimited challenges as long as they win it. Keep it at 2 challenge loses that is fine. But if the coaches throw 6 flags that all get overturned that is on the refs/the league. 

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

1 hour ago, Einstein said:

As someone who writes AI scripts, we are not at the point where it could be used in a live game. Too much nuance. 

For example, you could set to calculate contact/distance in relation to the ball on PI, but it would be hard to have it understand the difference between minor hand checking and a foul. It would also take incredible computing power to do in real-time.
 

There would also be holding called on the offensive line every play. 

Baseball is easy, because it is simply tracking one object against a pre-defined strike zone of minor variance in heights.

Apparently my AI guys are better than yours then 😂 … not everything of course, but certain things… down, distance, first downs, TD or not, illegal formations/man downfield, fumble?, completions/incompletions, face masks. 
 

I suppose it would make it all harder to rig though 😝 

[NewEra]

I’ve been asking for it for years, although I wouldn’t want on field officials just for game flow.  I think they should be able to throw flags too.  They should communicate the infraction in their mic and the eye in the sky can take a quick look to see if it’s legit, while also allowing the eye to throw flags on egregious penalties that were missed.

 

ot becomes touchy because we don’t want too many penalties called.  We just want legit penalties called correctly. Less mistakes.  The ability to overrule terrible calls or throw a flag on egregious missed calls

[Einstein]

1 minute ago, Over 29 years of fanhood said:

Apparently my AI guys are better than yours then 😂

 

I would like to see your prototype, if you're serious.
 

1 minute ago, Over 29 years of fanhood said:

down, distance, first downs, TD or not

 

This is already possible, but it is just tracking technology. Not what most would consider AI, though I guess one could consider any computer an artificial intelligence. 
 

1 minute ago, Over 29 years of fanhood said:

illegal formations/man downfield, fumble?, completions/incompletions, face masks. 

These would be significantly more difficult. 

For example: How does the AI determine that the face mask was grabbed and pulled, rather than simply grazed? How does the AI know if the knee was down (this requires elevation, rather than simply distance) or if the referees whistle was blown prior to the ball coming out on fumble? 

That doesnt even get into latency, snow, error handling, etc. We are talking 1,000+ TFLOPS (with error).

[DrDawkinstein]

1 hour ago, GoBills808 said:

Generally no

 

It's a game played by imperfect humans meant to be officiated by those same humans imo

 

1 hour ago, Royale with Cheese said:

 

This is the way I feel.  

 

My heart agrees with this, and that it's better for the game. I dont want robots calling Holding on every play.

 

But man, the officiating lately has been killing me. To the point that I get frustrated seeing the refs so often even when it's against the other team. Just let them play.

 

I think the answer is full time refs doing more group work to get calls more consistent.

[The Wiz]

1 hour ago, PatsFanNH said:

IMO I rather the refs just called penalties that affect the play or with the spirit of the rule. For example the incidental Facemask to Facemask touch that happened last night isn’t called. I think more common sense and god a lot less flags need to happen. The flags ruin the flow and enjoyment of the game.

This is the reason I worry about the eye in the sky and/or AI.

 

As the old adage says "there's holding on every play".  Refs can be brutal but I get the feeling unless there was a way of policing it with some sort of tolerance, there will be a flag on every other, if not every, play.

 

If the eye in the sky is watching real time every individual player to see things and that's all, I think it could work.  Giving them replay and slow-mo before the next play happens and then a flag comes in would absolutely kill the game and also take 5 hours to play.

[GoBills808]

3 minutes ago, DrDawkinstein said:

 

 

My heart agrees with this, and that it's better for the game. I dont want robots calling Holding on every play.

 

But man, the officiating lately has been killing me. To the point that I get frustrated seeing the refs so often even when it's against the other team. Just let them play.

 

I think the answer is full time refs doing more group work to get calls more consistent.

robots calling holding would be a great name for a band

[Process]

An eye in the sky is needed but to be overturning bad calls, not calling more penalties. 

 

The NFL has a flag problem. So many games I've watched this year were terrible because there were flags on every other play. 

 

Defensive holding and illegal contact calls specifically are something that need to get fixed. It's getting our of control. These are huge penalties that are being called way too often. Unless it's egregious we shouldn't be gifting offenses free first downs. 

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

49 minutes ago, Einstein said:

 

I would like to see your prototype, if you're serious.
 

 

This is already possible, but it is just tracking technology. Not what most would consider AI, though I guess one could consider any computer an artificial intelligence. 
 

These would be significantly more difficult. 

For example: How does the AI determine that the face mask was grabbed and pulled, rather than simply grazed? How does the AI know if the knee was down (this requires elevation, rather than simply distance) or if the referees whistle was blown prior to the ball coming out on fumble? 

That doesnt even get into latency, snow, error handling, etc. We are talking 1,000+ TFLOPS (with error).

With a screen name like Einstein you are bit of a nay sayer …. This is devolving into a work conversation.. Instead of telling me what you can’t do, let’s start talking about how we can. 
 

just because it’s hard doesn’t mean we can’t do it. 

There must be billions of minutes of video to train the AI/ML model. I’m going to start the prototype this weekend after basketball carpool.

 

Edited October 27, 2023 by Over 29 years of fanhood

[Einstein]

4 minutes ago, Over 29 years of fanhood said:

Instead of telling me what you can’t do, let’s start talking about how we can.

We can't (with current technology). You can't simply "train" a model to know when a 3d object such as fingers grasp onto a facemask (rather than graze) in real time. You would need a 3D convolutional neural network that receives data from a LIDAR-type 3D camera producing volumes of data that can differentiate between individual fingers and the material of the facemask from multiple directions. It then has to compute this in real-time, billions of computations per second. I

We are hoping that future advancements will enable the ability for us to do exactly what you are requesting. Maybe in another 10 years or so.

[Over 29 years of fanhood]

11 minutes ago, Einstein said:

We can't (with current technology). You can't simply "train" a model to know when a 3d object such as fingers grasp onto a facemask (rather than graze) in real time. You would need a 3D convolutional neural network that receives data from a LIDAR-type 3D camera producing volumes of data that can differentiate between individual fingers and the material of the facemask from multiple directions. It then has to compute this in real-time, billions of computations per second. I

We are hoping that future advancements will enable the ability for us to do exactly what you are requesting. Maybe in another 10 years or so.

Ok if  just make grazing the face mask a penalty too- did we avoid any cost or development timeline? 

[Einstein]

14 minutes ago, Over 29 years of fanhood said:

Ok if  just make grazing the face mask a penalty too- did we avoid any cost or development timeline? 

Likely not, because we then have to develop an error system that avoid flagging every single time an o-linemen grazes a d-linemens facemask while blocking (happens nearly every play).

The system will need an incredible amount of redundancy. 

[Herc11]

3 hours ago, Royale with Cheese said:

Penalties comes from a box upstairs from cameras at several different angles.

 

The on field officials control the flow of the game.

 

Is this the only way to really eliminate human error judgement?  Bad vision angles and being in the middle of the speed of the game makes it difficult.  I've done it at the HS level and I can understand why these guys make mistakes....its tougher than you think and the NFL players move much faster.  There is so much more to look at and try to focus on than what the TV broadcast view shows.

 

Still, the officiating isn't good in the NFL.  What would be your suggestions?

 

 

Two things here. The NFL already picks and chooses when New York wants to chime in and correct penalties. It's absurd how they do it, there's no rhyme or reason to when or if they do it. Second, I think something like this on every game would lead to an over-correction. There's penalties on almost every play and if there were people who's job it was to focus on penalties with video of several angles, the game flow would be beyond terrible. 

[LABILLBACKER]

3 hours ago, GoBills808 said:

Generally no

 

It's a game played by imperfect humans meant to be officiated by those same humans imo

Cool....imperfect results 

[Freddie's Dead]

No. ***** took away our TD at the start of the 2nd half in Houston. 

[boco357]

I joked they only use it when Vegas calls.

[Ed_Formerly_of_Roch]

9 hours ago, Royale with Cheese said:

Penalties comes from a box upstairs from cameras at several different angles.

 

The on field officials control the flow of the game.

 

Is this the only way to really eliminate human error judgement?  Bad vision angles and being in the middle of the speed of the game makes it difficult.  I've done it at the HS level and I can understand why these guys make mistakes....its tougher than you think and the NFL players move much faster.  There is so much more to look at and try to focus on than what the TV broadcast view shows.

 

Still, the officiating isn't good in the NFL.  What would be your suggestions?

 

 

I don't about the sky, but I'd like to see an official up in a man list 20 feet high that goes up and down the sideline aligned with the LOS. Preferably one on each sideline.  There'd have to be some safety involved that the list driver doesn't run over a player or two.

[Low Positive]

Sports officiating has a lot of judgement calls. But ball and strikes in baseball should be automated. Line calls in tennis are now to no i’ll effect. Maybe false start/Offside could be automated, but if AI was used to call offensive holding QBs would be killed.