TV football's MVP -- yellow first-down line

Behind the yellow line lies a surprisingly complicated feat of technology. Thanks to advanced software, the line doesn't seem to cross the white lines, yard numbers or team insignia actually on the football field. Nor does it cover up players or referees when they cross it. In fact, as the cameras move to follow a play, the yellow line adjusts to the angle but stays in place on the field. With each first down, it vanishes, and a new one appears on the TV screen farther down the field.

It's just the latest example of how the battle for sports audiences in an era of proliferating choices on TV and the Internet is increasingly turning to high-tech weaponry. An early example was the blue spot that Fox Sports imposed upon hockey pucks, giving them the illusion of comet tails as they whizzed across the ice. Fox football commentator John Madden says he's pushing for an electronically highlighted line of scrimmage, so fans can tell if players jump offsides or commit other infractions.

Some football purists say they find the yellow line irritating. But it is getting credit for simplifying the game and heightening its appeal for both veteran and novice fans. "My wife now fully gets 'first down,' " says David Hill, president of Fox Sports, which uses the yellow line on some its broadcasts too. "It's demystified part of the game."

Generating the yellow line, which has been used in professional and college broadcasts since fall 1998, requires a complex computer system trucked into the stadium where a game is to be played. Sunday's Super Bowl XXXIV, on Walt Disney Co.'s ABC network, will mark its first appearance in the National Football League championship game.

To create the yellow line, Fox and ABC rely on Sportvision Inc., a New York media company in which Fox is an investor. The system uses software to "cut" a hole in the shape of the first-down line into the TV picture and then fill it with yellow on the broadcast signal.

In cutting the hole, only the color of the field is removed in most cases. As a result, players and referees can cross the line as if it were underfoot, and numbers and insignia that are on the field in real life aren't discolored.

$20,000 per game
The yellow line isn't cheap, costing an estimated $20,000 per football game, and requires well-timed maneuvers from a small squad of operatives. Before the game, Sportvision technicians put sensors on the three main TV cameras on the field. The camera movements are fed into a central computer. During the game, a network spotter in the broadcast booth tells a technician where the electronic first-down line should be located. The technician types the location into the computer, which selects which pixels in the broadcast image to turn yellow.

The whole process takes about 25 seconds. In one preseason game, a technician typed in a bad coordinate but otherwise the system has operated largely error-free this season.

A pioneer of the yellow line was ESPN, Disney's sports cable channel, which signed a deal with Sportvision to use the yellow line in its Sunday night games two seasons ago and discovered it was a big hit. After ESPN came Fox and ABC's "Monday Night Football." Fox Sports Productions, another News Corp. unit, has become an investor in Sportvision. "We did market research that showed 92 percent of the audience wanted to see it on every game," says Bill Squadron, a former News Corp. executive and now chief executive of Sportvision.

In the new era of digital wizardry, TV producers face thorny ethical questions. CBS Corp. recently took heat after it used technology from a company called Princeton Video Image Inc., a Sportvision competitor, to alter a Times Square billboard ad in New Year's coverage. The billboard, advertising the NBC network, a unit of General Electric Co., would have appeared behind "CBS Evening News" anchor Dan Rather. CBS electronically replaced the rival logo with its own.

The NFL has made it clear to the networks that it doesn't object to the first-down line but doesn't want stadium ads tampered with. Such alterations of billboards have become commonplace in many local telecasts of baseball, although not, so far, on national sports telecasts. The NFL is "cognizant of protecting national advertisers," says CBS Sports President Sean McManus. "They don't want us inserting or covering up any signs."

The technology has led to a legal battle between Sportvision and Princeton Video Image. In October, Sportvision filed a patent infringement suit in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., against Princeton Video, claiming the company has no right to use the technology. Princeton Video subsequently responded that Sportvision's patent is invalid. The suit is pending.

Fox's Hill says that although he and Madden have kicked around other ways to use the yellow-line technology in broadcasts, he's wary about going crazy with the graphics. "You have to know where to draw the line," he says.