Sooner or later, college football has to answer a looming question: How much technology should be allowed as innovations continue to challenge the rulebook? When the NCAA football rules committee meets Feb. 10-11 in Indianapolis, technology will be a significant discussion during a rare year when the committee's agenda is light on substantive rules changes.
Among the discussion points: helmet communication systems for a quarterback and a defensive player, permitting video use by coaches and players from iPads on the sidelines to review plays, and putting sensors on players to track movement for media partners. There are a growing number of people within the game who want to let technology grow.
“Do you just turn the floodgates open with technology?” SEC officiating coordinator Steve Shaw began. “Do you try to manage it year to year? But that’s very difficult to do because the technology is much faster than a rules committee can even keep up with. That’s the dilemma. I want to embrace more technology but want to do it in a consistent manner that doesn’t create competitive imbalance for teams.”
Said American Athletic Conference officiating coordinator Terry McAulay: “I would love to see them open it up. I’m at the point, why not? Whether it’s sooner or later, it’s going to happen. There’s a lot of young coaches that are very technologically savvy that want to take advantage of this.”
The National Federation of State High School Associations now allows any form of communication technology during high school football games outside the nine-yard marks, on the sidelines and during halftime. Smart phones continue to get smarter, and college football appears to have no way to prevent impermissible use of them.
“The way it is now it’s hard to enforce sort of unenforceable rules,” said Rogers Redding, national college football officiating coordinator. “You don’t really want officials checking in a team area to see what’s going on. High schools just opened it up and said, 'Whatever you want to use, go ahead.' They seem pretty happy about that. There’s always the issue of different resources and what’s available. You’ve got rich guys and poor guys. I’m sure we’ll talk about it.”
NFL play callers have been able to communicate with quarterbacks through the player’s helmet since 1994. Starting in 2008, NFL rules allowed a defensive player to have a live helmet as well. An NFL operator cuts off the communication with 15 seconds left on the 40-second play clock.
Yet college football has never gone that direction. Operational costs associated with a communication system would have to include hiring additional people to turn the device off at a certain point as the play clock winds down.
“It’s something a number of coaches are very interested in,” Shaw said. “Maybe we start testing it.”
In December, the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards and Medical Aspects of Sports decided it won't stand in the way of wearable technology for players. That means allowing devices such as global positioning systems, accelerometers that measure speed and impacts, and heart monitors that help determine fatigue.
The question for college football: Does it use these technologies only for player safety or open the door for advanced statistics from the metrics that impact competitiveness and the fan experience? The measurements could provide stats such as how fast a player moves, the direction of his movements, and the impact of a collision.
This season, every NFL player wore two tiny sensors in his shoulder pads in order to create new stats for media partners and help the in-stadium experience. In the SEC, Tennessee was prepared to have players wear sensors in 2013 but the technology wasn’t ready, Shaw said.
“I think people want to start using it to see what we can do with it,” he noted. “I know our media partners are very interested in doing that to help their broadcasts. You really almost have to get into it to see what’s good, what works, what doesn’t.”
One unanswered question: Do college players have to sign off on wearing sensors that could be used for commercial use? The idea of tracking sensors comes during a litigious time for the NCAA and its members, who are weighing whether to pay players for use of their name, image and likeness while the NCAA defends the “amateurism” concept.
Some other issues expected to be discussed at the football rules committee meeting:
• Eight-man crews are here to stay. Most, if not all, Football Bowl Subdivision conferences will entirely use eight-man officiating crews in 2015, Redding said. The Big 12 first experimented with eight officials instead of seven in 2013. Other conferences tried it last year.
The idea is eight officials help cover more ground and manage the substitution process better. “We went from six to seven in 1986,” Shaw said. “Think of the game we have today with the spread, five receivers in the route. We need that extra official for coverage.”
A fear about eight-man crews was too many penalties would be called. Shaw said the SEC’s single eight-man crew in 2014, headed by referee Matt Loeffler, was exactly in the middle of the conference in penalties per game.
• Longer timeouts for coaches. One idea being considered is to give coaches the option for a one-minute timeout instead of determining that length based on whether TV breaks for a commercial. Redding supports the idea of more flexibility for coaches.
Currently, when a coach calls timeout, it’s either a media timeout (with a longer break) or automatically becomes a 30-second timeout if TV stays on the game. Coaches often use a timeout simply to stop the clock. But increasingly, coaches want the ability to strategize for a little longer.
“We could make all timeouts go back to normal length (about 60 to 90 seconds) unless the coach requests 30 seconds, or we would give a coach an option that once in a game he could extend the timeout,” Shaw said. “What the coaches are saying kind of makes sense. We’ve gone to all of these 30-second timeouts but there’s a time they need more time.”
• Uniform concerns. As the uniform craze continues in college football, there’s talk about creating a centralized process to approve these varying uniforms. The idea isn’t to stop Oregon, or any school, from wearing a different uniform each week. It’s to literally be able to read the jersey numbers from the press box.
“It just needs to be within the scope of the rules and have contrast in the numbers,” Shaw said. “What’s contrast? Sometimes it’s in the eye of the beholder.”
Consider the unique way Shaw tests prototype uniforms sent by SEC schools for approval. Shaw gets Cole Cunningham, SEC assistant director of video services, to put on the jersey and walk across the street in Birmingham, Alabama, to the front of the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame museum. Shaw stands in the upstairs lobby of the SEC office. If Shaw can read Cunningham’s number, the jersey is approved.
Redding has a similar process when jerseys are sent to him. He walks about 40 yards with his back turned, and his wife holds up the jersey. If Redding can immediately read the number, it’s approved.
Increasingly, schools want to wear team slogans on jerseys, such as “Anchor Down” at Vanderbilt and “Hail State” at Mississippi State. “Most people would say, 'What’s the big deal about ‘Anchor Down?’” Shaw explained. “But if you allow slogans and sayings, it can deteriorate on you pretty quick. Why not say ‘Beat Auburn’ or ‘Beat Tennessee?’ How tight do we want to manage this?”
• Competition committee for 2016. A year ago ago, the rules committee got heavily criticized for rolling out the since-tabled rule forcing offenses to wait 10 seconds before snapping the ball. Many coaches felt blindsided and duped -- health and safety was cited as a reason, but few believed it. The fallout was the idea of a football competition committee, which as of now is planned to be in place for the 2016 rules cycle.
Next year's rollout of the new committee may explain in part why 2015 is such a light rules year, even though this is a year when changes can be made for non-safety reasons. Some issues, such as competitive balance between offense and defense, may get punted to the competition committee. Redding said the concern from coaches about tempo seems to have significantly decreased this year.
Lots of details have yet to be determined about the competition committee, which intends to look at big-picture issues. Former coaches are expected to be on the committee. The most notable questions: Will the committee involve only Division I or every NCAA division, and will it be housed within the NCAA or College Football Officiating, LLC?
