I’ve always been intrigued how technology integrates with sports. During my Little League baseball days I always volunteered to operate the electronic scoreboard when our team was not playing. When I entered high school I became fascinated with the weight
machines used to condition the players. Some might argue that technology tends to remove the human element from the game but I feel otherwise. I cannot imagine football or basketball games without “instant relay”. This marvel of technology allows the fans and officials to scrutinize every play and virtually eliminates human errors of bad calls or biased views. Watching USC play Michigan at last year’s Rose Bowl was an unbelievable visual and emotional experience. Every down was replayed on a giant high-resolution video screen pictured to the right. The mega-sized instant replay allowed the Trojan and Wolverine fans to follow the individual heroics of their favorite players and understand the game strategies. Instant replay has also become an essential part of basketball and soccer where referee decisions on precise location and timing can make the difference between winning and losing. It is only a matter of time until baseball replaces home plate umpires with electronic sensors to determine balls and strikes. We may all like to yell at the men in black for making bad calls, but technology makes for greater entertainment and that is why I believe in technology.This past November before the USC-UCLA game, my high school classmate, Jeremy Weinstein, and myself devised a plan to create T-shirts we could sell at the upcoming football game. Jeremy is currently an Economics major at Cal Berkley and an ardent Bruin basher. We agreed to work this joint venture over the Internet. I knew the T-shirt would be widely popular among USC students because it exaggerated the embarrassing stun gun incident at UCLA the week before the game. The challenge to us was to design, create, produce, and sell the shirt within a week. I
used the Internet to market the shirt to USC students and also describe a conceptual design to Jeremy. Any excess shirts we couldn’t sell online would be bartered at the stadium immediately before the game. Jeremy returned a cartoon caricature of a Trojan using a taser weapon on a Bruin (see picture to left) in less than a day. Based on the process that I observed my father use when ordering uniforms for the Santa Monica Little League, I knew it was possible to produce the shirts in less than one week. Any reputable silkscreen shirt company only needed a CD-ROM with a JPEG image rendering the shirt design. I located a local silkscreen company that had the required computer automated equipment for a fast turnaround. With the right technology I had no doubt the shop could complete the job on time. Four days later, 100 shirts were mass-produced at a local silkscreen factory just off campus in time for us to start selling them before the game. Even though we risked $400 of our own precious funds, we were able to turn a profit in the end. And that is why I continue to believe in technology.
