virtfoot

Issue #44

Last Update March 2, 2006

Technology Digital Sports by Sten Grynir With the University of Phoenix, a private, for profit university, growing into one of the largest educational institutions in the world – mostly through on-line classes – and practically every other college and university in the nation offering some form of “distance learning”, from individual courses through graduate degrees, we must give some thought to what will become of the college experience. Alumni of these programs may never have stepped foot on a real campus. The ivied halls will have given way, in their memories, to Gateway screens or Macintosh monitors. Graduates will never have met their professors, or their fellow students, face to face. What will happen to school spirit, formed from common experience and shared tribulations, and marinated in fanatical team loyalties? When technology creates a problem, technology often has the answer. I propose the creation of a virtual football league, with digital teams from all the universities and colleges that offer on-line degrees.

Software already exists to accommodate this. University of Michigan football players are already being trained using the Virtual Football Trainer, a virtual reality environment that is used to provide players with fast reactions to other teams' tendencies and defensive maneuvers. Built for a room sized cube, the CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment) allows three-dimensional player animations to be projected on the walls and floor.

Outside academia, there are virtual football leagues that mimic professional football, and anyone can become a team owner. To give just two examples, a virtual baseball game, “Ultimate Baseball Online”, a multiplayer on-line sports game with 3D views that is about to be released, allows players to use an avatar to bat pitch, field, run, steal and perform any other baseball action. Such a game could be the basis of the Distance Learning Conference, the league for virtual colleges. In addition, VBL, The Virtual Baseball League has already been in existence since 1995, and has three sub-leagues. This uses a statistics-intensive game program to simulate games. Drafts, waivers and trades are used to acquire players. There is even a Virtual Player Scouting Group for player rankings.

Of course, player statistics, managerial strategy and random selection of environmental characteristics are not all there is to Virtual College football or baseball. Schools are full of computer-wise students who would love a crack at hacking the game and improving their team's chances. Rather than outlawing this, it should become part of the league environment. Like the engineering students who compete to build the best solar-powered car, or the computer science students who compete at creating the smartest chess-playing computer, students with technical backgrounds should be encouraged to help build the most effective team. Team sports are always more than muscles and guts; brains are important, and should be even more so than in virtual sports.

Think of the benefits of this concept. Rather than spending millions for a stadium, or laying out huge sums to coaches, trainers and other ancillary personnel, or giving out large sums in athletic scholarships, virtual sports is a low-overhead, highly visible method of doing what live team sports do at such great cost, and by using the internet, any student or almnus/a anywhere can attend the games, free.

Of course, there are additional factors to be considered for virtual football. What about the half-time show? Electronic Music majors and visual arts students could make a contribution here. And with porn sites already selling virtual sex and virtual sports leagues soon to come, can virtual cheerleaders be far behind?