Bill Belichick Throws in the Tablet
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> The other communication systems involve the press box to the coaches on the field, and then the coach on the field, the signal caller, or the coach-to-quarterback, coach-to-signal caller system. Those fail on a regular basis.
> And again, there's a lot of equipment involved, too. There are headsets in the helmets, there's the belt pack, that communication, there's a hookup or connection to internet service or that process and so forth with the coaches and the press box. So, there are a number of pieces of equipment, there is a number of connections that are on different frequencies.
> And then during the game sometimes something happens and it has to be fixed, and first of all, you have to figure out what the problem is. Is it a battery? Is it the helmet? Is it the coaches' pack? Is it the battery on the coaches' pack? I mean you know, again, it could be one of 15 different things.
[1] http://www.patriots.com/news/2016/10/18/bill-belichick-confe...
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--unnNrpz...
I think it paints a clearer picture as to why the Surface was singled out among the equipment.
[1] http://deadspin.com/bill-belichick-is-sick-of-those-stupid-m...
[1] For example: http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Fuck....
> As you probably noticed, I’m done with the tablets. I’ve given them as much time as I can give them. They’re just too undependable for me. I’m going to stick with pictures as several of our other coaches do as well because there just isn’t enough consistency in the performance of the tablets, so I just can’t take it anymore.
Edit: this comment is at -2 at the moment. If I'm wrong, please make the connection. I earlier pointed out that coaches are often emotional^1, and we have no idea if him throwing the tablet is related to him being angry at it, or even if it's a recent image.
[1] http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Fuck....
Brady's suspension is over.
> “As you have probably noticed, I’m done with the tablets,” he said.
...so I would just attribute this to people naturally referring to the frontend of the system they're using as the system itself. When he said "I'm done with the tablets" perhaps he means "I'm done with the system that I am using from my tablet".
It seems almost as if NFL confesses that it's not [necessarily] MS here, "... multiple factors that can cause issues within our sideline communications system either related to or outside of Microsoft’s technology."
It's not a good tablet, and it's not a good laptop. It attempts to sit in the middle which is not what I want.
I was expecting the tablet interface to be a lot more finished, but there are a lot of rough edges and missing features.
I'll be going back to iPad on the next cycle.
As a long time OSX user as well, I was surprised to see how unpolished Windows 10 Desktop is as well.
I'm guessing the NFL didn't get clearance from the FCC to use a dedicated wavelength within the stadium to isolate their systems from noise.
* http://blog.rfvenue.com/karl-voss/
"... at the Super Bowl we manage ... basically anything D/C to light that is allowed inside the NFL venues.
That view is reinforced here: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/10/patriots-bill-belichi...
"Microsoft's hardware isn't necessarily the culprit here, merely the victim. The NFL uses a lot of wireless hardware—communications headsets, public Wi-Fi networks, private networks for the tablets, networks for the press, and more."
if they had, would the surface tablets have been able to use it? I'm not aware of any licensed spectrum that standard wifi cards are capable of communicating on.
http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/09/12/coaches-say-...
This NFL suggests that there is such a need: "Since Microsoft has been a partner of the N.F.L. and implemented their technology on our sidelines, the efficiency and speed of communication between coaches has greatly increased."
But of course, that is the NFL speaking about a partner's product, so I can't imagine them saying anything else.
QB just threw an interception, lets look over the play that just happened to see what he overlooked and how we can adjust.
The problem with technology in this case, is that there is no room for error. You have 40 seconds to call the next play, if you swipe wrong, something crashes you don't call a time out to call IT, you are just fucked. So 100% reliability will trump convenience, no software or hardware is 100% reliable.
I wonder what experts would actually want out of a sideline tablet system.
The primary use of the tablets is to consume and analyze new information generated during the game.
But, practically, due to NFL rules, the only thing that the tablets are allowed to do is display still photos of past plays. [0] They've replaced B+W printouts of photos in this role.
Coaches can get the photos faster on the tablets than with the printouts, which can be a huge advantage. But if the system is unreliable, then they might get them slower, or not at all, and waste valuable cognitive capacity on the fucking goddamn malfunctioning tech that is keeping critical information from them in massively time-sensitive situations.
That I think is what's happening with Belichick here. He's notorious for preferring reliability over almost all other considerations. Though I imagine that if full replay video were allowed, it might have gone further before hitting his "fuck this" point.
Also note that there are also team staff (often the offensive/defensive coordinators -- the 2nd level of command, immediately after the head coach) in booths up above the field, with (I think) no technological restrictions, in radio communication with the sideline staff.
---
[0] http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2016/5/24/11715128/nfl-competiti...
For an illustration of what all this "analyzing past plays" stuff actually means in the context of football:
"The tablets only allow access to a Sideline Viewing System app that provides the photos of recent plays."
http://www.geekwire.com/2014/heres-nfl-players-coaches-use-m...
The NFL used to print out these photos and coaches would go over them on the sidelines. The Surface is supposed to be much faster for this and allow for some other functionality. Usually the offensive coach and his starters are looking at the images while the defense is on the field and vice versa.
The NFL does not allow coaches to use laptops to perform this kind of data analysis live during games.
The soldiers told him what they really wanted was a piece of plywood that they could fold out and lay their paper maps on. They didn't want screens or electronics, because those don't work with bullet holes in them, but the paper maps work fine even if they get shot.
Many think he's the best ever and his greatest strength is considered to be preparation, especially knowing his opponent in great detail and preparing his team for their strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. He is also very flexible in how he does things, adopting very different strategies from week to week.
IMHO he would seem to be a great candidate for a technology that provides up-to-date video of his opponents if it offered some benefits.
These tablet solutions are simply showing photos, which is replacing the paper version of printing out photos.
I can understand why a complicated tech solution that doesn't work reliably 100% of the time is essentially useless compared to a 100% reliable printed picture, solving the same use case.
Here[0], we see that experimentation with video has only occurred during preseason games. So, in the games that actually matter, video is still currently outlawed, as it has been forever.
[0] http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2016/5/24/11715128/nfl-competiti...
There's a lot of money lying on the table such that processes and systems are already going to be running on the border of human comprehension... can I see the signal in this noise?
Meanwhile projects that do something new tend to be successful and profitable, but mere reimplementation digitally tends to result in BS being added to the process as noise until the signal to noise ratio has dropped once again to what was, after all, acceptable before automation. "Well now you got all the time in the world to really stick it to the XYZ department so here's the new requirements" then they fire back causing lower productivity that if nothing were tried to begin with.
You have to realize automation is old, and our ancestors were ignorant not stupid. If you could increase the odds of winning a game by 5% using a million bucks of IBM 7094 mainframes and a million LoC in COBOL then gramps would have done it and made a profit to boot and maybe you can make a couple dimes by modernizing the hardware, but I assure you the algorithms and constraints are baked into the business logic cake and the win/loss percentage won't change.
One way to automate that does succeed is fixing something mgmt didn't realize is broken. I never knew there was a way to do that. I never knew we as a company blew X thousand labor-hours per week on hidden task Y.
IF football never tried statistics and record keeping, then a new system probably using contemporary tablets could really rock. But this isn't the case.
A good, although semi-controversial example, is moving from verbally asking for records over the radio to mobile data terminals to whatever cops use now (probably "cop space app" on their phones or something) has many effects, some even good, but catching criminals isn't one. Fundamentally you've changed who spends five minutes dorking around looking for warrants and dramatically changed how they spend those five minutes, but you haven't really changed anything in terms of end results, although intermediate metrics can be gamed (like dispatcher labor hour minimization).
Tablets make very poor band-aids.
"Moneyball" demonstrates that your assumption is incorrect.
In addition, you have to collect data, first, before you can analyze it. The limitation blocking "Moneyball" from happening was the fact that the statistics didn't exist for a long time.
Several of my friends were among the people who originally helped Bill James by scoring all the games they went to and then sending the papers in the mail.
Sometimes, something really does require "one clever person" in order to put it all together.
> In 2014, Belichick noted that the system had crashed, but seemed mostly cool with it. “I’d say that’s all kind of part of the game,” he said.
> “I just can’t take it anymore,” he said at a news conference Tuesday.
This is an under-reported challenge of the increasing automation narrative: we need more robust systems.
I'm going through this headache right now.
Sales wants more features to be competitive.
Management wants to ship it because it will generate revenue.
QRE/Manufacturing wants more time to test all of the features and their interactions.
And everywhere money gets squeezed out, sales wants to offer a discount to "win the deal", management wants to improve the margins by lowering the cost to develop, and the factory wants to ship product faster and spend less time qualifying it.
If there is some software developed specifically for his /the NFL's use, you have a code base that's giving the entire platform a bad image.
The idea of using a Surface for something as trivial as looking at pictures is ridiculous. The idea of Surface is it's a full computer in tablet form. It's way too much power and way too much complexity for the use case.
Also, it really matters to have competent support and help documentation. Asking for help should not be a frustrating experience; users should want to come to you first (and not the press) to fix all their problems. If they continually receive useless answers like “power off and on”, or they have to wait a long time, or even your support people don’t know what’s wrong, then you shouldn’t be surprised if your users find other ways to vent and solve their problems.
Long story short: quality is always important. as the median age of user rises, quality requirements increase dramatically.
My TWC cable net connection has been dropping on a daily basis for the last two months. Resetting the modem solves it until the next outage. (TWC has since replaced a shit ton of stuff to fix this).
So everyday, my two special snowflakes would get pissed when the Wifi would go nowhere. They would text me expecting me to fix it even when I'm in the office. They would text me when I was watching football (my only sacrosanct timeslot). They would text me when taking a dump. I could feel my blood pressure rise everytime I heard the phrase "The WiFi is down!"
So no, I think you're completely wrong about youngsters being less perturbed. When I was their age, my motto was "I want my MTV..." Their motto is "I want my WiFi..."
Oh, I don't know if I'd go that far. If since you were young you awakened each morning by being beaten with a stick, you might think that's just the way of things, but it's still unpleasant and you'd probably pay a good sum to make it stop.
No, the difference is that the oldsters have been putting up with this shit for over thirty years (flashing VCR clocks, anyone?). You've shaved one yak, you've shaved them all.
as the median age of user rises, quality requirements increase dramatically.
Because oldsters don't "get" technology? They don't want to give up their pen and paper? No, because they've got thirty years of experience backing their decisions: your shit doesn't work, and until proven otherwise they're going to stick with that assumption. I know I'm personally surprised when a piece of purchased technology does what it says on the tin.
So it has nothing to do with oldster vs. youngster. It has to do with "busy man has a job to do, a job that has nothing to do with yaks or shaving them" vs. "I'm going to spend my time dicking around with this tablet when I should be calling plays".
Sometimes I don't need to remember everything I've drawn on a whiteboard. And what's more, if I'm using a smart board that reboots in the middle of brainstorming, I'm thrown majorly off my groove and it may take a long time to recover my train of thought after troubleshooting.
So the complexity affords tremendous flexibility, but unavoidably at the cost of reliability.
The alternative interpretation is that younger users will put up with lower quality even when it is not rational.
Football isn't the most important thing in the world, but within it communication and data-gathering are mission-critical. If your processes are not reliable, that's a problem. You're accepting a risk that they will not work when you need them. And the trade-off is for an incremental improvement when they do work? Why would a rational actor find that acceptable?
Rather than being an old luddite, maybe Belichick is one of the few coaches with enough clout to call out the NFL's solution as being unacceptable.
And that's even accepting the interpretation of this as old vs. young, which I would need more than 1 data point for.
For example, I could picture BB chucking the tablet from something like a slight lag when navigating menus or even just dissonance between how the app works and how he expects it to work (regardless whether or not poor design is to blame).
There are parts of this that I like. The battery life, display, and WiFi connectivity are pretty awesome.
The OS, shell tools (there is a shell, it's just ... completely fucking crippled), advertising-orientation, lack of any user-centric controls, lack of user-centric data management, alteratives to store your data on the cloud^W^Wsomebody else's server, a ham-fisted locked-down experience from Samsung, crap hardware design and crap warranty service from Logitech.
I know all of that can be far better than it is, and that each of these companies are paying people whose jobs it is to specifically make the experience suck.
That is what this grumpy old techie's view is.
In my experience, that isn't limited by age - and if anything I see the opposite, with the young being so used to great UX that their concept of technology stops at the GUI.
So we're watching a TV episode my mythtv recorded and heavy rain always knocks out the OTA PBS signal so there's some digital breakup and the kids are like "skip it, its broken" because they are from an era of infinite youtube entertainment where something as good or better is always a "next" button away. They have no pity or empathy bad content is to be euthanized with aggressive application of the "next" button. Meanwhile I'm an old timer and I have invested in this episode of The Woodwrights Shop and I want to watch this damn episode even if I only get to see half of it between the signal breaking up. When I grew up an episode of Star Trek cost like $40 and was purchased on a VHS (or Beta) video tape and content was incredible valuable as the minimum wage was like $3/hr; for my kids content is infinite always available and totally worthless. You can always hit next and find something free that's probably better.
They are about the same with apps and games. Unless a game operates in what old timers would call newbie mode where its impossible to fail and you get little skinner box rewards every 10 seconds, they just delete it and find something "better". The game crashed? Don't restart, delete and reload. Oh well, for better or worse every game has 500 clones on ITMS to load on the ipad. Maybe clone #283 will be better than this one!
I also see a behavior with old people where TVs used to cost like a months salary so you replace them like windows, either roughly never, or when they break. How do I explain this to grannie that I can argue all day but when the CRT emission and therefore brightness drops in the amount of time I've spent arguing with grannie I could have earned enough money to buy a TV better than what she'd be throwing out, but great depression this and that and surely a smart electrician like me can replace a vacuum tube in her TV like uncle so and so did in 1962 and it would be all better and ugh ugh ugh so once again old people have a touch of early adopter syndrome and even junk is not to be thrown away, not realizing that modern stuff is both disposable and cheap. The only thing worse than arguing with an elderly relative about their 1980s magnavox TV is arguing with another old relative about their $100 2012 model thats already burned out the backlight because old people watch 18 hours per day of TV.
That's ridiculous, unless the NFL is also providing all the technical support (which Bill's actual rant doesn't imply they do.) Having just a short time to use, test and get them ready for the game is incredibly lousy, and certainly won't give the team's IT people any chance to seriously troubleshoot and improve the situation.
It doesn't matter who makes the tech, or how solid it is. You can't just throw tech at a problem and expect it to solve it.
Also worth noting that some of the reporters were complaining at last week's game that the WiFi was down in the press box at Gillette Stadium at the start of the game. There could have been a bigger networking issue going on there.
The Pats use Extreme Networks WiFi gear in the stadium.
By now, the IT team should know the gametime environment very well. It should no longer be a surprise to them.
On gameday there are thousands of different rf sources - deliberate and otherwise - in the stadium. You can't simulate that in as much detail as needed.
If I've got a system that takes a bit of consistent prodding to happen, or can do A & B reliably but not C, and it is consistent about that, it's almost always far more acceptable than a system which works most of the time without prodding but then falls down copletely, or a system that does A, B, & C, but fails to work right 10% of the time.
That little bit of uncertainty pokes an sticks at you. It's always at the back of your consciousness. A football coach's job is to coach the game. It's not to to try to figure out what's wrong with his comms equipment or even if it's working correctly or incorrectly.
Closely related: the paradox of automation.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/crash-how...
Seems NFL sets them up a few hours before kickoff.
Perhaps it is time for NFL to improve their tech support in all areas. There might be a relationship between the tablet issues and the problems with the comms system.
Anyone know?
The incentives for all parties involved in this situation is less than ideal.
A coach needs a few things to really make this valuable. First they need a play chart for selecting the appropriate play call for the corresponding down and distance. This can be a canned application that doesn't require network connectivity after it's been loaded, but networking would allow an assistant to update the player personnel availability in real time so that you don't call a play with improper personnel.
The other thing the tablets replaced was the physical photos the teams used to use to review plays. The NFL previously made the teams use B&W photos sent down to the sidelines. They don't want the teams to use live replays for some reason, though the monstrous displays in most stadiums make this dumb.
So if you take out the network connection, these lose a lot of their value. I can't imagine a more hostile environment for Wifi than a stadium packed with a bazillion cellphones, plus goofy atmospherics due to design.
I think there is a lot to be said about the fact that any event that has as much tech as an NFL broadcast and that it is never setup permanently will always run into some issue. The base complaint seems to be just that the league gives him the stuff too late to work out any unforeseen issues, and so it just is a sprint to troubleshoot week after week where he could just show up with briefcase full of printed plays and this just not be a problem. It's not like he has a shortage of bodies for manual labour on the sidelines.
http://newsdiffs.org/article-history/www.nytimes.com/2016/10...
Frequency management in a stadium is very hard. It's mostly done by volunteer ham radio people.
I have 2 "systems" at work...
One includes email and a white board with index cards taped to the wall next to it.
The other includes Jira, Confluence, Infor, Sharepoint, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Adobe Illustrator, GIMP, Skype, Webex, Success Factors, and a whole bunch of other stuff.
If I don't need all this horrible shit to build software, why would anyone need any of it to play football?
Ipads are more reliable and have a better gui, so why is the NFL using surface tablets? It's because Apple didn't need to push the ipad, but surface was really new and Microsoft really needed to promote it anyway possible, so it made a huge marketing push on the NFL, no doubt making it financially very attractive and promising all sorts of help.
What Microsoft seems to have not thought out is it would work out well for the coaches only if the entire network system worked flawlessly, or surface would get rejected by association, and so they should have given extensive help to make sure that happened. But they apparently didn't do that, the network screwed up endlessly, and sure enough, surface is being painted as no good.
Computer 1: Dell - Works as expected
Computer 2: Lenovo Thinkpad (work) - Old, works amazing
Computer 3: Surface pro - Randomly unresponsive, often times the keyboard has to be disconnected and reconnected. Often times it just freaks out and starts clicking where I am not clicking.
I followed all troubleshooting steps. It is terrible.
Belichick was also unhappy with the other communications systems at the game, like the ones between the press box and the sideline and between the coach and the quarterback. “Those fail on a regular basis,” he said.
He noted that the league does not supply the equipment to the teams until a few hours before the game, making troubleshooting difficult.
“So I would just say there are problems in every game,” he said. “There were problems last week, but there were problems the week before that, too. Some are worse than others. Sometimes both teams have them, sometimes one team has them and the other team doesn’t have them.”
The interesting question is why the new tablet/network is unreliable. My contention is that many physical processes are not vulnerable to single points of failure but that software is.
Electronics technology & software are truly great and wonderful, but they are still too immature (the latter more so) to be truly reliable. I'm confident that someday they will actually be superior to physical technology like pads of paper, but they're just not there yet. Honestly, I don't really expect them to get where they need to be within my lifetime.
For that matter, high-tech stuff isn't as reliable as low-tech stuff. I know that when I pick up my landline wired headset that I will have crystal-clear calling, every single time; I don't know that with my cordless phone; I don't know that with my cellphone. I know that when I pick up a pen & paper, that I will be able to quickly write and draw whatever I want; I don't know that with my laptop, nor with my tablet, nor with my phone.
It's also not a stretch to say that NFL coaches are mostly from older generations and have never had a lot of incentive to embrace computer technology. Furthermore, they head up highly competitive teams of large male athletes in a culture which prizes assertiveness and displays of aggression.
Put all these things together and you get one guy who's uniquely poised to get frustrated with technology. You also get someone who's uniquely ill-equipped to speak of that technology's actual shortcomings. For instance, the way these issues are described makes it sound like they're having network connectivity issues which are not related to the particular device they're trying to connect to the network. But did he throw the wireless AP at the wall? Nope, he threw the tablet at the wall.
[0] http://www.nfl.com/videos/new-england-patriots/09000d5d8226f...
On the other hand, this is Bill Belichick doing the talking, so I take the bulk of his complaints about the communications equipment with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you're not familiar with Mr. Belichick, he's earned the reputation of being worthy of suspicion when it comes to either exploiting a loophole in the rules or potentially breaking them outright and trying to explain them away[1]. A quick search[2] dredges up numerous cases of NFL teams visiting Gillette Stadium and experiencing significant communications system difficulties.
So, the cynic in me would like to pose a tentative solution to Bill: If his team would shut off whatever jammers and bullshit disruption devices they're using on the visiting opponents, maybe his equipment wouldn't fuck up as much either.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_New_England_Patriots_vide...
[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=radio+trouble+gillette+stadi...
Here's several coaches confirming it: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/09/12/coaches-say-...
Also, the teams communication devices are provided by the NFL, and have nothing to with the individual teams: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2564764-nfl-issues-statem...
Lastly, I'm not sure the tablet failing for Bill Belichick, but not the opponent, supports your claim that Belichick is trying to gain an unfair advantage out of this.
[0]http://www.si.com/nfl/2016/10/04/tom-brady-deflategate-ideal...
[1]http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2016/03/12/deflate-gate-scienc...
[2]https://www.sciencenews.org/blog/culture-beaker/deflategate-...
[3]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwxXsEltyas
[4]http://www.breitbart.com/sports/2016/05/27/scientists-file-a...