Wilson X Connected Football turns practice into an epic game
The team at Wilson X behind the Connected Basketball has come up with the next logical sports equipment innovation: the Connected Football.
Like the Wilson X basketball, launched last year, the Connected Football is engineered to help aspiring and current football players improve their throwing by gamifying practice.
On the outside, the ball looks like any normal football, but inside the ball contains an accelerometer, a Bluetooth radio and a sensor battery that lasts for about 200,000 throws.
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During a demonstration in New York last week, the company showed off how the ball measures a thrower's distance, spin rate, speed and spiral efficiency. The ball also detects catches and drops. All this information is sent via Bluetooth to a free app (available for iOS and Android) and presented in several game-style data statistic boards after you've completed various goal challenges.
And while measuring throwing effectiveness using embedded sensors is still a fairly new method, the Wilson demonstration, which pitted two would-be quarterbacks against each other, immediately illustrated the identifiable differences in each individual's throwing technique with detailed statistics delivered via the app.
Among all the different practice games, the most interesting so far is GameTime, which allows you to make yourself the quarterback of any NFL team and play against any opposing NFL team. Using sound effects around your incremental field progress and featuring voiceovers from a professional football analyst, it might be easy to get swept up and turn practice into a real competitive exercise.
"Wilson X is all about the concept of bringing to life these big game moments, but in the backyards and driveways across the U.S.," Bob Thurman, vice president of Wilson Labs, told Mashable. "[It's for] any two people with a football, whether they want to play or just pass, we want to bring that moment to life."
The ball is available now for pre-order for $199.99, a price that includes an arm sleeve for your smartphone, which allows you to view your statistics in real time as you practice. However, unlike the Connected Basketball, the Connected Football also comes in a junior size, for kids, also priced at $199.99.
Can gamifying practice using a sensor-enabled ball and tracking software truly make a difference in your game? It's early days, so it's too soon to tell, but this very logical step toward harnessing mobile technology in the age of sports analytics is too full of potential to ignore. So no matter what the early results, Wilson's growing line of Connected balls are a welcome "first down" into the future.
The official on sale date for the Connected Football is Sept. 8, which is also the date of the first game of this year's NFL season.
Topics Apps & Software Bluetooth
