The NFL is a big-spending enterprise, but for the 2024 season it will return to a very primitive system that costs a few dollars to call a first down.
After conducting preseason testing of new automated first-down technology that mimics tennis' Hawk-Eye system, the NFL is shelving the project for the 2024 regular season. The technology, maintained at NFL headquarters in New York, debuted this month but drew complaints during live broadcasts that it took too long and slowed down games, in ways reminiscent of soccer's controversial use of VAR, which has frustrated fans for years.
The NFL has decided that first-down technology isn't yet ready for primetime deployment, given the obvious difficulties so far.
From the Washington Post:
The NFL will not use electronic systems to count first downs during the 2024 regular season, a person familiar with the league's planning on the issue said Monday.
The league continued to test the system during the just-concluded preseason and left open the possibility of using it this season, but a person familiar with the matter said the system is not expected to be used during the regular season until 2025 at the earliest.
The stick and chain system for counting first downs is not going away, at least for now. The 10-yard chain will remain the primary means of determining first downs this season, and will continue to be used, at least as a backup system, even after an electronic system for counting first downs is used during the regular season.
Of course, the chain gang isn't a perfect system for measuring first downs, but there are also complaints that the NFL, despite all the money it makes, can't come up with a modern way to measure whether a team gains 10 yards from the line of scrimmage.
But for now, the chain gang is the best we have. And instead of waiting for some digital image to appear on a screen, there's still the drama of guys running chains and two big sticks down the field to gauge whether their team got a first down. In a way, that's a beautiful process in and of itself. Maybe some things are just destined to be that way.
(The Washington Post)
