May 8, 1894 - Rules convention at the NYC Athletic Club instituted a rudimentary rule for fair catch interference on a kick play. A portion of this rule required the person fielding and signalling the fair catch to mark the "spot" of the fair catch by marking it with the back of his heel indenting the turf, after waving one hand over head and catching the untouched kick or punt.
The Newspapers.com Football History Headline of the day is from the Spokesman-Review from Spokane, Washington which read: ‘COY THE GREATEST FOOTBALL PLAYER.”
May 8, 1910 - Walter Eckersly writes the Greatest Football Player of All Time article. The article starts off by giving creed and credential to Walter Eckersall. Eckersall was selected three consecutive years by Walter Camp to be what is the equivalent of First Team All-America and even made Camp’s All-Time All-American team as the QB! The brilliant quarterback played of course for Coach Amos Alonzo Stagg at the University of Chicago and all of this definitely qualified Eckersall for the task of determining the greatest player of all time, for at least the first 30 years of American football.
Eckersall chose Ted Coy from Yale for this honor. Coy, Eckersall exclaims, “possessed superhuman endurance, who more than any other man was responsible for Yale’s football triumphs in the last three years...who by his clean playing and true college sportsmanship on and off the field which has done much to elevate the popular college sport belongs the honor of being the greatest football player of all time.” We will examine the career of Mr. Coy more closely in a few weeks on his May 23 birthday edition of the Football History Headlines.
May 8, 2001 - U.S. Patent 6,229,550 is granted for Blending a Graphic to create the yellow line on TV for line to gain, The yellow first-down line. Since the late 1990s, the virtual yellow line has been quietly enhancing football broadcasts by giving viewers a live, intuitive guide to where the line to gain is even when the sticks are nowhere in view. The graphic is engineered to appear painted on the field, rather than simply plopped on top of the players. The line debuted during a September 27, 1998, game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cincinnati Bengals. It was developed by a company called Sportvision Inc. and operated by six people in a 48-foot semi-truck parked outside the stadium. ESPN was the only network that immediately agreed to pay the steep price of $25,000 per game. Before long, other companies began offering the yellow line to the other networks, and now you won’t see a football game without it according to Vox.com .
Sportsvision had developed this technology from their failed “blue halo” experiment in NHL Hockey in 1996 called FoxTrax, according to an article on MentalFloss.com. The article goes on to say FoxTrax employed a system of cameras and sensors around a hockey rink to place a little blue halo around the puck. FoxTrax wasn't a great fit for NHL broadcasts: Hockey purists hated the intrusion into their game, and casual fans didn’t flock to hockey just because the puck was suddenly easier to follow. However, the system inspired producers to think of new ways to insert computerized images into live sports broadcasts. The idea of using a line to mark the first down in football was a natural extension so they rolled it out in that aforementioned Bengals/Ravens game. A rival company Princeton Video Image, rolled out its Yellow Down Line system during a Steelers-Lions broadcast on CBS later that same season. Sportvision is still operating, but interestingly enough ESPN, Sportsvision’s initial partner acquired all of rivala PVI’s intellectual property in December 2010.
Ok what is the “magic” of this mystery line anyway? Mental Floss again has the answer stating that, “Long before the game begins, technicians make a digital 3D model of the field, including all of the yard lines. While a football field may look flat to the naked eye, it’s actually subtly curved with a crown in the middle to help rainwater flow away. Each field has its own unique contours, so before the season begins, broadcasters need to get a 3D model of each stadium’s field.” Each broadcast camera is equipped with special sensors that are constantly syncing its location along with the zoom, tilt and pan of the camera shot with the 3D model of the field’s unique minute landmarks and voila! A computer generated line is slipped into any camera view you see. And we enjoy that high tech digital line without even really thinking about it.
May 8, 2010 - Last piece of Yankee Stadium falls in the Bronx, New York, marking the end of the two year demolition process. Almost 88 years to the day from the start of its construction on May 5, 1922 the cycle of the House that Ruth Built has its last remnant removed. It had many baseball memories and historic moments but as we discussed in the May 5 edition of the Football History Headlines it also was the venue for some awesome gridiron moments as well.
May 8, 2014 - South Carolina’s outside linebacker Jadeveon Clowney was the first pick by the Houston Texans in the 2014 NFL Draft. This is really a pretty amazing draft., so much so we shared the top 16 picks compliments of Pro Football Reference website. Check out these names of NFL stars.
Pick Tm Player Pos College/Univ
1 HOU Jadeveon Clowney DE South Carolina
2 STL Greg Robinson T Auburn
3 JAX Blake Bortles QB Central Florida
4 BUF Sammy Watkins WR Clemson
5 OAK Khalil Mack LB Buffalo
6 ATL Jake Matthews T Texas A&M
7 TAM Mike Evans WR Texas A&M
8 CLE Justin Gilbert DB Oklahoma St.
9 MIN Anthony Barr LB UCLA
10 DET Eric Ebron TE North Carolina
11 TEN Taylor Lewan T Michigan
12 NYG Odell Beckham Jr. WR LSU
13 STL Aaron Donald DT Pittsburgh
14 CHI Kyle Fuller DB Virginia Tech
15 PIT Ryan Shazier LB Ohio St.
16 DAL Zack Martin G Notre Dame
