It was from a Fox article by Mike Pereira:
Baltimore Ravens' winning field against New England Patriots not easy call - NFL News | FOX Sports on MSN
I am not sure though that the bolded part is true. A high speed camera pointing up from the bottom corners of the goalposts would catch this nicely, for a price
Thanks. Well, that's the proverbial "horse's mouth," so its got to be right.
But even the camera you suggest would be subject to judgment as to when the ball crossed the plane formed the by two uprights. The only foolproof way of using technology to determine the answer would be to have two synchronized sets of cameras, one to determine when the ball passes the plane created by the two goalposts and the second to determine where it is in relation to either goalpost when it does. That makes me think that it would be a lot simpler just to make the goalposts extend another four or five feet higher than the 30 feet that they do today in the NFL (the rule says "at least" 30 feet, so they could be longer, though I imagine that stability would be an issue if you wanted to keep them from swaying too much in a wind).
Heh, heh, now for the
"let's see if we can drive ourselves crazy" analysis.
The rule also specifies that the "width" of the goalpost be six inches, without, as far as I know, specifying whether it is circular or square. When I was a kid, most goal posts were wooden contraptions with square uprights, for example.
So, a circular goalpost with a width, or diameter, of six inches, would have a circumference of approximately 18.84954 inches and, more importantly, an area of 28.27431 square inches.
Now, it gets interesting.
We all studied in high school geometry that Archimedes proved that you cannot "square a circle," i.e., that you cannot construct a square whose area is equal to the area of a particular circle with the tools that would be available to someone constructing as mundane a contraption as a goalpost. My memory is rusty, but I think that means that a round goalpost with a diameter of six inches will always have only about 80% of the area of a square goalpost with sides of six inches.
Therefore, assuming the availability and installation of cameras capable of capturing this at the precise moment it occurs (big assumption), a kick that would be "no good" because it resulted in a very small part (to use your original language) of the football passing outside the outer arc of a circular goalpost with a diameter of six inches as it passed above that goalpost might indeed be "good" if the goalpost were square and comprised another 20% of surface area for the same width.
Conversely, a kick that was "no good" because it bounced off of the edge of a square goalpost six inches in width could indeed be "good" if it just passed inside, at an angle of course, the inner arc (with no "edge") of a round goalpost of six inches width.
What does all that mean?
To me it means that we have to accept that we're going to have to rely on the eyeballs of fallible human beings standing under thirty foot high goalposts and looking up either into a bright sun or the glare of stadium lights, with a split second in which to make a judgment, and hope that they get it right more often than they get it wrong.
