The Fall of the Big 12's Ridiculous LED Basketball Courts

Just a quick post today.

The Big 12 collegiate athletic conference decided to add a line to the looooong annals titled Humans Do Stupid Things With a New Technology For No Good Reason But That They Can by turning basketball court floors into giant LED screens - basically making the court a giant television screen - and then soon undoing that decision.

As SportsCenter's Scott Van Pelt put it, "We said this whole thing was extra and unnecessary, but as long as the court played like a normal court, well, I said fine . . . . Well, it didn't." Players found that the LED screen was softer than normal hardwood and, more problematic, when players dug in to make quick movements, the surface turned out to be slippery, leading to falls and maybe contributing to an injury After players and coaches complained, conference leaders decided to yank the gimmick and return to normal court floors.

Someone should write a good book on how often people introduce technical novelties that are wasteful, unnecessary, and counter to very goals at hand . . . like having a surface that's good for playing basketball on. As Right-to-Repair activists have long taught us, adding gimmicks to mature technologies, like putting LED touchscreens into refrigerator doors, also reduces their lifespan and undercuts goals of environmental sustainability.

God knows how much time and energy went into making these ridiculous LED basketball court floors . . . all for nothing but the waste.