Report: NFL to put microchips in footballs to study kicks

The NFL’s newest experiment gives new meaning to the term chip-shot field goal.

In an effort to study whether goal post uprights should be narrowed, and by how much, the league will have microchips inserted in each K-ball (kicking ball) this preseason, the Toronto Sun’s John Kryk reports.

Dean Blandino, the NFL’s senior vice president of officiating, told Kryk that data gathered by the chips will be analyzed by the competition committee after the season to determine how the goal posts can be reasonably manipulated to make kicks more challenging.

If the experiment goes well in the exhibition season, Kryk reports, the competition committee might choose to continue it in regular-season Thursday night games.

For years, the league has looked into the concept of “smart footballs,” equipped with miniature GPS units and accelerometers. Those could determine not only the precise location of the footballs, but factors such as ball speed, spin and trajectory.

The chips weigh no more than half an ounce.

“You can’t change the weight, the spiral, the torque or the feel of the football,” Priya Narasimhan, then an associate professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, told The Times in 2011. “It’s really critically important, otherwise you’ve just ruined the whole purpose.”

At the time, Narasimhan and her team of 10 engineering students were among multiple groups working on developing chip-equipped footballs. The primary goal was to come up with a system to determine the precise location of the ball, to determine, say, if it broke the plane of the goal line or if a first down was attained.

Knowing the exact location of the football isn’t always enough in those situations. For instance, if a ball carrier is ruled down before the ball breaks the plane, then the play is not a touchdown.

The NFL has been reticent to use chip-in-ball or laser technology to measure first downs, in part because it likes the drama of the chain gang coming onto the field and officials studying the location link by link.

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