Jacob Whittingham

Professor Padgett
UWRT 1102
March 3, 2015

Technology in Sports
The sporting world today is a billion dollar industry whether it be football, baseball,
basketball, or even the X games. Millions of people view and attend games from these respective
sports each year which adds continuous growth to professional sports. Sports are evolving and
changing over the years and one of the main factors for this change, technology. Technology has
caused change in so many different aspects of professional sports. Athletes are now being
followed by people in their everyday lives via twitter and Instagram. Sports writers and reporters
are now just tweeting out news making it faster than ever. Aside from the social changes of
sports, there are many changes in actual competition due to technology changes. Instant replay is
a huge factor in the evolution of sports through technology, every play can be seen again and
again which makes for more accurate competition. Sports will continue to change for the better
due to increasing technological changes.
There are different ways technology is changing sports altogether. There are equipment
advancements that are making the games much safer and keeping athletes from being hurt. There
are also changes in gameplay due to technology that are going to continue to change over the
years. When looking at the four sports that were listed earlier, the one that really catches most

peoples attention is football. Football is Americas game, it is a billion dollar industry alone and
it is technologically changing more and more over the years. Aside from some rule changes,
equipment changes are the leading factor in the change through technology in football. As we all
know, football is a very violent game. Many head to head collisions happen each game and that
really takes a toll on these players lives not only in present time, but in the future as well. There
are many former football players that are now in rough condition due to the years of punishing
hits to the head. Thats where the technology comes into play, football helmets are now being
altered and changed to try and make the game safer. A new helmet has come out called the
Xenith 1, this new helmet is starting to be used by different teams around the league and will
make those vicious hits a little less harmful. There were over one hundred concussions in the
NFL last year and even though this is a twenty percent drop from 2013, it is still too big of a
number. This helmet is being used to prevent these concussions. There are special air pockets in
the helmet that are wrapped around the inside to help reduce the impact from the hits. The air
pockets are made from a thick foam like material that will form better to players heads giving
less room for the head to move around when there is a collision. This helmet is continuing to
progress and change, and will continue to change until concussions are erased from the game.
Football is not the only sport where equipment is being changed. Baseball is going
through equipment changes as well and these changes have taken place in the last few years.
Baseball bats are being altered to make the game safer. At the professional level, baseball bats
are made using wood but at the college, high school, and youth level, metal bats are still being
used. This is where the problems are coming from, when the ball is hit, the speed of the ball is
much faster off of a metal bat. I played baseball from the age of 5 all the way up until last year
when I stopped playing in high school and I unfortunately witnessed too many players being hit

with the ball with not enough time to even react. This happens at every level of baseball but the
numbers are much higher with metal bats. Over the past 5 years, new metal bats have come out
to make the ball come off the bat with less speed. The old bats which were called BBCOR, had a
trampoline effect which caused the ball to fly off the bat at well over 100 mph which is scary for
the pitcher especially given that he is only 60 feet away from the batter. There is essentially no
time to react when the ball is flying off the bat that fast which makes for some scary injuries.
There are instances of many players being sidelined due to the ball coming back and hitting them
in the head. Many fans will argue that this new technology is taking away from the offensive side
of the game. The majority of people who watch baseball enjoy the towering home runs and high
scoring games. The home run numbers in college and high school have actually dropped
exponentially due to the new bat technology. This will bring up an argument that the game is
becoming more and more boring now that there arent as many home runs but I believe that this
will cause players to become stronger and better and will make them more prepared for the
professional level. The new bats are giving professional scouts an easier way to look for players.
These scouts can narrow down who they want to look at based on the home run numbers from
the new bats. If a player is still hitting home runs then they deserve to be looked at by these
scouts. The new technology is not only changing the number of injuries in the game but it is also
changing the way people play. Players are going to become more and more pro ready due to
these bats which makes for a more exciting game.
The NBA has many critics and naysayers about the way the game is played. Critics say
there is no defense being played and players are just out to score as many points as possible. The
new ground breaking motion capture technology called SportVU is intended to change the minds
of the critics. This technology will capture new statistics that nobody has ever explored. SportVU

will use six different high speed cameras that will capture the movement of the players as well as
the movement of the ball every 25 seconds which makes for 4 million data points over the course
of a single game. If you multiply that by the 82 game season it obviously makes for a lot of data
to be observed. This data will track things such as passing patterns and the connection between
players on the court observing the passes. This data will completely change the game plan for
coaches and players preparing for games. It will make for a more defensive game which is what
the fans want to see. Coaches will be able to analyze each player on the courts every move which
means that stopping players will become much easier. This technology is different from the
others discussed because it doesnt pertain to any injuries but nevertheless this SportVU
technology will change the game of basketball.
The X Games are comprised of thrilling extreme sports varying from snowboarding to
big air skateboarding. There is obviously room for error and injury in these extreme sports which
brings me to the next technological change in this sport that will make the participants much
safer. A new product called Bagjump is a large air filled landing area that will be used to prevent
the athletes from falling to the ground. There have been too many news stories about these
athletes falling to the ground from being over 100ft in the air, this usually results in critical
injuries and sometimes even death. The Bagjump is going to change the complexion of the sport
altogether. These athletes will be able to try and perform new tricks and stunts that we have
never seen before because the Bagjump will allow them to fall to the ground without being
injured. This will do great things for the X Games because it will bring more attention to the
sport and will also bring more viewers if the athletes are trying tricks that have never been tried
before.

As technology evolves I believe sports will make advancements technologically as well.

Even over the past ten years we have seen so many different changes in sports through
technology. The advancements I discussed have all been within the last ten years which makes it
hard to imagine what the next ten or twenty will have to offer. The changes that are being made
in each of these sports have the best interest of the fans as well as the players safety which is
something that we may not have seen twenty years ago. Sports will continue to change for the
better due to technological advancements and it will highlight the weaknesses of sports and fix
them altogether.

Works Cited
By Luna Shyr, for National Geographic News. "NFL Looks to Helmet Technology to Combat
Concussions." National Geographic. National Geographic Society, n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2015.

"The NBA's New Technology Will Change the Way We Watch Sports." N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar.
2015.
Sewell, Tes. "X Games." X Games. ESPN, 27 Jan. 2012. Web. 10 Mar. 2015
Wehrwein, Peter. "Play Ball: Will New Rules for Bats Make Baseball Safer? - Harvard Health
Blog." Harvard Health Blog RSS. N.p., 31 Mar. 2011. Web. 09 Mar. 2015.
"How Social Media Can Impact the Sports World." :: TTU Outpost. N.p., 15 Aug. 2013. Web. 17
Mar. 2015.