Counting Tanks in the Fulda Gap

GEN William Odom's excellent book, The Collapse of the Soviet Military, relays an interesting anecdote -- that Soviet military officials trusted the western military journals and publications like Jane's for accurate counts of how big their forces were more than official reports. What any of this has to do with big-time football is up for interpretation, but let me take a stab.

As long as there has been football there have been signals -- signals for defenses, signals for offenses and signals for special teams. And, in response, opposing teams have invested varying levels of efforts in identifying and exploiting those signals for competitive advantage on the field. If an opposing coaching staff could capture the signals, it would have the keys to the kingdom, a way by which to drive a trojan horse through the gates of opposing squads. Within these horses would be special blitz packages, offensive sets exploiting a fatal flaw in the defense, and other assorted tricks.

The recent flap concerning the New England Patriots' signals intercept operation brings to light how much this activity has advanced. It's not enough for the backup quarterback wearing the ballcap and the smartly starched jersey to cover his mouth. It's also not enough for a half dozen grown men to gesticulate like so many mimes on a Parisian thoroughfare to mask what the true signal call really is in this sport.

No, in this case, it appears a modern NFL franchise has a fully integrated electronic information-gathering and supporting electronic warfare capability as well. The first activity is an old-hand practice simply brought into the modern era. The second apparent activity -- not officially confirmed, mind you, but still fascinating -- shows just how far people are willing to go to get a W on the field.

Scouting, and its mischievous sisters spying and sabotage, all play a role in the sport of football. One of the reasons Bowl Subdivision conferences have rules against intra-conference transfers is to prevent top talent from taking competitive data to rival teams. If you want an example of how devastating signals and play formation "source codes" can be in football, look at what Tampa Bay Coach Jon Gruden did when his Buccaneers faced off against the Oakland Raiders in the Super Bowl a few years ago.

It's really easy nowadays to generate a complete picture of an opposing team using common open-source material. A lot of that has to do with the sports portion of the Internet organizing into a form of collective intelligence that provides everything from comprehensive statistical analysis to the intimate activities of head coaches. The other factor is that technology is lighter, cheaper and more agile than before -- and the trend is continuing in the forward direction, not the other way. You can pack more and more data on smaller and smaller microchips. The smaller the package, and the more data it has, the more information you can carry, and the easier it is to make it portable. In other words, a single IPod probably has more power than WOPR.

Football is a marital sport, as we all know. It is not war, but its characteristics -- formations, groupings of personnel, the craft of specialists like nickel defensive backs and 3rd-down running backs, all lend themselves to martial bearing and style. We always hear words like field general thrown about by the commentariat. However much of an overstatement it is to compare football to war, and indeed, it very much is -- the analogies are easy to make because the parallels, however broad, are there.

It could be a simple task as counting how many tanks the Reds have, ie, how many different formations Arkansas will use against Alabama this week. Or, if we are to believe the assertion in the NY Daily News, it means actively trying to sabotage communications, ie, shooting anti-radiation missiles at a SAM radar site.

In light of the NFL's determination that indeed New England did break the rules, I wonder what steps teams both at the college and pro levels are taking to defend themselves.

This is something to watch as the season progresses at both ranks.