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The Information Age

Computers are changing the nature of a coach\'s job... and saving hundreds of hours too
by: Jane Musgrave
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It's the kind of argument that breaks out hundreds of times during hundreds of coaches meetings that are held at hundreds of school across the nation each week.

The coaching staff at Pittsburg State University in Kansas was mulling over the team's weak spots and one coach insisted that a glaring problem was the team's inability to convert on third down. The idea caught on quickly and pretty soon the entire staff was in agreement that the Gorillas simply weren't very good in third-down situations.

The lone voice of dissent was offensive line coach Bill Kroenke. But, he said, his argument didn't go very far.

"I said, 'Yeah, we are,' and they said, 'No we aren't,' " he recalls. Finally, he played his trump card. "OK, I'll prove it," he told them as he left the meeting room.

Ten minutes later, he returned with a tape showing how the team performed on each and every third down throughout the season.

And you know what?

"We were horrible," Kroenke says with a laugh.

The point of the story is not that he lost the argument, but rather that he could settle it conclusively.

The video-editing system Pittsburg State has been using for the last two years not only takes the guess work out of coaching, but does it quickly. If a coach wants to see how the team performs on third downs, within about 10 minutes Kroenke can produce a tape showing each and every third down it has played. If a coach wants to see how the team, or an opponent, performs in long yardage situations, boom, the tape is available in a matter of minutes. Ditto first down and short, second down and long, and pretty much any combination imaginable.

"If you walked in and said, 'Give me all of your pass plays from the entire season,' I can do it in 35 minutes with two views - one from the end zone and the other a wide view from the sidelines," Kroenke says.

A coach can get kind of dingy about it, says Army coach Todd Berry, who utilizes as much modern technology as he can in his program. "You can ask for third and distance on the right hash, only when it's raining," he says.

But, obviously the point isn't to stump the computer with strange requests or to spend days analyzing information that has little real practical value. The point of all the technology that has swept through football programs during the last several years is to help make coaches more efficient and, in turn, to make players better.

And while high-tech equipment was once the province of NFL teams or big schools with lots of well-heeled alumni, Kroenke, Berry and even an ever-growing number of high school coaches will attest that programs don't necessarily have to be awash with greenbacks to take advantage of the technology.

Like calculators that once sold for $125 and now can be picked up as an impulse item at the checkout line for three bucks, the price of technology is coming down even as its capabilities are increasing.

And while it's still out of the financial reach of many schools, those who have tapped booster clubs or school administrators for the needed cash, say it has been worth it. Having tasted the joys of technology, most say they would never go back to the old days.

Take Berry. When he moved from Illinois State to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point last year, he had to wait several weeks before the computer systems he relies on were installed. "For three weeks I felt dysfunctional," he says. "It's so much part of our daily routine."

Kroenke, who is both video coordinator and offensive line coach at Division II Pitt State, says he can't imagine going back to the old days.

"I takes me 10 hours to do cut ups," he says. "It used to take me 150."

And, he says, even after spending 150 hours winding and rewinding video tape, it still didn't provide coaches the information he now gets after spending only 10 hours preparing the tape with the current system. "The things you can get with video cut ups are amazing," he says.

In the old days, he would go through the game tapes again and again to capture different types of plays. First, all the first downs. Then, all the second downs, and on and on, ad nauseam. Then, coaches, armed with clipboards, would watch the tapes and write down what players did right, what they did wrong and what they needed to do to improve.

"In the past, you'd watch a game film a couple of times or break it down by hand and hope you would remember," he says.

Now, after he loads the tape from the camera into his computer, he "marks" all the plays. He marks them for down, distance, play name, formation, motion, and the like. Once he's gone through the tape once, he's done. The computer will do the rest. In addition to producing videos of say, all third and long plays, it will spit out written reports, analyzing how the team performed in various situations.

When an upcoming opponent gives him its game films he can break down their plays with the same alacrity. "What's this team run on the goal line?" he says, posing a typical question a coach might ask. "We use to tabulate it by hand. Now, if I want, I can give you a paper break down or a video of all their passes. The possibilities are endless."

Most importantly, he says, the videos he produces are given to players to watch so they can see their own performance and will know what to expect from their opponents. The tapes are position-specific and there's no dead time. Players don't have to sit and watch a shot of the cheerleaders or pictures of the band in action. They can watch one tape to see how they performed on the field and another one to see what their opponents are capable of and learn what to expect.

Dana Martin, video coordinator at the University of Central Florida, says he puts voice-overs on the tapes so players will know exactly why they are watching a particular play. Such tapes have become an invaluable way of dealing with the 20-hour NCAA limit on how long teams can practice each week, he says. "Because of the 20-hour rules - it's very essential," he says.

But, even without the time limit on field practice, Kroenke says the scouting tapes better prepare players for what they're going to face on the field. In fact, he credits technology for the increased speed of the game.

While he says there's no doubt that better conditioning has produced faster athletes, he says the use of tapes has had far more to do with pumping up the game than is generally recognized. "Players are reacting faster because they get to see it on video first," he says. "I don't think people give enough credit to technology."

He compares it to the use of simulators in driver's ed. "If you're behind the wheel of a car on a simulator and you have a crash, you're going to react faster in the event you have one in real life because you know better what to expect," he says.

The same is true in football.

By the time the Gorillas play one of their opponents on the field, they have already seen how they play and have thought about how they will respond to it. If their opponent runs one of their trademark plays, Pitt State players are familiar with it and can quickly counter-attack.

Berry, at Army, agrees. "It's changed the game," he says, " and I don't know if everyone has recognized it yet."

It's not just that players know better what to expect from opponents, he says. "It's not just for game preparation," he insists, "but for our everyday analysis of what we do."

He says he uses computers to analyze his athletes' performance in the weight room, which enables strength coaches to better monitor their progress and adjust their workouts accordingly. Berry also uses spread sheet programs to analyze tendencies, to store his playbook and to keep track of practice schedules. With the click of a few keys, he can analyze what worked well and run different plays against different fronts. "It allows us to be more efficient and to be better teachers," Berry says.

Further, he says, once all the practices are over and all the analysis has been done, he is convinced his team has a psychological edge over its opponents. "It allows you to have so much more information that on game day you just feel smarter," Berry says.

Kroenke agrees that Pitt coaches now have much more information at their fingertips than they had in the past. But, he isn't convinced technology has made his job easier.

"Computers have not made our profession easier," Kroenke says. "They haven't saved us time, the time commitment is actually much more. But they've allowed us to do so much more."

Now, for instance, he can do much of the work involved in preparing the video tapes on his laptop while traveling back from games. He can have video ready to hand to coaches and players days before they could see it in the past.

But, because the video is available, and can be cut to show virtually any type of play imaginable with the few click of a mouse, coaches use it more. "We're showing players more video, we as coaches are looking at more video and there's more data to analyze," Kroenke says. In the past, because such information was all-but impossible to retrieve, it simply wasn't used.

"It used to be that football coaches just would got out to the football field and coach," he says. As technology has advanced, so too have the skills required to be a coach and the demands on his time.

While large schools can afford to hire video coordinators, at small schools, such as Pitt State, position coaches have had to learn how to operate complex machines, understand how computers work and teach it to others.

Berry says he has long been interested in computers and first began using them in the early 1980s when he was studying marketing. Using the same type of formulas that were used to analyze marketing trends, he wrote a program that enabled him to statistically analyze various plays. The program, first written in a now-defunct computer language, was primitive, particularly compared to what is available today, Berry says.

"It's incredible how far we've advanced in the last five years," he says. "Any information you want is just a mouse click away."

Still, he says, coaches have to be careful what they're buying. Before he bought his first system, he says he researched the market for several years. He wanted to make sure football coaches were heavily involved in the creation of the software he bought. For one thing, he wanted to make sure it was easy for his staff to use and also because he wanted to make sure it would do what football coaches need it to do not what a bunch of computer nerds might think is important.

Kroenke says he too spent hours researching what was available before deciding what system would be best. "You have to be incredibly knowledgeable. If you're not knowledgeable, these salesmen are going to trick you - just like car salesmen."

Prices can fluctuate dramatically. Therefore, if a coach doesn't know exactly what he needs and doesn't fully understand the technology, he can be fooled, Kroenke says. "It drives me crazy what some of these coaches pay for systems because they don't know enough."

The danger is paying too much for a system that you could get for a lot less money. On the other hand, a coach may err on the penny-pinching side and buy a cheap system that doesn't meet his needs.

At Pitt State, with the help of donations that streamed in after the team's 1998 season, they spent $40,000 and got five desktop computers, two laptops and two digital cameras. The computer system is networked which allows more than one coach to use the system at one time - a feature that is nice, but not critical, for small schools.

By comparison, however, Central Florida's Martin, says the XFL paid $700,000 for video-editing equipment for each team in the fledgling league.

Martin urges coaches to also be careful of what types of cameras they buy and who they hand them to on game day. Cash-strapped high schools often will use volunteers to film games. Often, the well-meaning volunteers have no training and are just as likely to film the cheerleaders as they are the offensive line. A coach would probably be better served if he worked out some arrangement with the school's audio-visual classes to film the games.

Likewise, there's many low-priced cameras available that do a good job, he says. But coaches should pick them carefully. "It doesn't make sense to get an editing system and have lousy cameras," he says. "It's the old story, you're only as good as the glass you shoot through."

And, most agree that in the not so distant future, coaches, with rare exception, are only going to be as good as their understanding of technology.

As a tool to teach, to analyze plays, to scope out opponents, to figure out new plays and schemes, technology is just too powerful to ignore and its powers are expanding everyday, they agree.

"There's been tremendous advances in the last year," Kroenke says. "And in a lot of ways, we've just scratched the surface." s
Pitt Statešs Kronke now does in 10 hours on a laptop what used to take him 150-plus hours.


"Computers have not made our profession easier. They haven't saved us time, the time commitment is actually much more. But they've allowed us to do so much more."






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