NFL training facilities receive multi-million-dollar upgrades
American football is big business and the insane level of investment in training and development reaches right down to college players.
What would you say is the most tech-savvy sports facility in the world?
According to the Washington Times, it’s the Hatfield-Dowlin Football Complex in Eugene, Oregon – the home of the University of Oregon Ducks.
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Emilio Estevez would be so proud.
The Hatfield-Dowlin Complex is not a stadium, but a six-storey player practice, education and recruiting centre.
The granite, steel and glass structure includes lockers from Germany, Portuguese marble floors, walnut millwork that was sourced at the mill at a 96% rejection rate, a basalt wall for a fortress-like facade and a plaza adorned with water features and surprisingly comfortable stone benches.
The Hall of Champions at the entrance, engineered by a world-renowned acoustician, is outfitted with a Dutch acoustical ceiling, state-of-the-art 3D sound and a 64-screen video wall that greets visitors with a mosaic of inspirational, 4K videos and stills plus live sports broadcasts.
At the heart of the facility’s video systems is Crestron DigitalMedia and control technology.
DEVELOPING TALENT
The coaches in any university football program face the significant challenge of turning raw high school recruits into championship players, competing at an extremely high level as early as their freshman year.
This is especially true for the coaches at Oregon, in a program that has ranked consistently in the Top 10 in college football polls.
As with other football programs, Oregon coaches and players spend a great deal of time on the practice field – but they also spend many hours each week in the classroom.
According to Oregon Football assistant video coordinator Eric Day, they spend most of the classroom time reviewing game and practice videos, using those videos to show players how the game is played and how it should be played.
“We shoot every game and every practice, and then edit the video into play clips here in the facility,” he explains.
“The typical clip shows a play from two angles and is about 10 to 20 seconds long.”
The video staff supplements the footage they shoot with material provided by other teams and organise it using XOS Thunder software, a widely used platform to edit, store and display sports video. Over the years, they have built up a collection of hundreds of thousands of clips, which coaches can access from their laptops to illustrate virtually any play, its proper execution and proper defence.
“The coaches annotate the clips as they talk about them, much as they might on TV, pausing the video and then drawing a diagram over it using X’s and O’s,” Eric says.
They also use a software product called Hudl to create diagrams without a video background, which is especially useful in presenting new plays and new defensive schemes. Those who prefer can draw them up on paper and project them via a document camera.
A Crestron DigitalMedia network uses fibre optics and 10 DM matrix switchers, ranging from 8×8 to 32×32, to bring raw video and audio into the editing suites and video servers. From there, AV can be distributed to two team theatres, nine position meeting rooms, 12 coaches offices and three coaches’ meeting rooms, as well as a large dining room, players’ and coaches’ locker rooms, a recruitment centre, players’ and recruitment lounges, a media interview room and a 2,300m² weight and fitness room.
Much of the video the staff shoots is 4K; the DM network is fully 4K-compatible and transmits that video to the editing suite, video servers, and then to the video wall.
DETAILS OF THE SYSTEMS
According to Jerry Nuckolls, systems designer at integration outfit CompView Audio Visual, any room at the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex can, and is, used for instruction. That’s especially true of the coaches’ offices as well as the theatres and position rooms, all of which can access and control the video content.
Most rooms have more than one large-screen display. The coaches’ ‘war room’, designed for full-staff strategy sessions, includes seven 80” flat-screen displays and a Christie projector. Coaches use all of these screens at once for side-by-side comparisons of scouting video of potential recruits, as well as to review game film, TV broadcasts of live games and play diagrams.
The players’ lounge includes two video walls dedicated to Xbox and PlayStation consoles plus six large-screen televisions.
“We want to encourage players to stay here and interact with their teammates, rather than going back to their rooms,” Eric says.
Even the theatres and position meeting rooms all have two or three screens, used for side-by-side display of game film, play diagrams and word slides or other material. The facility includes five 1,920 x 1,200 projectors and more than 250 Planar flat-panel displays, many with touch capability. Each coach can control all AV components via the Crestron Mobile Pro app on his iPad or wall-mounted Crestron touch screens.
“Coaches are busy people, so we use the Crestron screens to keep everything as simple as possible,” CompView systems integration manager Eric Boyd says.
“They have enough on their plate without having to learn the details of the video system.”
He says the CompView team worked hard to create an interface that places all important functions within two button presses of the home screen. The Crestron systems control all video and audio routing, plus channel selection for live TV, volume levels and, on the lobby video wall, source selection and layout presets.
The reliability of the video system is essential to the football program, more so than in any corporate conference room or university classroom. Because of strict National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) rules limiting the amount of time student athletes can spend with coaches, everything runs like clockwork.
“It’s interesting that in the outside world, a 10am meeting might not start until 10:15, while with football people, it’s going at 9:58,” Eric Day explains.
“When a coach walks into a room, that’s it. He touches one button and everything has to work,” Eric Boyd adds.
CompView has installed AV technology in nearly every athletic facility on campus.
“In college sports, you’re looking for any edge you can get, and of course Oregon is stepping up and recruiting from the big sports states, including Florida, Alabama and Texas.”
In addition to the football complex, CompView has installed Crestron technology in dedicated basketball, lacrosse and soccer facilities, plus the Casanova practice complex, which includes space used by the baseball and running teams.
“When the university started planning this building some years ago, DigitalMedia was the only system available to carry HDMI signals over network cabling,” Eric says.
“Today, it’s still the best for digital routing; absolutely the right choice for a facility like this. In fact, of the hundreds of Crestron devices installed in the Hatfield-Dowlin Complex, only two have failed, neither one vital components, and when that happened Crestron took care of it immediately. That kind of performance is unheard of in a system of this complexity.
“Obviously there’s a heightened sense of urgency on a high profile project like this, but Crestron steps up on the smaller ones, too. They go the extra yard every time, on every project.”
By the end of the facility’s first season of use, the staff and the team were ecstatic.
“Our new centre is probably the most effective and efficient building in either college or pro football,” senior associate athletic director for football Jeff Hawkins says.
“The video presentation systems, based on Crestron technology, were a big part of making that possible.”
Eric Day adds, “Those who decide to join our program will find the best of the best in everything we do, including the building where they will spend most of their time in athletics.”
****<<BOX-OUT>> Midwest Madness
S:\General\Editorial Photos\Connected Home\2015\1-15\135 – NFL\BOX – Michigan
The Michigan State Spartans aren’t taking any prisoners in their drive to dominate the Big Ten. So it’s no surprise that they pulled out all the stops at their new Skandalaris Football Centre, a $15 million, 2,300m² addition to their Duffy Daugherty training building.
At the core of the Skandalaris Centre is a digital video archiving system that is networked to a divisible team meeting room and nine other rooms assigned to various offensive and defensive positions. The archive is used in conjunction with the on-screen annotation system built into Crestron’s TPS-GA-TPI touch panel interface, which also controls the audio, video, and other systems in these rooms.
“We wanted to set up stations where our assistant coaches could be most effective in teaching their student athletes the game of football,” senior associate director of athletics Gregory Ianni says.
“It’s a great learning environment. The technology is easy to use, it gives us real-time information that we can pass on to the team and it’s just been terrific in maximising the time efficiencies of our coaches and athletes.
“We get just 20 hours a week with the players. If you figure they’re on the field roughly 2 1/2 hours, they’re probably in those rooms an hour to an hour-and-a-half per day.”
The video used in instruction comes from two sources. Media staffers at MSU shoot footage at every game and every practice, and Big Ten members share videos from every game in a digital format. All the footage is broken up into clips then indexed and archived on a computerised system from XOS Technologies.
Mike Sexton, technology designer at Troy, Michigan-based AV consultant Integrated Design Solutions (IDS), says Michigan State has built up about 20TB of archived content, with digitised game film going back at least 20 years. Coaches access the system from networked PCs in each of the classrooms as well as their offices and a detailed index makes it easy to find specific clips.
Because newer footage is high definition and in a widescreen format, IDS specified the use of a 19” Cybertech O1900U touch panel to be used with the Crestron touch panel interface, plus high definition projectors and flat panel displays. A coach can bring up a video clip on the touch panel and the room’s large screen display, start it, pause it and draw on it using the Crestron annotation software, and once he’s sure his players understand the point he is trying to make, move quickly on to the next clip.
IDS used a Crestron MPS-100 for audio and video switching and control in each of the smaller position rooms and they route all local video and audio signals in these rooms over Crestron QuickMedia cable.
“We like the MPS-100 because it conserves rack space, minimises interconnects, yet does everything MSU needs,” Mike explains.
A Crestron PRO2 processor located in the head end networks all the control processors together for Crestron RoomView centralised management. The integrator can also access the Skandalaris Centre network from their service department should they need to step in with support or troubleshooting help.
“The young men who are considering playing for the Spartans are very aware of the technology here,” Gregory says.
A team history museum is a prominent part of the facility, illustrating the Spartans’ storied past and the success graduates have had moving into the pros. The museum includes a video wall in addition to 42″ displays, all fed by the same RF video and audio distribution system that sends live video to the classrooms and offices.
“The flexibility of the space is huge and the technology allows us that flexibility with minimal problems. IDS nailed it.”
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