Touch Me in My Sporting Arena: TouchWall in Training

May 20th, 2008 by Tuffy Posted in technology in sports |

We’re fairly familiar with the ability to project and work with computers onto a whiteboard.  These interactive boards (usually requiring rear projection) allow the user to hook up a computer to the board and then use it normally, either with the standard software that comes with their computer or special whiteboard software that allows the user to create special presentations or activities.

For those of you out of school for awhile, this may seem stunning.  For those of you currently or recently in school, you may not quite understand why death by chalk inhalation was once an omnipresent teaching danger of the 20th Century. 

However, we’re excited about an announcement last week by Microsoft that takes this notion of wall computing to a much more usable level: touchscreen wall computing.  No rear projection; no special pens; fully interactive.  Welcome to TouchWall.

Why do we bring it up here?  Remove the example under this gentleman’s finger and replace it with game film from last week’s loss to Alabama State.  Or how about a simply-written application that allows the coach to enter all the plays in and run them at any speed, stopping and moving a defensive back out of position to see how the play’s result changes?  How about loading all the team’s plays into that application and running pop quizzes with the players?

Now we’re cookin’.

And imagine being able to show the passing angles and spacing required for each offensive and defensive basketball play in three dimensions from ground level, only to then ‘grab’ onto the lower corner of the entire court and toss it downward, pushing the view to two dimensions from above and allowing the coach to use the more traditional X-and-O technique.  Visual learners will appreciate seeing plays in action from both angles.

Coaches afraid of shiny electronic objects (not, say, Saban) will appreciate the direct connection.  Players on the board can directly be manipulated, finally completing the journey started by coaches decades ago.  In fact, it may be hard to get the coaches to share the board once their fantasies have been realized.

Frankly, we expect to see these from Microsoft or HP or other vendors in the richest college football and basketball ‘classrooms’ in a year, bumping the old film sessions and whiteboards aside.  (Phil Knight is already on the phone, no doubt.)  NFL and NBA teams should already have theirs on backorder, along with those Euro footie sides.

This leads us to the obvious next step in sports simulation trainers:

I have a suggestion: let Stan Van Gundy win.

What other uses can you think of for this handy-dandy device in the sports realm?  (For example, “allow Adam Jones to safely seed the clouds from the privacy of his own home”.)