gopro

With it seeming more and more likely that the Big Ten Championship Game will have little to no impact on the College Football Playoff, interest seems to be fading at a rapid pace.

But what’s one way to gets fans interested again? GoPros!

Yes, during Saturday’s game between Wisconsin and Penn State in Indianapolis, the referees will wear a special hat that features a GoPro on it. This footage will be available to the folks at FOX while the game is happening.

This announcement comes after referees wore similar hats during this past Saturday’s game between the Badgers and Minnesota. Here’s some of the footage.

Along with college football, the NHL is also doing something similar. Where college football has the leg up, however, is its ability to use the footage in real-time. The NHL can only use the footage after the game. Here are some more details on what FOX is planning to do with this footage during the broadcast.

The project is part of a deal between FOX Sports Lab and GoPro to offer new viewing experiences to viewers. It’s not yet clear if the hats will just have a store-bought GoPro attached, or be a custom-built wearable with an integrated camera and wireless system.

Footage captured from the camera-hats will be shown on FOX during the broadcast, as well as made available online and on FOX Sports’ social media accounts.

While this technology is still in its early stages, it’s easy to see how this could be beneficial in the long-run. The modern football fan is always looking for more replay angles. This is just one more and probably the closest we could get to the action.

UPDATE: ESPN has informed us that they have used referee GoPro cameras for the WNBA and Friday Night Fights as far back as 2013. So FOX’s GoPros aren’t a brand new innovation, though they do seemingly represent a next step in popularizing the concept.

[Tech Crunch]