[yk]

Belichick is considered the best coach in football of the last twenty odd years, so he has probably his process with pen and paper nailed down. And the thing is, new technology requires a learning curve both individually and also on a larger scale culturally, so I would guess that tablets after a year or so of use would provide a lot of value, however they do not do so now.

[mikestew]

From my reading, the learning curve has nothing to do with it. Belichick's complaint seems to me to be that the shit just doesn't work reliably. It's not a "training issue" or "user education" issue. It's a "go back to your cave and don't emerge until you're confident that this works reliably under all user circumstances". It's a "the head coach of a football team shouldn't have to troubleshoot connection issues" issue.

[coleca]

Reminds me of a story I heard during a project management class many years ago. The PM was working on a govt contract for the US Army in the late 90s to build a mobile mapping system for use in the field on the Humvees. He got all the specs from the generals to build this marvel of a technology system with screens and scrolling maps (90s remember) and decided to talk to the soldiers in the field to ask them what they wanted out of the project.

The soldiers told him what they really wanted was a piece of plywood that they could fold out and lay their paper maps on. They didn't want screens or electronics, because those don't work with bullet holes in them, but the paper maps work fine even if they get shot.

[8_hours_ago]

This kind of stuff still happens all the time today. A few years ago I worked for a small government contractor which did a lot of phase 1 and 2 projects for the DoD. Most of the contracts we got were for developing experimental technologies to make soldiers more effective, which involved a lot of guessing what the soldiers actually wanted. After making a shiny demo (usually held together with duct tape, ugly perl scripts, and prayers) which the government PM would fall in love with, we would do field testing which would inevitably end with the soldiers reporting that it was a cool piece of technology, but almost completely useless to them. Anyway, it was lots of fun to work on those projects :)

[hackuser]

> Belichick is considered the best coach in football of the last twenty odd years ...

Many think he's the best ever and his greatest strength is considered to be preparation, especially knowing his opponent in great detail and preparing his team for their strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. He is also very flexible in how he does things, adopting very different strategies from week to week.

IMHO he would seem to be a great candidate for a technology that provides up-to-date video of his opponents if it offered some benefits.

[PKop]

It is against the rules to watch video replays on the sidelines of the current game.

These tablet solutions are simply showing photos, which is replacing the paper version of printing out photos.

I can understand why a complicated tech solution that doesn't work reliably 100% of the time is essentially useless compared to a 100% reliable printed picture, solving the same use case.

[trynewideas]

Per Belichick, the NFL was experimenting with video on the sidelines.

[PKop]

Was that mentioned in this article? I don't see it. So his tablet use currently was for still photo viewing.

Here[0], we see that experimentation with video has only occurred during preseason games. So, in the games that actually matter, video is still currently outlawed, as it has been forever.

[0] http://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2016/5/24/11715128/nfl-competiti...

[VLM]

I have a lot of experience automating systems and I would guess the opposite.

There's a lot of money lying on the table such that processes and systems are already going to be running on the border of human comprehension... can I see the signal in this noise?

Meanwhile projects that do something new tend to be successful and profitable, but mere reimplementation digitally tends to result in BS being added to the process as noise until the signal to noise ratio has dropped once again to what was, after all, acceptable before automation. "Well now you got all the time in the world to really stick it to the XYZ department so here's the new requirements" then they fire back causing lower productivity that if nothing were tried to begin with.

You have to realize automation is old, and our ancestors were ignorant not stupid. If you could increase the odds of winning a game by 5% using a million bucks of IBM 7094 mainframes and a million LoC in COBOL then gramps would have done it and made a profit to boot and maybe you can make a couple dimes by modernizing the hardware, but I assure you the algorithms and constraints are baked into the business logic cake and the win/loss percentage won't change.

One way to automate that does succeed is fixing something mgmt didn't realize is broken. I never knew there was a way to do that. I never knew we as a company blew X thousand labor-hours per week on hidden task Y.

IF football never tried statistics and record keeping, then a new system probably using contemporary tablets could really rock. But this isn't the case.

A good, although semi-controversial example, is moving from verbally asking for records over the radio to mobile data terminals to whatever cops use now (probably "cop space app" on their phones or something) has many effects, some even good, but catching criminals isn't one. Fundamentally you've changed who spends five minutes dorking around looking for warrants and dramatically changed how they spend those five minutes, but you haven't really changed anything in terms of end results, although intermediate metrics can be gamed (like dispatcher labor hour minimization).

Tablets make very poor band-aids.

[bsder]

> If you could increase the odds of winning a game by 5% using a million bucks of IBM 7094 mainframes and a million LoC in COBOL then gramps would have done it and made a profit to boot and maybe you can make a couple dimes by modernizing the hardware, but I assure you the algorithms and constraints are baked into the business logic cake and the win/loss percentage won't change.

"Moneyball" demonstrates that your assumption is incorrect.

In addition, you have to collect data, first, before you can analyze it. The limitation blocking "Moneyball" from happening was the fact that the statistics didn't exist for a long time.

Several of my friends were among the people who originally helped Bill James by scoring all the games they went to and then sending the papers in the mail.

Sometimes, something really does require "one clever person" in order to put it all together.

[nhangen]

Surface tablets have been in use for at least a few years, maybe 3-5.