Sports Illustrated - USA (2021-12-15)

Three years later, Big Ten officials

voted to adopt the pylon and

replace the old boundary-defining

method of mini red flags, which had

inspired the term “flag route.”

Although historical sources are

sparse, credit for inventing the

pylon generally goes to the late

Irwin “Bud” Shopbell, a former high

school and Big Ten official who

lived less than five miles from the

Pro Football Hall of Fame.

In addition to “weird problems

for game officials” caused by the

f lags “blowing into the field of play”

on windy days, Shopbell also cited

safety concerns—“the danger to

players who may accidentally fall

upon or be thrown upon one of the

steel f lagstaffs”—as inspiration for

his groundbreaking invention.

In the five decades since, pylons

have undergone several notable

technological innovations. The

weighted pylon was born in the

early 1990s, replacing the old

spring-coiled version with a bottom-

heavy foam mold that stood by

itself rather than stick in the

ground. Next came Gilman Gear’s

logo-embossed pylon, which

debuted for Super Bowl XLIII in

Tampa, followed by the hyped pylon

cam in 2012 that Gilman produced

at the request of NFL Films to

fiery results. “We machined out

the inside of a pylon and glued in

the camera,” Gilman says. “It was

kind of primitive. They found that

the camera generated a lot of heat

and would burn out the inside, and

you’d have a smoking pylon.”

Eventually, though, Gilman found

the right formula with the aid of

some ESPN engineers who created

a ventilation system to cool the

cameras inside the foam shell.

Fortunately, Ezekiel Elliott

avoided a similar fate when the

Cowboys’ running back landed

smack on the line-to-gain pylon in

Week 5 (above), resulting in little

more than soreness—both in his

spine and in postgame quotes. “That

thing is kind of hard,” Elliott told

reporters with a laugh. “Maybe they

should find a new spot for it....It

kind of just stabbed me. Lost my

wind.” (Elliott exacted revenge the

SPORTSPERSON OF THE YEAR 2021 13

BOWLED OVER

Elliott landed hard on one of the

camera-equipped pylons that

Gilman Gear has been supplying

to big games for years.

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