Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Super Bowl. Show all posts

Feb 3, 2020

Super Bowl Name Origin

Very interesting that the Super Bowl name is from former Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt, inspired by a popular '70s toy: the Super Ball. For its first three years, the game had been called the world championship. Then Hunt saw his daughter playing with a bouncy ball and asked her what it was called. The rest is Super Bowl history.

Incidentally, the NFL pays no halftime appearance fee. The only thing the organization pays for is the expenses for the band and its entourage. Also, Joe Montana won all four Super Bowls he played in and he never threw a interception in any of them.

Feb 2, 2018

Football Facts

The big game is coming this Sunday, so I decided to look up a few facts about football.

The NFL League Office, is tax exempt and is classified as a trade organization whose primary purpose is to “further the industry or profession it represents.” This began in 1942 when the NFL filed an application for tax-exempt, non-profit status with the IRS. The application was accepted and it has been tax-exempt ever since.

In recent years, about 110 million people watch the Super Bowl. An estimated 98% of those viewers are from North America, mostly from the United States.

Since 1955, the official NFL footballs have been made at the Wilson factory in Ada, Ohio. Each football is handmade from cowhide sourced from Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. The hides are tanned in Ada with a “top secret football-weather-optimizing tanning recipe.” An average 130 people working at the factory produce nearly 4,000 footballs every day. Each football is made up of four pieces and a synthetic bladder, and each cowhide can usually make up to ten footballs (or hand eggs).


During 1951, the first year of night Football, footballs were white with two black stripes so that players and spectators could easily see the ball in the dark. Advancements in stadium lighting were made, making the white ball unnecessary, and by 1956 they were officially replaced with the standard brown football we have today.

The official nickname of the football used by the NFL is “The Duke,” after Wellington Mara. Mara, who was named after the Duke of Wellington, was the co-owner of the New York Giants and the son of the founder of the Giants. The nickname was used between 1941 and 1969. It fell out of use in 1970 when the AFL and NFL merged, but bounced back into play in 2006, a year after Mara’s death.

Jan 26, 2018

Super Bowl and Olympic Cameras

Even though we will not be seeing the Super bowl in 4K in the US, it will be filmed in 4K. The same is true for the Winter Olympics, which will be filmed in 4K and 8K HDR, but will not be shown on cable in 4K in the US, except by Xfinity. Unfortunate that the rest of the world gets to enjoy 4K, while we do not. Seems many countries have more advanced distribution systems than the US. The good news is that regardless of the game play, the Super Bowl commercials are always worth watching.

Olympic feeds will all be distributed in 4K, then locally distributed by country. South Korea will be broadcasting the Winter Olympics in 4K HDR throughout the country. It utilizes the ATSC 3.0 broadcasting that will be tested in the US beginning this Spring. This standard will replace the current antenna (OTA) signals in the US and allow us to receive 4K TV with an antenna.

For the Super Bowl, NBC Sports will deploy 36 cameras with a mix of Canon and Fujinon lenses. Among them will be:
Four Sony HDC-4800’s operating in 4K,
Seven Sony HDC-4300 hard cameras configured for 6X super-slo-mo
One Sony HDC-4300 operating in 4K,
Two Sony HDC-4300 handhelds configured for 6X.
Eight Sony HDC-2500 hard cameras,
Eight Sony HDC-2500 handheld cameras,
Two SkyCams and a few robos.


The four Sony HDC-4800 4K cameras, outfitted with Fujinon PL 85-300mm Cabrio lenses, will be positioned in the left and right end zone and the near-left and far-left sideline. The Sony HDC-4300 4K camera, with a Canon 95X lens, will be positioned in the high-left end zone.

Nov 20, 2015

Origin of Bowl Games

During 1916, the Roses Association decided to sponsor a football tournament between WSU (then called The State College of Washington) and Brown.  This game was held at Tournament Park in Pasadena, as were subsequent annual matches.

Fast-forward five years and they needed a larger stadium to play the game as attendance outgrew that venue. Myron Hunt was commissioned to design a stadium for this purpose which was named Rose Bowl.  The Rose Bowl was modeled after the design of Yale’s stadium, Yale Bowl, which resembled a bowl.  This tournament sponsored by the Roses Association then was named the “Rose Bowl,” after the stadium.

As other universities with football teams saw the money making opportunities and promotional value of these tournament games, they began creating their own 'bowl' games, even though many of these games were not played in bowl shaped stadiums.

The NFL borrowed this terminology when it created the Pro Bowl in 1951. In 1970, the AFL and NFL merged and they created a championship game called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. Once the merger was completed two years later, the championship game was re-branded the Super Bowl, using the college naming convention. The third match-up, was named Super Bowl III and also set the tradition of using Roman numerals for the Super Bowl.

Nov 28, 2012

Statistics

6 Million were using Facebook in 2005, now it has over a 1 billion users
67.2 million watched the last presidential debate and 111.3 million watched the Super Bowl in 2012
There are 500 million Twitter users