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Any coach or former athlete  understands the importance of strategy in winning. Good strategy in any sport can definitely compensate for conditioning that leaves something to be desired and a lack of natural talent. The cornerstone of any great strategy has to be knowing your own strengths and knowing your opponents strengths and weaknesses – in other words, knowing your opponent better than your own team. This may seem impossible, but it’s actually aided tremendously by the introduction of online video archives of high school games. Here in Colorado, football videos and their availability has made the game almost as much of a research project as it is a battle for which troops need to be trained. The advent of archives of high school sports online has made coaching in Colorado much more competitive than it is in some other states, where the technology has yet to change the way the game is played and coached. Being able to observe opponents throughout the season gives a coach tremendous insight into the opposing team’s weaknesses while also allowing him to build his own team’s strengths in order to exploit those weaknesses during future games. In some sense, Colorado football videos have turned sports into a real war. Yet how much each coach chooses to play “general” in the game of strategy varies depending on the individual. Some of the best teams don’t even use videos because their athletic talent and the dedication of their players is sufficient advantage over most opponents. Still, other players and coaches alike swear by learning from video because it gives them even basic insights that they wouldn’t have without it that prevent opponents from creating early leads. For instance, watching just one game played by an opposing team can offers a glimpse at the lineup’s best players. Does the running back need to be double-teamed? Is the quarterback susceptible to being sacked? The advent of internet-based archives puts this information just a click away from any player or coach. Players can now study their match-ups for weeks before they ever meet. This capability for research has definitely changed games from ad hoc skirmishes to meticulously-planned battles with all sorts of contingency plans. Whether this change is for the better or for the worse, however, remains to be seen.