John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports
The Kansas City Chiefs have become one of the latest NFL teams to put their playbook on an iPad.
The tablet market is continuing to explode and NFL teams are getting in on the act. A recent story on Fox Sports detailed how the Chiefs, along with the Jacksonville Jaguars, have moved their playbooks from paper to digital.
From Fox Sports:
"All the teams have gone to great lengths to make sure their iPads don’t get hacked — and safety nets put into place in case one gets lost or, dare we say, in the wrong hands.“Our security is very strong,” a Chiefs spokesman told FOX Sports. “The iPads will be managed by a mobile device management console along with multifactor level security.”The precautions don’t end there.If a player loses an iPad – which usually results in a five-figure fine – the team can wipe it clean remotely. That is something that can’t be done with a hardcopy playbook. Even though those are collected at season’s end or when a player is released, one former league executive told FOX Sports that copies from every squad are “floating out there.”"
In many ways, this is a smart move by the Chiefs. Many players probably already have a tablet of their own and are familiar with how to use them. Being able to quickly access different sets of plays with just a few swipes of their finger should help the players cram more information into their brains than searching through endless pages in a binder.
Still, you have to believe that at some point, a player on some team is going to lose their iPad or have it hacked. The Fox Sports article says that these iPads are strictly used as playbooks and can have restrictions on internet use.
It will be interesting to see if an NFL team’s playbook ends up online for all to see one day. Who wouldn’t like to get a peak at the Chiefs’ playbook?
What do you think, Addicts? Is putting playbooks on iPads smart or risky?