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Most football fans are content to turn their televisions on each Sunday afternoon and watch whatever the networks offer. The truly devoted spring for the NFL Package on DirecTV and watch as much as they can handle.
Those fans officially have become lazy and uninformed.
That’s because the NFL now offers Game Rewind, which allows fans to watch replays of every game from the last two years via tablet or PC. It not only offers the standard broadcast feed, but the ability to toggle to an end zone camera or the “All 22” feed — so named because it covers all 22 players on the field at once — that coaches use to study film.
This is a football fan’s dream come true, but the NFL and the company behind the product, NeuLion, are positioning it as even more than that.
“Let’s say you have Robert Griffin III as your quarterback on your fantasy team, and you want to trade him,” said Chris Wagner, executive vice president at NeuLion. “You get on your iPad and watch film on him with the All-22, and can then capture any of those highlights as an image. We provide a telestrator tool for you to break down any play he was involved in, which you can then send via Facebook or e-mail to people in your league, and use it as bait in your negotiations.”
Other features include condensed games, which offer up every play, minus whatever happens between the time the whistle blows a play dead and the time the next ball is snapped (not including penalties, coach’s challenges and plays under review). An entire game can be watched this way in about a half-hour.
They also have something called Big Play Marker, which is essentially a timeline of the game at the bottom of the screen, with markers denoting significant plays, for which one can click to receive pertinent stats and video review.
All told, football widows who have already grudgingly marked autumn and winter Sundays off their calendars can now expect to see even less of their spouses than ever.
