Scoreboard Bugs
Any insiders or tech-gurus have any thoughts as to why the stats portion of the Michigan Stadium scoreboards continues to be inaccurate when it's even operational?
I'll admit that I haven't gone to that many games since they went up for the 2011 season, but I can't recall a game when they worked for the entire game, if at all. So that's three years that these things have not worked properly. As a fan with seats low in the bowl, it's frustrating to not be able to know the down and distance. As an alum, it's a bit embarrassing with all the brains at this university that somebody can't figure out how to get accurate numbers to project on a screen and update in near real time.
September 9th, 2013 at 9:41 AM ^
September 9th, 2013 at 9:47 AM ^
Sometimes it works....but you're right. The board has been up for going on 3 years now and it's still pretty glitchy. WTF?
September 9th, 2013 at 9:47 AM ^
and that that explains it. But who knows. I did notice that they appear to have to type in down designations ("1st" etc.) one character at a time rather than selecting one from a list of options with a single keystroke, so even if students didn't design the program, it's obviously not optimally designed.
September 9th, 2013 at 9:48 AM ^
September 9th, 2013 at 4:40 PM ^
September 9th, 2013 at 10:00 AM ^
If our students had designed it, it would work just fine
September 9th, 2013 at 10:03 AM ^
I hang my head in shame for having thought any different.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:57 AM ^
Euphoria induces cloudy thinking
September 9th, 2013 at 11:47 AM ^
You must mean they'd outsource it to Google.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:02 AM ^
phones to input the information. Damned autocorrect.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:03 AM ^
Agreed. Why can't we have some basic boards installed that have important information available at ALL times: Score, Down, Distance. You can then put stats on the bottom portion and maybe they are not there all the time but you can use the whole video board portion for game broadcast.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:04 AM ^
Designing an interface for the scoreboard would be extremely easy for anybody skilled in computer programming or software engineering. Who ever designed it did a poor job.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:04 AM ^
September 9th, 2013 at 10:05 AM ^
It's been a problem almost every single game since the new boards went up in 2011. Even when they have worked, the person inputting the data has often been wrong -- there were a few games last year when the boards kept saying it was 1st and 6, for example, from the team's own 6 yard line (as in 94 yards away from a touchdown, not 1st and goal). There's no excuse, with as much as tickets cost and as much as those boards cost, to have them operated so poorly during games. I like having big video boards, but as scoreboards they are complete failures so far. I had seats low in the south endzone on Saturday, so for most of the game I had no idea what yardline the ball was on because the scoreboards never showed it correctly until the 4th quarter. For a long stretch of the first quarter (after the boards showed the score as 100-100 at one point) they just turned the scoreboard/stats part of the screen off completely.
September 9th, 2013 at 11:38 AM ^
Protip from 25 years in the north endzone. Look at the first down marker, then find the line judge. It's not the greatest but at least it gives you an idea of how far they need.
That said, I concur with all the complaints. A secondary board that constantly has this information (you know, like the one in every other football stadium in America) is needed. It would also free up that scoreboard space for more advertising.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:05 AM ^
I feel like they spend way too much time in "full screen for video" mode rather than "2/3rd screen for video, 1/3rd screen for score, down/distance, clock, other stats" mode. That's probably a deliberate decision rather than a bug, but it's annoying.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:17 AM ^
They only started doing this when the stats mode was reliably malfunctioning. When the boards first went up, there was always a stats stripe on the side. But I assume they started to go to fullscreen stream to cover up the consistently malfunctioning stats board.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:05 AM ^
I'm not sure if it is buggy or it just takes a lot of time to update so it's nearly perpetually behind. I've noticed this as well, and while it is frustrating I've just trained myself to look at the down marker on the field.
Hopefully it gets worked out.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:19 AM ^
The sideline markers definitely help with the down, but all the have to help with the distance is that little arrow they place on the turf for a first down marker. From the low seats in the endzone where there is no depth perception, the first down marker is nearly invisible with all the people standing on the sidelines.
September 9th, 2013 at 4:53 PM ^
This is very true and now that you bring it up I recall (admittedly slightly drunk) having difficulty telling the distance. I sit in row 21 in the north endzone and it was an issue when the teams were at the south endzone.
Let's get DB on the phone.
September 9th, 2013 at 1:25 PM ^
because at some games in the past, the boards/stats have worked OK. Even within the Notre Dame game itself, all the stats were non-functional at the beginning (leading them, as others have said, to just give up and use the boards for video only), and then gradually came back on-line with the exception of down and distance (which never got completely up to speed, or maybe only at the very end of the game). At other games, they've had different problems -- e.g., for Nebraska in 2011, the boards were almost totally non-functional, but that seemed to be a power problem, and in the early days of the boards, the statistics were either missing or laughably inaccurate. It's definitely puzzling (and irritating) that they seem to be able to run the boards properly sometimes but not others.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:09 AM ^
I was at the 2011 Nebraska game where we only had the game clock and the play clock for nearly a half of football.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:14 AM ^
Better to be in full screen video mode than 2/3 screen ad mode and 1/3 screen video mode.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:20 AM ^
problem. So, I guess the real issue, is making it a priority enough to remedy. So, maybe this thread needs to be submitted to the Athletic Department administration for review. I mean a basic element of the game experience is being properly informed about down and distance, and if the operator of the biggest stadium in college football can't get this right, then what does it say when you are touting yourself as having the most well-attended stadium in the country every year? Size isn't everything.
When you are at one end of the stadium, you really can't tell what the down and distance situation is, unless the scoreboard and the announcer tells you. So, I can see why this is annoying.
September 9th, 2013 at 11:02 AM ^
I don't use Twitter, but maybe somebody who does should tweet it at the AD. I thought about sending Brandon a link earlier but that seems like overkill and I don't have any email addresses intermediate between mtickets and Brandon.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:20 AM ^
MAybe with their new laser lights on top of the luxury boxes, they could project a yellow line down onto the field for the first down marker.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:28 AM ^
constantly either not updated fast enough or wrong for much of the game. It was as bad as when the new scoreboards first came online. I have NOT noticed it this bad since then. I find it hard to believe it's software, and am leaning strongly toward operator error. I sent an email to David Brandon complaining about it yesterday. If he sends a reply with any actual information other than "Thank you for your feedback", I'll let everyone know.
September 9th, 2013 at 10:55 AM ^
My best guess is that they went with a low-bid on the project and got a company that tried to do it on the cheap or just doesn't know what they are doing. Their code is probably a jumbled spaghetti mess and they don't know how to fix it. There is nothing worse than trying to fix a software project that has been mangled by people that don't know what they are doing.
Everyone always says that "coding is easy", and well yeah, for people who know what they are doing, it is. For people who don't know what they are doing, they create an unmanagable, unfixable mess and you end up with scoreboards that are still broken 3 years after they were installed.
This is a prime example of why being the first adopters of a system is risky. Obviously whoever put the scoreboards in Michigan Stadium hadn't put them up anywhere else first because they had never worked the kinks out, and still haven't, and don't really know how to develop software. It was obvious from day 1 when they turned them on that they had never even bothered to test the damn things at all. They were probably running so far behind schedule that they just slapped up whatever they had at the time. Just ridiculous.
September 9th, 2013 at 11:00 AM ^
September 9th, 2013 at 11:04 AM ^
is that I noticed that the "Michigan Stadium" lettering at the top of the scoreboard did not light up at all....I'm pretty sure that I've seen that light up maize before...
September 9th, 2013 at 4:41 PM ^
they used to light up.
September 9th, 2013 at 11:09 AM ^
The lack of down and distance is really just unacceptable. You get that information easily at most high school games. Given that the info is just wrong sometimes, I am guessing that whoever is doing it is just bad at their job.
While we're on the topic, the other thing that killed me on Saturday is the lack of replays in favor of constantly showing the "Big House Cam." There's no reason not to have a replay of every single play. Instead at least half of the time we get to see idiots in the crowd waving.
September 9th, 2013 at 11:27 AM ^
Less a function of "because we paid so much for tickets" and moreso because we should be an example of the very best possible, I agree that this needs to get fixed.
I also agree that the reason they went full-screen was to hide the fact that there was no reliable information on the board. 2Blue4You has a great point that small boards with score, time, down, and distance should be in a few locations and *always* visible.
I would like to see the *opposite* of what we have today. Instead of the very basics, which are frequently unreliable:
- Majority of screen is showing the play and replay
- A small dedicated portion shows score, time, down/distance, TOs
- An even smaller portion is constantly cycling through other stats, like rushing, passing, total yards, individual rushing/receiving leaders, QB stats, etc.
Again, this should not be expensive to implement, it just needs to be done by experienced people who understand the intricacies of pulling and displaying information from the database (after all, all the numbers are recorded in real-time as the plays happen).
I know the FanVision devices weren't very popular, but they had all of this, and more (including as many replays as you wanted) available in real time. The technology exists...
September 9th, 2013 at 2:07 PM ^
Depends on how the scoreboards are driven. If they are driven by proprietary custom software, it could be somewhat expensive to fix because based on the fact that it has been broken for 3 years and never worked properly to begin with, that software is probably a buggy jumbled mess.
Still, it should be a hell of a lot cheaper to fix than whatever the ridiculous cost of the actual scoreboards was. You just have to be willing to hire the right people, whch they clearly aren't.
September 9th, 2013 at 5:07 PM ^
It was done with a series of light bulbs. And you always knoew the down and distance. Now get off my lawn.
September 9th, 2013 at 2:47 PM ^
The OP asks "why" they don't work. We can try to speculate on all sorts of reasons. But none of the excuses suffices. This crap should have been ironed out entirely after the first season the boards were in place. The problem lies with the company/people the AD hired to program and operate the boards. Who ever they are, they suck at it. It can't be a budget problem. Neither can it be due to a lack of local technical expertise.
Hey, I have an idea: how about they get out and PRACTICE with the fucking thing? You know, make sure it works on FRIDAY when there's noone there instead of finding out it doesn't on Saturday when it matters.
THIS IS MICHIGAN fergodsakes!
September 9th, 2013 at 4:21 PM ^
Maybe it's time to go back to this.
