Blog poster asked how would an endzone camera give a good view of a play that took place around the 20-yard line, and how did it take until the fourth quarter for UNT officials to know of a malfunction? Let's handle the first part of that.
I need to further clarify the camera situation at Fouts. For all games, televised or not, there are manned cameras behind each end zone transmitting to the video board. Those cameras are not trained on a particular spot or position, and can move around, pan, zoom, provide crowd shots, etc. The two cameras I referenced yesterday are mounted and unmanned on the Fouts visitor side along the goal lines, actually behind the 5-yard line or so. Again, these are fixed and do not move.
These cameras, I'm told, have enough zoom capability to get a clear angle across the field, despite the long vantage from behind the running track. Todd Dodge said he called a timeout for two reasons; to reset the defense after Rice completed a pass to Luke Willson to the UNT 3, and to hopefully give officials a chance to review the catch on replay. Rice's offense was running to the line of scrimmage, knowing of such a chance.
The fixed visitor-side camera at that end, however, wasn't operating. The manned end zone cameras can be used for official replay, but the nearest one either didn't have a clear angle, didn't zoom close enough or was trained somewhere else. The last remaining camera, UNT's "high 50" camera atop the press box, also feeds the video board but didn't have the required angle.
By the way, Willson clearly came down inbounds according to later-reviewed team video, so this is moot on at least that level.
As for why UNT officials didn't know until the fourth quarter that a camera was down, I have no answer, other than it was working at kickoff and later malfunctioned.
No comments:
Post a Comment