It's Discount Week! 🎁 Pick up new Marketplace gear at a discount when you donate today! Get My Gear!
Codebreaker

Paper vs. iPad. NFL style.

Adriene Hill Aug 29, 2012

NFL coaches are abandoning paper binders full of super-secret plays and strategies in favor of iPads. Apparently making all those paper binders can be really expensive (think $100,000 a season). Plus, it doesn’t sound like they were recycling. From CITEWorld:
“Until recently, they were printed and arranged into binders, distributed to players the week before the game, then destroyed and pulped after the game was over.”
Adding updates required getting pages to each player. (Hey guys. Good practice. Now we have a few handouts for you to add to page 76 of your binders… One for you, one for you, one for you…)
“Plus, players are also supposed to watch hours of film from every game, which was a totally separate process.”
Makes some sense, I suppose. But it’ll be interesting to see how the season goes for those teams that have made the change to the IPad (about 10 teams) and those that haven’t. I can imagine it’s a whole lot harder to memorize calls and plays and your opponents’ weaknesses when you’ve got Twitter and Facebook right there…begging for just a moment of your attention.
(@aaronrodgers Me too. RT @tonyromo Wish I could get a slice of cheese pizza right now. )
With a binder all you can do if you get bored is click the thing open and closed.

There’s a lot happening in the world.  Through it all, Marketplace is here for you. 

You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible. 

Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.