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Did a Timer Error Change the Outcome of a Division I College Basketball Game?
New submitter javakah writes: Controversy has erupted from the February 10th basketball game between Boise State and Colorado State, and speculation is that a timer may have made an incorrect assumption about the number of frames per second the game was recorded in, and ultimately lead to an erroneous result. With the game tied in overtime, Boise State had the ball out-of-bounds with 0.8 seconds left on the game clock. The ball was thrown in-bounds, the shot went in, and the game clock showed that the Boise State player got the shot off with 0.4 seconds left. However there was a problem: the game clock did not start until a fraction of a second after the in-bounds player touched the ball. Referees decided to use video replay to examine whether the player had gotten the shot off within 0.8 seconds or not. To do this, they used a timer embedded in the video replay system. This embedded timer indicated that 1.3 seconds had passed between the time that the in-bounds player touched the ball and when he got the shot off. (Read more, below.)
With the result of the timer, referees ruled that Boise State's shot was invalid, and the game went on to double overtime where Boise State lost. Afterwards, the Mountain West Conference organization, in which both teams play, defended the outcome based upon the embedded timer showing that 1.3 seconds passed and released video of the replay footage. That footage however, clearly displays the game clock. It shows that the game clock, which was counting down from 0.8, counted down to 0.7 seconds 0.7 seconds after the in-bounds player touched the ball. The game clock also shows that there were 0.4 seconds left when the shot was taken. The problem arises however, that the video also reveals that embedded timer counted 1.3 seconds between when the ball was touched and when the shot was taken, meaning that in the time in which .3 seconds passed on the game clock, the embedded timer had counted .6 seconds. Speculation has now arisen that the video footage may have been taken at 60 fps, but that the embedded timer may have calculated the time with an assumption that the video was taken at 30 fps. This closely matches ESPN's own timing, showing that only 0.63 passed.
That depends on how you define "see" in this context. For starters recording at 60 fps makes sense if you review at 5 fps to see what actually happened, which in itself is reason enough to record with high framerates. Secondly the bottleneck is in the visual "pipeline" from the eye to the brain. This mean the benefit of 100 Hz TVs is to provide a more stable image for the eyes, which do catch the high framerate and actually relaxes more with the more stable image. I'm not certain this goes for anything other than CRT screens since it is mainly an issue of pixels fading between frames. I read back in the 90s about research telling that viewing a CRT monitor was stressful for the eyes unless it displayed at at least 76 Hz, preferably more. I haven't seen recent research into CRT monitors, likely due to marked shares.
Since I'm not feeling well with flickering lights, I intentionally selected a monitor where pixels stays lit the same until they are updated for the next frame. Also light level is controlled by voltage rather than pulse width modulation and the image is completely stable and calm for the eyes regardless of framerate. This tells me that required framerate highly depends on display technology.
In short using more frames than what the brain captures can make sense in some setups, but not all. Also I'm not certain about those 30 FPS being the max. Moving from 60 to 50 Hz monitor (full progressive) seems to result in mouse movement being a bit jerky, which indicates that at least in some cases we do experience at least 60 Hz. I will not trust any number written here (from AC or otherwise) unless backed up with a trustworthy link.
If colleges limited themselves to football (or ice hockey for some universities) and whichever of men's or women's basketball was more popular, almost every athletics department would make money. However, the more popular sports subsidize the less popular sports (Track & Field, Baseball / Softball, etc.) that don't make much or any revenue and then Title IX requirements mean that they have to offer funding for women's sports which typically make even less revenue.
Coaches are going to get well paid, but some are probably worth it given how much money the football/basketball program can bring in for the athletics department. A good amount does go into scholarships for the athletes, a few of whom may not be able to otherwise afford to go to college. Some don't make the most of that opportunity, but that's not any less true of the general student population itself.
The NFL doesn't pay for that technology. They're not at all responsible for the first down line. The TV networks do that. Unless the game is on NFL Network, the NFL really has nothing to do with it at all.
The NFL really has no direct interest in improving the quality of TV broadcasts. The networks sign long contracts, around 10 years in length, where they guarantee they'll pay a certain amount of money to the NFL. That's a big part of the billions of dollars in revenue the NFL brings in each year. However, the NFL blackout rules (lifted for the 2015 season) and restrictions on showing out-of-market games in a team's home market during a home game are because the NFL wants to maximize attendance at the games at the expense of TV.
The reason for things like the yellow (or red, for fourth down) first down line is because TV networks want to maximize viewership. They sign enormous contracts for the broadcast rights and then need to make up that money from ad revenue. If they can improve the experience for the viewers, ratings go up, and they can charge higher prices for commercial time. The NFL only cares about this to the extent that they can demand larger contracts for the broadcast rights. The first down line isn't the NFL's innovation.
There's a long history to this kind of innovation, but it's almost exclusively by the TV networks. Here's a pretty good Wikipedia article that discusses the history. Give it a read and you'll see it's the TV networks, not the leagues, doing the innovation.