The Many Color Options
Stan Honey and his technical team were faced with a seemingly trivial decision that would have a profound impact on televised football, choosing the color that the first down line would become. Many factors were involved in their decision making, field color, common jersey colors and conditions(think snow). The color chosen had to be sharp enough to be easily seen by fans but not sharp enough to distract from the action of the event, a mistake learned from the illuminated hockey puck which was notorious for distracting from the game itself. While a wide range of colors were considered, Honey and his team narrowed in on for colors yellow, orange, blue and red. Eventually yellow was decided upon because in the words of Rick Caravallo, a senior VP of technology at Sportsvision "Orange would make more sense because the chain gang has orange flags. But orange looks bad and yellow looks good."
Choosing yellow was not an easy decision because orange, blue and red all had benefits and drawbacks. Each color except orange presented a challenge in the NFL because blue, yellow and red all match up with a few teams' jersey color presenting a significantly more difficult engineering problem than simply projecting onto a blank green field. Sportsvision stuck to the important design principle that technological limitations should not prevent a designer from creating the most aesthetically pleasing product. After eliminating orange, the color that represents live first downs, the color decision became increasingly more difficult. A major reason blue was ruled out is that a significant portion of NFL teams have blue in their jersey color scheme. Although presently the technology is advanced enough to paint the line under players, the technology in 1998 was advanced enough to always product an accurate result. The NFL predicated the design of the yellow line because televised NFL games had significantly higher revenue than college football however a blue line would have proven problematic because Boise State, a prominent college football team, plays on a blue field. With blue ruled out yellow and red remained, both colors are only in a few NFL color schemes and both are sharp enough that fans would be able to perceive while watching. The engineers at Sportsvision decided between the two colors in what they saw as the most difficult NFL game to display the yellow first down line, "the San Francisco 49ers playing the Green Bay Packers at sunset, after a recent rain." This was the most difficult situation because the 49ers have red jerseys and yellow-gold pants, the Packers have green jerseys and yellow pants and a fresh rain would mean that either Lambaeu or Candlestick parks' grass would be fairly muddy and brown and green in various patches. In this stress situation both colors conflicted with jersey color and red would be more likely to conflict with red-brown dirt created in muddy conditions. The conflict of red with dirt and its harsher connotation than yellow lead to yellow eventually being selected as the color for the first down line that would change the game of football forever.
Interestingly some networks have capitalized on red's slightly harsher connotation than yellow, using a red line for the first down in on 4th down, a team's last chance to convert on downs or be forced to turn the ball over to the other team. Black and blue have also been introduced as a line of scrimmage marker or a field goal kicker's range, as black and blue are more benign colors and line of scrimmage and field goal range are less imperative targets than the first down line or end zone. Even though other colors have been introduced into other situations of the game of football, no on screen graphic is as ubiquitous among television networks as the yellow first down marker. The yellow first down line has become such a widely recognized and effective design that it will likely never be replaced as the most recognized ubiquitous graphic in televised football.