I am so excited. The countdown is on, and there are only a few more days until the 2021 National Football League (NFL) season starts. The official kickoff of the season is on Thursday, 9 September when the Dallas Cowboys (America’s Team) take on defending Super Bowl Champs Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Florida. In the office, I’m surrounded by Kyle, who is an avid Las Vegas (Oakland) Raiders fan and John, a huge Kansas City Chiefs fan. I’m just a fan of football! Fantasy Football League, Survivor Pool, Squares, or any other thing related to football, I’m in! Major League Baseball (MLB) is often referred to as America’s National Pastime, but football (NFL) is America’s passion. I CAN’T WAIT!!!
When I was younger, stats were calculated manually, and only the experts or people with a lot of time on their hands had the benefit of players/team stats. However, technology has made that possible for everyone. I read and review stats until my eyes are red. I can cite the top quarterbacks, running backs and wide receivers faster than I can name my distant cousins.
An internet search of “NFL fantasy football league” yields pages and pages results. All of these leagues reside and operate virtually and all of the information is stored digitally in storage systems on prem (premise) or in the cloud on Nearline HDDs. Although no one has ever calculated how many exabytes of data is specifically related to football, I bet it’s a lot.
For the past four quarters, Toshiba has been the fastest growing Nearline HDD company. Toshiba’s Nearline HDD exabyte Y-Y average growth was over 100% when compared to an industry growth average of less than 20%. During this same period, the company’s Nearline HDD unit average Y-Y growth topped 50%.¹ Toshiba’s exceptional growth in the industry is likely attributable to several factors, including the competitive product offering and the industry’s first FC-MAMR (flux-controlled microwave-assisted) 18TB Nearline HDD (https://toshiba.semicon-storage.com/us/company/news/2021/02/storage-20210218-1.html).
The beauty of football is that there are only 17 games in a regular season. Unlike baseball (162), basketball (82) or hockey (82), every game during a regular football season counts. A couple of bad weeks, and the chances of reaching the playoffs are greatly diminished. However, except for Thursday and Monday nationally televised night games, all of the other games are played on Sunday. That makes watching all of the games challenging. My digital video recorder (DVR) works overtime during the football season. Although some content providers record your shows on their own servers for you to stream, I have a physical DVR in my cable box.
The number of recording hours is limited by the size of the HDD in my DVR. I would void my warranty if I opened my cable box, so I don’t, but there is a good chance that the 1TB HDD in my DVR is a Toshiba HDD. Since 2020, Toshiba has been the leader in the DVR market, maintaining an average market share of over 40%². With a 1TB HDD, I can record about 150+ hours of high-definition football. At about 3 hours per game, I can record and watch 50 games!
This is the best time of the year for me. The weather in September and October are the best in the Bay Area, and with live football on Sundays starting soon, I can’t ask for anything more – except for another cold drink and more chips and salsa.
Are you ready for some football? I KNOW I AM!!!!!
1,2 Source: HDD shipment data search, TRENDFOCUS, Inc. (https://trendfocus.com) (Subscription required)
Toshiba defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes, a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes and a terabyte (TB) as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1GB = 230 = 1,073,741,824 bytes and therefore shows less storage capacity. Available storage capacity (including examples of various media files) will vary based on file size, formatting, settings, software and operating system, such as Microsoft Operating System and/or pre-installed software applications, or media content. Actual formatted capacity may vary.