Above the "Line&quot...

May 8, 2001 - U.S. Patent 6,229,550 is granted for Blending a Graphic to create the yellow line on TV for the 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 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 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 different 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 says that FoxTrax employed a system of cameras and sensors around a hockey rink to place a little blue halo around the puck. FoxTrax wasn't an excellent 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. Using a line to mark the first down in football was a natural extension, so they rolled it out in that 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 rival PVI's intellectual property in December 2010.

Ok, what is the "magic" of this mystery line anyway? Mental Floss again has the answer: "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 subtly curved with a crown in the middle to help rainwater flow away. Each field has 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 constantly sync its location along with the zoom, tilt, and pan of the camera shot with the 3D model of the field's unique minute landmarks. 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.