When you’re a football player, you rely on your team’s playbook for learning and referencing different plays and strategies. For the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, iPad 2s will replace hefty playbooks. And the team’s 90 players will be able to peruse NFL video archives from the .34 inch tablet.
Instead of using the phone book-sized playbooks that were previously required, players will have a much better experience using digital copies of the playbooks on iPads, according to the St. Petersburg Times.
The Buccaneers fell in love with the iPad when coach Raheem Morris started showing videos of potential players with GM Mark Dominik and Player Personnel Director Dennis Hickey. Morris understands how the iPad changes his field of work:
“With this iPad, I can just flick through, and if that play doesn’t apply to me, I just touch it and get out of there and go here, and there’s third down. Get out of there, and let’s go to the red zone. Okay, there’s the nickel. It’s a different deal now.”
The iPads are also a huge draw for the players themselves, who are already addicted to their smartphones and computers anyway.
“But I think guys are really more likely to go home and take a look at their plays (with the iPad),” Graham said. “It’s the way guys these days are about anyway. Now all of a sudden you’ve got to take your playbook home.
“It’s not that guys don’t want to look at plays, but it’s the convenience. … Guys are accustomed to already doing things on their iPads anyway.”
It’s worth noting that two of the teams vertran players, Earnest Graham and Jeff Faine, still prefer taking notes the good old fashioned way on paper.
With the iPad’s reasonable price tag of $500, the Buccaneers had no problem ordering the tablets for the players. The best part: Apple’s Find My iPhone service gives the coaches peace of mind, because, in the event that an iPad is lost, the device can be remotely wiped. That way, the competition can’t get its hands on the Buccaneers’ plays.
