Football: The College Teams

Instant Replay.

An anecdote related by sports historians Randy Roberts and James S. Olson demonstrates the evolution of college football (and all televised sports, for that matter) during the 1960s, as television began to redefine the game for fans. In 1960 Roone Arledge asked ABC engineer Bob Trachinger if it would be possible to replay a piece of sports videotape in slow motion to show how a play developed and to verify a close call by a referee. Trachinger went to work on what became instant replay, which was tested during the Boston College-Syracuse University football game that year. Arledge re-called, "That was a terrific game, and at one point Jack Concannon, a sophomore quarterback, was trapped in the pocket but ended up running seventy yards for a touchdown. Six or eight people had a shot of him and we replayed the whole thing in slow motion with Paul Christman analyzing the entire play as it unfolded. Nobody had ever seen...

[The entire page is 940 words long]

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