Bill Belichick Throws in the Tablet

This speaks to a higher level perception about software. Bugs and crashes, however inconsistent, irreparably damage the sentiment about using a technology. Younger folks grew up in an age with these inconsistencies and are less perturbed by them. To older folks though, manual systems rarely "fail" during use. The bar of acceptance is a great deal higher when your reliability and availability are compared to pencil and paper.

Long story short: quality is always important. as the median age of user rises, quality requirements increase dramatically.

> Microsoft entered into a long-term sponsorship partnership with the league in 2013. At the time, the N.F.L. had a list of demands for the equipment, including ruggedness, ease of use, size, effectiveness in extreme temperature and glare resistance.

> In 2014, Belichick noted that the system had crashed, but seemed mostly cool with it. “I’d say that’s all kind of part of the game,” he said.

> “I just can’t take it anymore,” he said at a news conference Tuesday.

This is an under-reported challenge of the increasing automation narrative: we need more robust systems.

What a terrible URL: http://.../football/bill-belichick-patriots-might-be-a-mac-g...

I think there is a lot to be said about the fact that any event that has as much tech as an NFL broadcast and that it is never setup permanently will always run into some issue. The base complaint seems to be just that the league gives him the stuff too late to work out any unforeseen issues, and so it just is a sprint to troubleshoot week after week where he could just show up with briefcase full of printed plays and this just not be a problem. It's not like he has a shortage of bodies for manual labour on the sidelines.

Have you watched a Pats game? Belichick is about as wordy as a granite counter-top in game and is like a cemetery in front of journalists. That he bothered to complain, let alone did some much to reporters, indicates that there are VERY big problems with them.

Mostly what stands out to me from this is that they only get the tablets just a few hours before the game.

That's ridiculous, unless the NFL is also providing all the technical support (which Bill's actual rant doesn't imply they do.) Having just a short time to use, test and get them ready for the game is incredibly lousy, and certainly won't give the team's IT people any chance to seriously troubleshoot and improve the situation.

It doesn't matter who makes the tech, or how solid it is. You can't just throw tech at a problem and expect it to solve it.