National Football League game official training in the virtual world: Fantasy or feasible?
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The job of officiating in the professional arena is difficult and demanding. Sporting fans and players are generally unaware of the level of training required to become a competent and well-trained NFL game official.
All seven officials — the referee, the umpire, the down judge, the line judge, the field judge, the side judge and the back judge — are held to an incredibly high standard and have their respective responsibilities while on the field. After all, the NFL reports billions of dollars of revenue every year. Because of this, officials are expected to constantly be improving their work. During the offseason, there are two clinics that seek to develop the skills of NFL officials. The first clinic focuses on new rules and other administrative changes in the NFL, while the second clinic focuses on testing the knowledge of officials. During the regular season, officials study film from the games of that week. They review film with officiating supervisors in order to learn how to identify errors and perform root cause analysis. Extensive training of game officials allows the NFL to boast a 98.9% accuracy rating for calls made during games.
Source: Walt Anderson, Bret Ayers, Michael Carter, Andrew G. Lee, MD, Joshua Ong, MD, Ethan Waisberg, Nasif Zaman and Ashtyn Zapletal
Game officials must train to hone their predictive abilities and be able to know where the play is heading. An important part of this is being able to direct their sight toward where the play will develop next. Officials are able to accomplish this task by integrating learned game knowledge with real-time cognitive processing abilities. Our hope is that officials will be able to apply principles of neuro-ophthalmology in order to increase the accuracy and precision of their calls made on the field.
After initial collaboration between Andrew G. Lee, MD, a neuro-ophthalmologist in Houston, and Walt Anderson, senior vice president of officiating for the NFL, specific principles have been incorporated into a structured curriculum for NFL game officials. These neuro-ophthalmic principles include static and dynamic visual acuity; unobstructed line of sight and full visual field; saccadic prioritization and suppression; and smooth pursuit.
Our efforts to date involve aligning neuro-ophthalmic concepts with real-world videotapes of recorded NFL plays. This work with the NFL, while still in its infancy, has already proven to be both informative and an excellent starting point for future endeavors. Our initial on-field experience began in El Paso, Texas, at the NFL training camp for high school and college football officials. The above principles were directly taught by past and present NFL officials during a 2-day training session that culminated in real-world applications as the trainees officiated several high school football games with immediate feedback. Our role during this time was to experience how the neuro-ophthalmology principles were being practiced and used by the trainees. During another game official meeting in Plano, Texas, a complete lecture on the visuomotor system was provided to current NFL game officials. Pre- and post-lecture surveys during this time were used to determine the effectiveness of the lecture and interest in future content.
Our results overwhelmingly showed that viewers of the lecture thought the content was extremely applicable to NFL game officials and that there was marked interest in more teachings. These results were presented at the American Academy of Ophthalmology annual meeting in Chicago in 2022. As we have mainly worked in the qualitative sector, we are hoping in the near future to move into the quantitative sector and obtain hard data regarding how the teaching and understanding of neuro-ophthalmology principles can improve precision and accuracy in play calling and faster reaction times. One of the ways we will explore this avenue is through the use of virtual reality, something that has been used in the field of ophthalmology, and neuro-ophthalmology specifically, many times before.
The advent of extended reality (XR) technology has made strides in the world of ophthalmology, particularly in visual assessment, diagnosis and rehabilitation. This technology spans into various ophthalmic subspecialties including glaucoma, strabismus, retina, cornea and neuro-ophthalmology. Head-mounted visual assessment systems have been used to assess astronaut visual function as well as terrestrial applications including virtual reality-based visual assessments. Building upon this XR-based technology development, we developed some prototypes for a realistic NFL-like environment with the goal of improving NFL referee performance (Figure 1).
Given that officials currently train with footage and on-field training, XR allows for officials to train somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. A large benefit of this training is recreating difficult call scenarios in which officials can rerun the same scenario and make decisions based on neuro-ophthalmic principles (eg, field of view, line of sight) to move around in the virtual environment to make the best call.
We have developed an NFL-like environment in virtual reality using Unreal Engine. This environment can be experienced on the majority of commercially available VR headsets. This will allow referees the chance to gain experience in a simulated-game setting and watch difficult plays in virtual reality. Virtual reality allows the exact plays to be replayed, allowing the referee to self-identify reasons for missing a call. Several variables can be changed by a referee, including the direction of gaze and the location they are standing to improve their field of view. Our VR program has a variety of difficult-to-call plays, with the goal of challenging NFL referees and improving their skills. The difficulty of plays watched increases in a stepwise manner, allowing a referee to become better acclimatized to the virtual environment before being greatly challenged.
It is our hypothesis that implementation of this VR program will further improve play calling within the NFL, reducing the need for instant replay, which prolongs the televised broadcast and occasionally does not provide further clarification regarding close calls. A better appreciation for an NFL official’s training and preparation is a bonus.
We hope that our collaborative efforts with the NFL will continue to expand and that neuro-ophthalmic principles and practice might help NFL game officials to improve precision and accuracy of on-the-field calls that will improve the enjoyment and integrity of the game of professional football.
- References:
- Iskander M, et al. Asia Pac J Ophthalmol (Phila). 2021;doi:10.1097/APO.0000000000000409.
- NFL officials: Preparing for success. https://operations.nfl.com/officiating/nfl-officials-preparing-for-success/. Accessed Jan. 16, 2023.
- Ong J, et al. NPJ Microgravity. 2022;doi:10.1038/s41526-022-00222-7.
- Waisberg E, et al. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2022;doi:10.3357/AMHP.6092.2022.
- Zapletal A. A structured curriculum in neuro-ophthalmic principles for National Football League (NFL) game officials: Comparison of pre- and post- training ratings of knowledge. Presented at: American Academy of Ophthalmology meeting; Sept. 30-Oct. 3, 2022; Chicago.
- For more information:
- Walt Anderson, of the National Football League, can be reached at walt.anderson@nfl.com.
- Bret Ayers, of the National Football League, can be reached at bret.ayers@nfl.com.
- Michael Carter, of William & Mary, can be reached at mcarter@wm.edu.
- Andrew G. Lee, MD, Herb and Jean Lyman Centennial Chair of Ophthalmology, Blanton Eye Institute, Houston Methodist Hospital; of Texas A&M College of Medicine; of Baylor College of Medicine; and of Weill Cornell Medicine, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, the UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, and the University of Buffalo, can be reached at aglee@houstonmethodist.org.
- Joshua Ong, MD, of Michigan Medicine, University of Michigan, can be reached at ongjo@med.umich.edu.
- Ethan Waisberg, of University College Dublin School of Medicine, can be reached at ethanweisberg@gmail.com.
- Nasif Zaman, of the Human-Machine Perception Laboratory, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Nevada, can be reached at zaman@nevada.unr.edu.
- Ashtyn Zapletal, of Texas A&M College of Medicine, can be reached at azapletal@tamu.edu.
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