Twenty-nine years after radio devices first appeared in NFL quarterbacks’ helmets, mounted communication devices will likely be tested by college teams this bowl season.
Before the start of this college football season, the NCAA Football Rules Committee decided to allow coach-to-player communications tools in non-College Football Playoff bowl games. It’s unclear what kind of tools—or how many—will be used this December, though, and it will remain that way at least until bowl matchups are set on Dec. 3.
The conversation around these communication tools has picked up in recent weeks, amid allegations that the University of Michigan sent spies to steal other teams’ signal schemes. On Friday, the Big Ten suspended Wolverines coach Jim Harbaugh from the sidelines on gamedays as part of its punishment. That scandal has since mushroomed as current and former coaches have shared just how prevalent sign stealing, in various degrees, is in modern college football. Meanwhile, marquee coaches, including Alabama’s Nick Saban and LSU’s Brian Kelly, have come out in favor of introducing communication protocols, similar to the pros.
“It’s silly,” Kelly told ESPN in October. “Silly meaning my genuine feeling is that we have too many smart people that have looked at this and said we should be doing it and we haven’t taken the time to actually move it forward.”
Ahead of the bowl games, the NCAA has left teams and their conferences to work out the details of each trial, ranging from picking which speaker vendor to use (or even selecting alternate options such as wrist-based versions) to determining the number of players wearing the receivers. The two coaches set to face off in a given game will likely have to agree on those types of specifics—and they’ll have to come to a resolution quickly.
Given those complicating factors, it is unlikely that this year’s bowl season will provide the perfect set of experiments—to achieve that, the NCAA would need a balanced mix of tech providers installing their wares in representative venues at various price points, giving the association ample data as it weighs potential standards going forward.
But, rules committee secretary-editor Steve Shaw said in an interview, December still provides the best chance for such tests. Unlike the NIT, which college basketball uses to test potential changes, college football lacks a clear rules playground. And while the Big Ten this offseason proposed working headset tech into their teams’ schedules, decision makers balked at the possibility of programs being judged for playoff consideration on an unequal playing field. In the past, concerns about maintaining level competition and preventing arms races has stopped other pushes to allow tech on gameday.
The resulting situation is the latest representation of how decisions are currently made across college football with coaches, conferences and the NCAA each trying to move things forward, though each having their own priorities too.
In 2021, Southern and Grambling State did manage to pull off a successful test, installing CoachComm communicators in Riddell helmets for that year’s Bayou Classic. But several hurdles have prevented a wider rollout.
The first is logistical. While the cost of the small implants has decreased (simple systems can be built for a couple hundred dollars), operating and maintaining the systems could require technical know-how and even additional gameday staff labor. Following complaints of interference from radio broadcasts and even local businesses, the NFL went so far as to acquire an exclusive, secret radio frequency from the FCC for coaches to talk on in 2016. Setting up, testing and monitoring technically advanced systems across 133 FBS schools could require a serious undertaking.
Then there are the legal issues. Given the multimillion dollar lawsuits that have been filed against helmet makers and other organizations in recent years, any alterations to safety-related equipment could open schools to increased liability scrutiny. The nature of the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement with pro players, by contrast, limits some of those concerns.
Even if those issues are sorted out, college football leaders would still have to get on the same page about how to implement the tech. Should just the quarterback receive the signal, or should receivers be installed in every skill position’s headgear—something that up-tempo teams would be in favor of, unless the cost was prohibitive for them. Defensive coaches might prefer a wrist-based solution for its simplicity, while offensive masterminds could push for the flexibility of audio.
It’s likely that no amount of next-gen communication technology will get all of the sport’s stakeholders to agree completely on the issue.
“In the big picture, there’s a lot of excitement about experimenting,” Shaw said. “When you start talking about the reality of it … it’s not as straightforward as just sticking a receiver in a helmet.”
All that said, progress is being made elsewhere. In 2017, the NCAA allowed baseball catchers in the SEC to wear earpieces in order to receive pitch calls from coaches. The sport later added the ability for all coaches to send in signals to wrist-based screens worn not only by the catcher, but by pitchers and infielders as well.
Football teams across the country have also implemented communication tech into their practice routines to get more play-calls—and instructional feedback—into increasingly short practice windows.
While vendors remain on the proverbial sidelines when it comes to game day, they’re gearing up after tuning into increased chatter this season.
“We kind of figured this day would come and have been preparing for it,” CoachComm owner Peter Amos said. “It’s a relatively complex decision they’re going through. We’re just sort of standing here waiting on them to tell us.” Those signals could come in any day now.
