Since 2015, every player in the National Football League has been part cyborg. Well, kind of: Embedded in their shoulder pads is an RFID chip that can measure speed, distance traveled, acceleration, and deceleration. Those chips broadcast movement information, accurate to within six inches, to electronic receivers in every stadium. Even the balls carry chips.

So far, that data has stayed within the walls of each individual team, helping players and coaches understand offensive and defensive patterns. But this week, the NFL’s competition committee made good on its intention to share data on all 22 players after every game—with all the teams.

That move will give competitors a greater understanding of player movement across the league. But it could also begin to change the essence of the game. Much of the challenge of sports is the ability to quickly process and react to information, an instinctual gift of great coaches and players. By stripping away some of the uncertainty of competition, data will shift who holds that analytical advantage—and introduce some new ethical questions.

New information is always changing how the game is played, of course; coaches and sports scientists have been using GPS for over a decade to assess physical performance and the need for recovery. “Everyone is and will always look for an edge,” says Dave Anderson, former NFL wide receiver and co-founder of the Gains Group, a sports and technology consultancy. “In professional sports, where the difference between wins and losses are paper thin, any potential advantage should be taken seriously.” The question is what potential advantage should be considered rule-abiding—and what crosses the line.

For now, football has decided that collecting data—as well as applying intelligence and ingenuity to analyze it—is above board. What isn’t? Surreptitiously filming other team’s practices, hacking into scouting databases, and stealing signs with Apple watches. Oh, and deflating footballs.

“In sports, we want talent, dedication and effort to be difference makers, so how much do we want technology to decide the outcome of games?” asks Thomas Murray, president emeritus of the Hastings Center, a prominent ethics research center. “Taking the human element out of the game, making it a competition among scientists rather than athletes, does seem to undermine what we value in sport,” says Murray, who wrote about the ethics of performance enhancement in his book Good Sport.

That’s why the NFL competition committee, in an effort to level the playing field, has been conservative about the use of in-game technology. The league shuts off helmet radio communication from coach to quarterback 15 seconds before the play starts, for example, to prevent coaches giving instructions during actual play. Microsoft Surface tablets, given to teams as a replacement for paper images of offensive and defensive formations, are intentionally hobbled. The tablets only show photos—no video—and can’t access the internet. Similarly, computers can’t be used in the coaches box during the game.

“It’s a matter of balancing tradition and technology,” says Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the NFL. “Some coaches and club personnel do not want to deploy further technology during the game and want the focus to be on the play on the field.” But those lines are always moving: According to McCarthy, the use of video on the Surface tablets might be one of the possible topics at this week’s NFL meeting in Orlando.

And now the RFID data release will become a reality. The NFL has hinted at the possibility of the new policy before; according to McCarthy, the decision to make the data widely available was finally made because the Committee felt all clubs could benefit from the information. But those benefits may take some time to realize.