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I am reading an ESPN story about how the Patriots may have been trying to intercept and video tape signals from Jets coaches to players this weekend.

Signal stealing has been a part of football for decades, and maybe even since the start of the game.

Which makes me wonder: Has anybody ever tried to listen in on the radio frequencies between coach and quarterback during a game? In case you don't know, coaches (or the people they designate, sometimes backup quarterbacks), have a headset they can use to transmit information to pro quarterbacks on the field. They used to yell out their instructions, but now they use electronics.

I know the signals are "scrambled," but it seems like it would be worth so much to somebody to figure out a code crack. Click here to see the "in helmet" devices and price lists. You will notice these "kits" even have "extreme noise" add-ons.

Cox News Service says:

Earlier this year, NFL owners voted down a proposal to allow a coach-to-defense radio signal. The owners said it would cause too much confusion and slow the game down, though they say the coach-to-quarterback radio devices speed the game up.

Here is a 2005 article from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that explains how the hand and radio signals work in pro-football. Did you know that when the ball is snapped or when the play clock hits 15 seconds there is an official who turns off the coach-to-quarterback radio signal? And then there are the wristbands that the quarterbacks wear, which act as secret decoder rings of sorts.

Switching sports, how hard would it be for opposing teams to pick off signals from a third-base coach to a runner or hitter in baseball? What about the catcher-to-pitcher codes that TV coverage often shows all the time? One coaching site says:

The site goes on to explain how complicated the whole two-second exchange can become:


Of course, the signals could change game to game, and relief pitchers have to know what the signal order of the day is.  

This 2005 story from The Journal News of New York gives an inside peek at the hidden signals used in baseball. It may just be true that baseball involves more non-verbal signals than any other sport. This topic could make for a great multimedia piece.

The most common signs the third-base coaches use (especially with kids), are for the third-base coach to tell the batter to bunt by grabbing his belt (B for Belt, B for Bunt). He might touch his leg to tell the base runner to steal. See? Leg for Run? And swiping his hand across his chest would be the signal for hit and run. Then there are "wave offs" like touching his cap. If the third-base coach touches his cap at any time during the signal, it means everything is off. Don't pay attention to this signal at all. Touching the sleeves or clapping the hands, for example, might not mean anything at all other than being a distraction.

Here is a terrific video on YouTube that explains how baseball signals work.

I wonder how often the codes are changed considering how often players get traded ...

I think this is the kind of sports story that could appeal to everyone. Even those of us who do not live for box scores like to know more about the games we watch.

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Sports Sites Getting Interactive and Creative

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Web site, JSOnline.com, has a remarkable resource that is worth a look. JSOnline has entered all of Brett Favre's 414 regular-season touchdown passes into a sortable online database. There is also a separate list of his playoff touchdown passes.

As JSOnline explains:
 
I asked the site editor, Mike Davis, to tell us about the project:

How did you do this?
The only way we found we could get what we wanted on each touchdown pass was to sift through 15 years of Packers media guides. We couldn't find all of the information anywhere else on the Web. But each media guide has pretty extensive game summaries from the season before. One of our online sports producers, Rick Klauer, logged the data on each touchdown pass into a spreadsheet, then double and triple-checked his work with one of his colleagues.
Then we had to think, how would readers want to play with all of this information? In addition to a complete list, with each of the 11 columns of data being sortable, we wanted to offer readers a way to play with the information, to refine their results in a variety of ways.
Then we designed it, built the guts of the database engine, tested the heck out of it and put it online.
 

Why did you do this?
 

Mike Davis

Because it's Brett Favre. It's the Packers. We have online readers from more than 200 countries, and much of that's surely due to the Packers' worldwide fan base. A large part of our online traffic is to our Packers coverage. With Favre approaching Dan Marino's career touchdown record of 420, we knew we wanted to do something special. This was the first step in preparing for the big story.

 
Give us a peek inside the conversation of how you conceptualized the idea. How was it pitched? How was the idea refined?
 
Once we decided on the basics of what we wanted to do -- give readers every touchdown pass Favre's ever thrown -- we just brainstormed about how we could make it easy to use and fun to play with. We wanted users to be able to slice and dice the data in lots of different ways and maybe even win a friendly bar bet with some offbeat "Did You Know" information.
What has the public's reaction been?
 
... We just launched it this afternoon, and in the first hour, on a Friday afternoon, before we really started promoting it throughout the site or in the newspaper, we got about 3,000 page views. So I think it'll be a hit with fans.

Another of my other favorite interactive sports sites recently was this one from The New York Times. The site charts the "path" to Barry Bond's home run record. You can click on the chart and compare Bond's path with other noteworthy players.

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Estimated Mileage on New Cars Finally Means Something

The new cars rolling off assembly lines this month arrive on showroom floors with new Environmental  Protection Agency (EPA) estimated-mileage stickers which actually may give you useful information for a change.

The Wall Street Journal says:

For nearly three decades, the auto industry has benefited from government-sanctioned hype in the form of the mileage estimates displayed on the window stickers of new cars. Now, as 2008 models roll out into showrooms, the window sticker information about mileage is getting an overdue makeover, in both style and substance.

The style part is a redesigned fuel-economy label, required for all vehicles built after Sept. 1. The new label will prominently display more detailed information about a vehicle's likely annual fuel costs, and how a given model's estimated fuel economy compares with other vehicles in its class. Instead of just relying on small print to convey data, the new labels will use simple graphical devices.

The more important change is in the method used to produce the city and highway mileage figures for 2008 models.

As prescribed by law, the "driving" used in the Environmental Protection Agency's fuel economy tests bore little resemblance to the behavior of motorists in the real world. The highway mileage test, for example, used a top speed of just 60 miles an hour, and the average speed during the test was 48 mph. The temperature for the test was a mild 75 degrees. The cars were run without the use of energy-sapping accessories such as air conditioning.

To account for the discrepancy between the test conditions and real life, the government would "adjust" the mileage results. The last time the formula was changed was in 1984. The EPA concluded that it should reduce the city miles-per-gallon figures by 10% and the highway number by 22%. But even that wasn't enough for many models or many drivers.

The Journal says in the old days the inflated test results helped car makers. But when gas hit $3 a gallon and people were buying cars expressly for their EPA ratings, buyers grew increasingly annoyed when their new cars didn't get the advertised gas mileage. So the Feds have come up with a new standard that may be more accurate.

The mileage estimates for the new 2008 model window stickers reflect a new, more rigorous approach to testing. Instead of relying solely on the old city-highway mileage test protocols, the EPA is now factoring in the way cars perform in three other tests, designed originally to determine whether vehicles met tailpipe pollution standards. EPA scientists a few years ago got some residents of Kansas City, Mo., to agree to have their cars outfitted with testing gear, and concluded from the results that the emissions tests could be used to gauge fuel consumption as well, EPA spokesman John Millett says.

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Are Muslims Allowed to Dye Their Hair/Beard?
Osama bin Laden's newest video raises an ethical question that has a more complicated and fascinating answer than you might think. Click here for Slate.com's podcast for further explanation.

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Comic Books on Cellphones
As publishers look for ways to engage readers, comic books are arriving on cell phone screens.

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