The Game goes digital

By Roger Kuo

So you missed the 2000 Harvard-Yale Game. Maybe you booked your flight too far in advance. Or maybe you just don't like football. Whatever your reason, you no longer have to stare blankly at your friend when he asks you, "What did you think about Eric Johnson's amazing touchdown in the fourth quarter?" Why? Because 2000 marks the first year the Yale Athletics Department has ever broadcast The Game over the Internet using streaming video. The video is available at the Yale Athletics Department webpage under the football section. RealPlayer 8 is required to view the broadcast.

JUSTIN CHEN/YH

The beginnings of the webcast

The idea of broadcasting The Game over television was not a new idea. The Game was televised via satellite to hundreds of Harvard and Yale Clubs across the country and on a local cable channel in Boston. Brian Dowling, legendary Yale quarterback during the '60s and subsequent professional football player, called the shots for these broadcasts alongside Harvard football star Vic Gatto. But it was not until this year that Benjamin Slotznick '70 approached Dowling and presented to him the idea of streaming video. Dowling agreed, and the webcast was born.

The technical aspects were managed by Ed Kairiss, Director of Instructional Computing at Yale ITS, and undergraduate Gabe Nevarez, PC '01. Though simple in theory, the implementation of the webcast was no small feat. Sophisticated software and hardware, coupled with a fair amount of computer expertise were required to complete the job. To make matters easier, Kairiss and Nevarez used two very powerful workstations and RealNetworks software developed by Rob Glaser, a Yale alumnus and former editor of the Yale Daily News.

The first workstation, the "encoder station," accepted feeds directly from the satellite and compressed the signal in real time without sacrificing signal quality. In order to do this, an intricate computer program was crafted to tailor encoding options to each individual rebroadcast of the signal. As Nevarez described it, "The process is more of an artform than an empirical science."

The compressed signal was then sent to the second workstation, which distributed the signal to clients and decided on the quality and number of feeds. RealNetworks software was particularly useful during this stage because it had a built-in algorithm that automatically changed the signal depending on the user's Internet connection, a feature unique to streaming technology.

Trials and tribulations

There were, of course, several administrative obstacles that had to be overcome. The Yale Athletics Department needed to grant permission for Yale ITS to implement the webcast. Rich Kaplan, head of the athletics web team, and Steve Conn, director of sports publicity, proved invaluable in this regard. Slotznick also needed Dowling's express written permission to be faxed to Yale's legal department for review. Even on short notice, all of these were accomplished within a week.

Many technical difficulties also arose. Kairiss and Nevarez were constantly forced to deal with unexpected glitches, cramped quarters, and tangled wires. There were also concerns over the quality of the video using slower dial-up connections. One day before the game, Slotznick and Nevarez spent a lengthy amount of time on the phone, testing the streaming video as Slotznick watched from his home in Mt. Greta, Pennsylvania with a 56K dial-up connection. Sam Rubin, '95, webmaster of the Yale Football site, was also involved in linking pages to the webcast server. Finally, by kickoff, the webcast was ready to be viewed.

Yale has made many efforts in the past to broadcast football games, but never with streaming video. Both 960AM and 1340AM broadcast all ten Yale football games—people can tune into the 1340AM broadcast over the Internet at http://www.broadcast.com/radio/college/wybcam/. 1340AM also features a pre-game show 15 minutes before kickoff with a game preview and an interview with Head Coach Jack Siedlecki.

TEMLINE offers a paid service where people can listen to a broadcast of Yale football games over the phone—see the Yale Athletics site for details.

Sam Rubin, Rick Kaplan, Ed Kairiss, and Gabe Nevarez also implemented a precursor of the webcast for the Yale-Columbia game online by displaying snapshots of the game that refreshed every few seconds. Thus, people could tune into 1340AM and watch the snapshots at the same time.

The webcam met with considerable success. One fan responded: "The picture was very clear and the transmission came through easily, with no interruptions or delays. I could read the numbers on the jerseys and readily identify all the participants, referees, coaches, trainers, etc." Another fan commented: "Thanks so much for putting the WEB CAM on the 'net for the Yale v. Columbia game! We have a son on the team and cannot get to every game so we clicked on the web cam link and also the radio link and enjoyed the game." The overwhelmingly positive response for the webcam that Rubin and Kaplan received encouraged them to further pursue the webcast with streaming video.

The benefits of streaming broadcasts of football games, they reasoned, would be very far reaching. Such webcasts would enable parents previously unable to attend football games to see their sons play. Yale students that do not have the time or cannot make it to the stadium could still catch all of the football and excitement.

Furthermore, Ivy League football games tend to get much less media coverage compared to other colleges. Therefore, the webcast would be one of the very few ways to follow Yale football games without people actually being at the Yale Bowl. The stream is also designed so that even people using a slower dial-up Internet connection can enjoy watching the game without losing too much video quality.

Looking ahead

In the end, the webcast was a success story that fulfilled Slotnick's vision "that Yale can be a leader in deploying Internet technologies," and is a prime example of how many generations of Yalies across several departments can work together to make a dream come to life. But Slotznick's vision does not end there; in fact, this is just the beginning. The webcast is still in its experimental stages, and as it is further developed, the Yale community can expect to see streaming video of: other sporting events, drama productions, and even class lectures.

So get ready as Yale prepares itself for a streaming video revolution. Except this revolution will be televised—on the Internet, that is.