30 September 2022
Richard A Lovett
Richard A Lovett is a Portland, Oregon-based science writer and science fiction author. He is a frequent contributor to Cosmos.
As Australia’s football codes close their seasons with teams vying for premiership glory, and as the Womens Basketball World Championships begin, or the new A-League soccer season kicks off, decisions which can make or break a team are being made moment by moment, by fallible human beings. You can almost hear the fans say “Microchipping footballs.”
In the AFL Grand Final between Geelong and Sydney, there were no disputes about ball positioning through the goal, and none ever-so gently hit the post, or travelled over the top of the post with the technology called on to determine goal or a point.
For many years the hope has been to use a technology like Hawkeye which tracks tennis and cricket balls, to end these disputes. But to date there are no solutions.
In the United States the NFL has been microchipping footballs since 2018. Cosmos US Correspondent Richard A Lovett spoke to Adam Petrus of Zebra Technology which has been chipping the balls (and the players incidentally) for the NFL.