From today's WSJ -
By Andrew Beaton
The Next Phase of Football’s Offensive Revolution Has Just Got Started
The decision by Texas high-school football to allow players to use wearable devices next season could radically transform America’s favorite sport
Imagine a future in which Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen and every other NFL player takes the field armed with a piece of digital technology that can communicate information instantaneously.
Instead of long, abstruse playcalls radioed into a quarterback’s ear and getting drowned out by tens of thousands screaming fans, each play would just appear in front of each player’s eyes on a wristband. It would completely transform the way the game looks—and even how it’s played.
And as it happens, it’s now closer to a reality than ever before.
In a move that fell under the radar of most football fans, the league that oversees high-school football in Texas just approved a change permitting the use of these types of wearable devices. And while Friday night football in the Lone Star state might seem a long way from NFL stadiums, recent history shows that high-school fields now serve as the breeding grounds for the next stages of the game’s evolution—even when those ideas seem completely radical.
The spread offense and the pass-happy “Air Raid” scheme were both popularized at Texas high schools before trickling up to the pro game. The latest innovation might be less of a schematic advancement than a technological one.
And the ramifications could be seismic, from supercharging offenses by allowing them to rip off plays at warp speed to tamping down the sign-stealing suspicions that have roiled the sport in recent years.
“Obviously as a society we get these technology advances everywhere. Football, I guess, is no different,” says Larry Hill, the coach of state champion Smithson Valley High School in Texas. “Once you go down the technology trail, you very rarely see it go back.”
Football tech has come a long way since the invention of the plastic helmet. In his 45 years of coaching Hill has seen plenty of it, from watching film on newfangled VHS tapes to storing a vast library of playbooks, as he says, “in the air.”
In fact, the NFL has spent years looking into wearable devices. One of the companies that designs wristband technology has already won an award and funding from the league for its innovation.
The arrival of this new tech could hardly be more timely given how communication between athletes on the field and coaches on the sideline has emerged as a thorny issue.
The NFL began allowing radio communication into player helmets in 1994, but the NCAA adopted it just last year—and only after a controversial sign-stealing scandal involving Michigan’s football team. That came not long after the Houston Astros’ own sign-stealing scandal, which prompted MLB to adopt the PitchCom system that allows pitchers and catchers to communicate digitally.
The University Interscholastic League’s new policy in Texas advances the ball significantly. It allows for coach-to-player communication through “devices such as wristbands, watches, or belt packs”—and makes it available to every athlete on the field. That means a tight end or nose tackle can receive the play call the same way a quarterback or linebacker normally would.
Once the UIL made the change, the phone lines at a company called GoRout suddenly started blowing up. The business won a prize from the NFL in 2017 for its on-field wearable technology, and it now works with more than 1,000 schools across the country, including major college football programs, which use its product in practice.
“You’re going to see more of this and not less,” says Mike Rolih, GoRout’s founder.
The system is all controlled by a coach using a tablet that has the team’s plays loaded onto it. With a few taps, the coach can select the right playcall, which then appears on 1-inch-by-1-inch smartwatch screens.
The Division III Liberty League, home to schools such as Hobart and Union College, ran a trial with GoRout’s tech during its conference games this year. While there were some minor hiccups, including a watch that fell into the possession of the opposing team, the biggest complaint from most of the coaches was that the trial limited each team to just three devices on each side of the ball. (The company is also implementing a kill-switch in case a watch ends up in an opponent’s hands.)
Tracy King, the conference’s commissioner, says it was easy to implement. Not only did it reduce questions about sign-stealing, but it generally increased the efficiency of in-game communication across the league.
“Our coaches were supportive of it,” King says. “We just felt that this is the wave of the future.”
It’s also cost efficient for football teams on a budget. While in-helmet communication systems can go for tens of thousands, GoRout says the starting cost for its product is about $5,000.
What coaches are especially curious about, though, is how it could change the game. Hill, the Smithson Valley coach, expects it to be just the latest development in a sport that increasingly favors offenses, which he believes will benefit more from the speedy communication.
That said, the Liberty League’s limited trial didn’t find that it increased the tempo much. GoRout says teams were at, or just above, the same number of offensive plays while using the tech.
“Coaches are going to adapt,” Hill says. “At some point whether you agree with it, disagree with it, or are unsure if you agree with it, you better get with it.”
