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Follow live coverage of Super Bowl LVIII between the San Francisco 49ers and the Kansas City Chiefs
Harrison Butker has earned his reputation as one of the NFL’s great kickers. The two-time Super Bowl champion has made all 14 of his kicks in the Kansas City Chiefs’ postseason win this season and has become as reliable as Stephen Curry at his craft.
But in a bit of irony, it was Butker’s missed field goal in last year’s Super Bowl that brought it to the attention of Jason Cohen, CBS Sports’ vice president of remote technical operations.
With 2:24 left in the opening quarter of Super Bowl LVII between the Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles, Butker’s 42-yard field goal attempt broke the top of the left field at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. (Fox broadcaster Kevin Burkhardt said in describing the play: “So a good drive ends with a ‘doink’!”)
The kick is no good, but the game is still tied.
: #SBLVII on fox
📱: Stream NFL+ on https://t.co/d8gBDzRt2m pic.twitter.com/VzXUvUzSa0– NFL (@NFL) 13 February 2023
It so happened that Cohen and Mike Francis, vice president of engineering and technology at CBS Sports, were sitting in the end zone where the kick was missed. As Miss’s voice echoed through their section, Cohen and Francis looked at each other excitedly.
“The ball bounced off the pole and made a very loud sound – ‘dink,'” Cohen recalled this week. “We looked at each other and I said, ‘We need a camera overhead.'”
Immediately after Butker’s gaffe, Cohen sent a message to the NFL’s senior director of broadcasting, Blake Jones, who was working well. He excitedly told Jones that he wanted to put a camera overhead at this year’s Super Bowl when CBS was broadcasting the game. A pleased Jones immediately messaged Cohen and asked that they should talk after the Super Bowl.
Months of planning and testing have produced a set of “Doink” cameras for Sunday’s game. The CBS broadcast will feature a total of six 4K cameras placed in both end zones of Allegiant Stadium. The two cameras on each vertical camera are positioned at a 45 degree angle to the outside of the field. The other person faces straight in to get a side profile shot of the ball as it flies. They have high-resolution zoom capabilities and super slow-motion replay capabilities. CBS will be able to get great replays of any field goal or extra point, but the dream will be when one hits the post for Doink.
“Doink doesn’t just hit the camera when he hits it,” said Harold Bryant, CBS Sports executive producer and executive vice president of production. “If a field goal is tight, we have three different angles on each vertical, so we can see it in three different positions.”
Soon after sending the message to Jones, Cohen started researching the Internet and found a company, Sportsfield Specialties, which designs and manufactures sports equipment, including soccer goalposts. He sent a LinkedIn request to the company’s sales director during the game. Cohen and his team ultimately spent months preparing engineering drawings and sketches to ensure that the integrity of the upper sections would not be compromised. Sportsfield helped CBS with engineering the poles and cutting the holes. Cohen said that Fletcher Sports, a specialty camera-capture company that often works with CBS Sports, designed the upward-facing insert and figured out how to fit the camera.
The proof of concept initially came in a preseason game between the New York Jets and Tampa Bay Buccaneers at MetLife Stadium on August 19. Cohen and his group consulted with kicking analyst Jay Feely to get his perspective on what spots he thought might be good for the cameras.
“We presented our thoughts on this quite early on where we had a preseason plan,” Cohen said. “The NFL had time to evaluate the plan and then get back to us with their feedback after preseason testing.”
The next live test took place at Allegiant Stadium in October for the Week 6 game between the New England Patriots and Las Vegas Raiders. It took a lot of trial and error to get to this point, but Doink cameras got their television debut off to a successful kick.
Ryan Galvin, the lead replay producer for this year’s Super Bowl, explained how the dunk camera replay process will work practically on air. At the Super Bowl, production specialist Amanda Semerez will operate the machine that controls six cameras overhead. They call it “DOINK” in the production truck. Steve McKee, who normally produces the team of Andrew Catalan, Matt Ryan and Tiki Barber but is serving as the replay producer for this year’s Super Bowl, will oversee those cameras. If DOINK creates something memorable he will alert Galvin.
The Doink Cam fits upside down to give a unique view of field-goal and extra-point attempts. Each CBS goalpost will have three of them. (Courtesy of Jason Cohen)
Galvin, who has approximately 60 replay feeds, must ultimately decide which replay to use, including the doink camera in real time throughout the game. Galvin likes the technique but was quick to point out that ultimately you have to prepare for the game ahead of you and trust the people around you.
“A brand new look can be difficult for the audience,” said Galvin, who will officiate his seventh Super Bowl. “Would it be a little confusing? Can people ‘get it’ in six seconds? I am not smart enough to answer this. I know that Jason Cohen and our entire operations team work incredibly hard to fill the toolbox of cameras and replay machines for our crews. My job is to get the best replay possible on the broadcast when appropriate.
Jones said the NFL is always trying to identify the next broadcasting innovation. For example, Pylon Cam is now standard for major NFL games across all broadcast partners. The Super Bowl often presents an opportunity to do something unique, and sometimes what debuts in the Super Bowl can become standard production at the game.
Ultimately, such broadcast innovations are dictated by the networks as they are the ones who have to budget and invest in R&D. If the viewing public instantly falls in love with a certain camera, the NFL’s other media partners will surely take notice.
“It used to be that sky cams were something you only saw at big prime-time games,” Jones said. “Now it’s going to be more regular Sunday afternoon games. We will learn a lot after this week. Ultimately, these are network decisions that we are supporting and facilitating rather than saying you must have cameras X, Y and Z. It’s a very unique use case, and you need a certain part of the game to occur a certain way to get that ‘wow’ factor. It will be interesting to see how it all turns out.”
“There is no history of what is the right camera to capture the right thing,” Cohen said. “Part of it will be luck. Where will the ball possibly hit? What I will tell you is that we set up cameras in different locations for the preseason game in August and the game in October, where we looked at every possible angle, trying to see what the advantages and disadvantages were. …What we’ve come up with is what we think is the right height, angle and wide-angle lens.
A doink cam is in place and ready to go inside the goalpost with the plexiglass cover. (Courtesy of Jason Cohen)
Cohen said that testing showed that it is not just about the image of the football coming towards the viewer, but that the viewer also needs to look at other goal posts as reference to see whether the ball went in or out. No. Sportsfield Specialties was able to get the cameras where CBS wanted them through custom fitting. It consists of a camera cylinder tube with a piece of unbreakable plexiglass that slips directly into the pole through an opening at the rear. “Think of it as if there’s a little door or a chamber on the back, and this little camera slot inserted in the inside,” Cohen said. “Then a piece of plexiglass that is bent and pushed forward so that it is completely flush with the rest of the upright part.”
The Doink cameras and proper wiring were erected inside the Allegiant Stadium on Wednesday. The test was scheduled for Thursday night, when final field installation takes place. There will be a run-through on Friday as well. Cohen said he will sit in one of the CBS production trucks with other CBS executives at Super Bowl Sunday. He admits that he is favoring doing something.
Cohen said, “Look, you’re never the cause of anyone else’s suffering, and I don’t want to inflict bad karma on the world and hope that field-goal kickers don’t do their thing.” “But this is the kind of innovation that if someone hits post and our camera gets a great look, it will make us feel really happy about all the work and effort that went into inventing this angle. So when they line up for kick off on Sunday, I’ll definitely be holding my breath a little bit.”
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(Top photo of a monitor showing a view of the “Doink Cam” during a test in a preseason game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the New York Jets: Courtesy of Jason Cohen)
