Fast on the heels of Major League Baseball’s Statcast, the National Football League has announced that it will start sharing data from its games as well.  Next Gen Stats will use sensors embedded in players’ shoulder pads to track them on the field.  Following key plays, Next Gen will break down the data into slick illustrations that fans can watch on certain Microsoft devices (a gimme to MSFT owing to their long-time NFL sponsorship, presumably).

Like TRON, only with PEDs

While undeniably cool and very appropriate for the Madden fans out there, this venture may end up biting the NFL in the ass.

While the NFL has been dealing with recent scandals involving one of their top players and a drumbeat of domestic violence cases, it has also had an issue with player concussions.

I have to imagine that some data-focused fan will start collecting velocity and acceleration/deceleration data from this app and start calculating the forces involved throughout the game.  In turn, these calculations will only underscore the risks of concussion on pretty much every play in the game.

And those risks do not make for a pretty highlight reel.