I’ve been watching this GIF all morning.
In case you’re wondering what’s going on, this is Bill Belichick. He’s the head coach of the New England Patriots, who comfortably put the the Cincinnati Bengals away on Monday morning 35-17.
But the fun part was the Patriots match on Sunday, where they had a few issues with technology. According to Deadspin, the Microsoft Surface tables they were supplied — and seemingly everything else — simply weren’t working.
“As you probably noticed, I’m done with the tablets,” Belichick said in the post-game press conference. “I’ve given them as much time as I can give them. They’re just too undependable for me.”
Here’s Belichick’s disappointment in real-time.
“I’m going to stick with pictures as several of our other coaches do as well because there just isn’t enough consistency in the performance of the tablets, so I just can’t take it anymore … there are very few games that we play, home or away, day, night, cold, hot, preseason, regular season, postseason, it doesn’t make any difference; there are very few games where there aren’t issues in some form or fashion with that equipment.”
Ouch.
It’s not the first time Microsoft’s multi-million dollar deal with the NFL has been called into question, and it’s also not out of form for Belichick to have a whinge about technology. The team blamed the Surface tablets for their loss in the AFC Championship against Denver, although the problem was later revealed to be a network issue.
Still, Belichick’s gripes don’t usually devolve into hilarious Hulk-esque Surface smashings on the football pitch though. Microsoft responded by saying that the Surface, really, was fine:
We respect Coach Belichick’s decision, but stand behind the reliability of Surface. We continue to receive positive feedback on having Surface devices on the sidelines from coaches, players and team personnel across the league. In the instances where sideline issues are reported in NFL games, we work closely with the NFL to quickly address and resolve.
And for added measure, the NFL politely followed up by saying that Microsoft was an “integral, strategic partner of the NFL”. In other words: shut up Belichick and use the damn Surface.
But if the Patriots head coach wants to keep going postal on the Microsoft tablet-PC, that’s fine. I’ll just grab the popcorn.
Comments
14 responses to “NFL Coach Really Hates The Microsoft Surface”
Oh how I’d love for local sports to be more represented on here. In Aussie Rules for example you can’t go a week without some sort of technological invention (like say, a corded phone installed in the 80s) being obliterated in the coach’s box.
I can see why.
we recently rolled out a few hundred SP4’s into an enterprise enviroment. Now it’s become the bane of my existence.
MS really need to get their act together, the constant updates and rollbacks I’ve had to do for clients over the past few months is disgusting, specially being their flagship device.
Blank black screens during update restarts (lasting upto hours) leaving most users in the dark as there is no indication of what is happening.
RDP resolution faults
Speratic login times
Battery faults
Pen faults
etc…
“my surface is broken”
“my surface is broken”
“my surface is broken”
Fuq
So would you say there’s some…
**Puts sunnies on**
Surface tension?
You win the internet today!
A good coach would remain calm on the surface.
“Surfice” to say that is correct..oh god..i’m so sorry..
Perhaps he’ll surface an example to others.
Shitty PR for MS when it turns out that it was network issue. Oh well, that’s what happens.
“The team blamed the Surface tablets for their loss in the AFC Championship against Denver”
They did? Quote from Belichick after the game:
“It is what it is,” Belichik said. It’s a pretty common problem. We have ways of working through it. There is really nothing you can do. It’s not like the headsets where one side is affected. You just deal with it. We’ve had it at home, on the road. That didn’t affect the outcome of the game, no way,” he added. “Just part of it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Belichik shouldn’t complain too much: the Patriots did extremely well with no Brady and using second/third string QBs. Hopefully Dak Prescott will keep playing like he is for the Cowboys and the league will see a new MVP!
Two different games. The tablet smashing was from the match on the weekend, where as the AFC Championship game was around the start of the year.
Yeh I get that. The Belichick quote I put there was from after the AFC game.
Ah gotcha. My bad.
@zambayoshi (missed the reply button somehow)
Dak’s a stud. I know Jerry Jones loves Romo like no-one else but if Dak has another big game this week it’s going to be hard to take the ball from him.
F the pats go texans