Sunday’s NFL game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and Atlanta Falcons was played live in London, as well as the Toy Story universe. Andy’s room hosted a secondary broadcast for Disney/ESPN that put a nostalgic animated twist on American football.
It was awesome. Everybody got involved, including Woody and Jessie, the aliens, Rex, the army men, and even the Claw.
Slinky dog also served an important role as the “chain gang,” which was the by far the highlight of the morning. However, the necessity of his job is in question because of the Toy Story broadcast.
Why are first downs still measured/decided by two giant orange sticks and chains?! It is a constant debate with no end in sight. Sunday’s animated broadcast only made it even more confusing.
Disney’s Toy Story broadcast was very innovative.
There was a lot of technology involved with Toy Story Funday Football. Booger McFarland and Drew Carter, the two announcers, were transported into the animated world with the same kind of CGI technology that is used for Madden, or a movie like Avatar.
And then there was the game itself. The whole thing was digitized in real time.
For example:
Even the sack celebrations made it to Andy’s room.
The Walt Disney Company put a lot of time and effort into the broadcast, which went off with minimal glitches. There was a lot of advanced technology involved, and it was even more complicated than the animated hockey broadcast from March.
We’re using tracking chips on the players and a tracking chip in the ball. Some of the bigger differences from last time are that hockey’s only six people per team on the field at the same time, and it’s almost constant motion.
Football has 22 players on the field, and there is downtime between each play. With hockey, everyone kind of skates the same way and takes a shot the same way; they’re the same motions. With football, you have so many variations: a lineman acts totally differently than a quarterback does, and a running back acts totally differently than a receiver does.
It’s a little more challenging to make everybody do what they need to do [in animation]. And, honestly, this has never been done before—combining the single-point tracking with the optical link tracking.
— Michael “Spike” Szykowny, Senior Director, ESPN Creative Studio
Overall, the Toy Story broadcast was an overwhelming success. There were a few minor issues, but the kinks were kept to a minimum.
The NFL is stuck in the stone age.
Meanwhile, everywhere else in the world, two orange sticks and a chain that runs between them are used to mark distances in 10-yard increments. A literal index card was once used to determine a crucial first down on Sunday Night Football.
Although the NFL claims that the ball-tracking technology isn’t quite there yet, Toy Story had no issue keeping up with the game in real time. An entire football game can be digitized, but there is no way to track the spot of ball with a microchip. That seems backwards.
For the record, I am a fan of the chain gang. I love the big orange sticks and the chaos that they create.
However, if Toy Story can translate a football game being played overseas, it seems as though the NFL would be able to find a more innovative, technologically-advanced system for first downs. It is time.
Gone are the days of the chain gang. Here are the days of technology. Let’s move into the future.