Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Possible Fallout From The Pat Tillman Tribute Glitch?


Almost two weeks ago, the Arizona Cardinals unveiled their tribute to Pat Tillman, and attempted to play audio and video on the giant screens inside the stadium honoring his life. Unfortunately, the audio part of the tribute did not play correctly, and many fans were "angered at the perceived disrespect shown to a football player many of them had followed for years". The Cardinals issued an apology a few days later saying:

"During the Ring of Honor ceremony for Pat Tillman at halftime of Sunday’s game against the Cowboys, the tribute that ran on the stadium’s scoreboard did not operate properly and we sincerely apologize for that. While the technical reasons for those audio problems have been addressed, the bottom line is that we dropped the ball. Our intent was to provide a very special tribute to Pat and in the end we did not do that. We regret that very much."

Currently, there's an advertisement for a Video/Scoreboard Engineer position with the Arizona Cardinals. The responsibilities include: "the operation, installation, design and maintenance of all production systems throughout the University of Phoenix Stadium building including all control room equipment, RF transmission equipment, television, sound, communications, closed captioning and signal distribution systems. The Engineers must also be able to meet the requirements of the broadcasters that interface with video/audio systems."

Makes you wonder if the "technical reasons" were mostly human related.