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For all of college football’s big box office, bluster and billions, Alex Shada saw a financial opportunity two years ago at the Senior Bowl. The head of GSC, a well-known company in football circles based in little-known Wahoo, Nebraska, had been supplying coach-to-player helmet communications to the NFL for the last decade.
This was Shada’s moment of realization. Here before him that day were some of the best and brightest quarterbacks jockeying for attention at the nation’s oldest college all-star game. And they looked helpless.
The market for his products was about to take off like a go route.
“The first day of practice, they have an NFL coach talking to [college quarterbacks] in their helmets instead of getting a signal from the sideline,” Shada said. “I watched an NFL coach, after about the fifth play, just screaming at these guys. Pretty colorful words. ‘If you guys think you’re going to make it in the NFL, you better get your poop in a group.’
“One of the [other] long-time NFL coaches was standing there, saying, ‘That’s the biggest problem with these guys. They haven’t heard a play [call] since high school. Now you’re hearing this long-drawn-out play call [through the helmet]. It’s really hard to hear it and relay it to 10 other guys.'”
Those players were indoctrinated a bit in that Senior Bowl bootcamp.
The NCAA Football Rules Committee this week is likely to propose the use of coach-to-player sideline communications. What are widely known as “helmet comms” — giving coaches the ability to talk to players through wireless helmet technology — have been used by the NFL for quarterbacks since 1994. Defensive players were added to the mix in 2008. Tablets debuted in 2014.
Thirty years later, it appears as if time has finally come…
Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/college-football/news/college-football-nearing-long-awaited-adoption-of-helmet-communications-after-successful-bowl-season-test/
Author : Dennis Dodd
Publish date : 2024-02-26 16:26:32
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