In the NFL, some tactics and practices catch on like wildfire. But when it came to watching college game tapes, the league was caught in the technological Stone Age until this past December.

Thanks to a deal with XOS Digital, the Ravens and all other NFL teams are now off beta tapes and now have digital footage from every college football game on their computer at the click of a button.

Because of that, front office staff such as Head Coach John Harbaugh and Ravens Director of College Scouting Joe Hortiz said they save enough time that they can watch one more game of film on each prospect.

“At the click of a button, you can get the team, the player, the scenario,” Harbaugh said. “It will save time because everything is at your fingertips. We’re not rewinding everything, looking through tapes, things like that.”

“It allows you to watch a little extra time on each guy if you need to,” Hortiz added. “It doesn’t make you speed up the way you scout. It speeds up the dead time.”

Let’s say, for example, Hortiz wanted to watch Oklahoma defensive tackle Gerald McCoy’s game against archrival Texas. Here’s what the process may have looked like last year.

Hortiz would have went into a video room that resembles a library, written down where his video is on the rack and flipped through the thousands of beta tapes to find the game he wants. Most times it’s there. Sometimes it’s not.

When it wasn’t, Hortiz was left on a wild goose chase. He stops in Eric DeCosta’s office. Not there. He walks over to Defensive Line Coach Clarence Brook’s office. Not there. He goes to Wade Harman’s office, because maybe Harmon is looking at tape of Oklahoma tight end Jermaine Gresham. Not in his office.

See how this can eat up time? Here’s how that process works this year for Hortiz.

The NFL Dub Center sends the college game videos to the Ravens Video Operations department, where it is then loaded into the XOS Digital Software for the coaches and scouts.

Hortiz boots up his computer, opens up the XOS Digital software, makes a few clicks and he’s watching any game of McCoy in less than a minute. Hortiz can flip through plays quicker – essentially like the difference between VCRs and DVDs – by lessening the fast-forwarding and dead time between plays.

He can also make cut-ups (highlight reels) by clicking one button on his remote – which he wields like a skilled technician by now. Before, Hortiz had to manually write the time the play started on a notecard to mark where he later wanted to cut the tape.

“There’s not a huge difference, but it’s 10 or 15 seconds,” Hortiz said. “That adds up.”