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College Football Helmet Communication Misses Another NFL Plan Gone Wrong

Umito November 1, 2024

Now it’s the headset communicationsthe latest in a long line of this stuff doesn’t fit.

Or maybe it could fit – if we knew what we were doing.

“Sometimes it feels like we’re running around plugging holes with good intentions,” LSU coach Brian Kelly told me in July about college football’s shoot-first process, asking how does this damn thing of copying an NFL template work. .

The latest misstep (and I can’t believe I’m writing this): College football decided to copy the NFL’s helmet communications model ― without signal encryption. As absurd as this sounds, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

We’ve seen this movie and we know how it plays out.

College football is not the NFL. It doesn’t matter how college presidents, conference commissioners, athletic directors, coaches and players try to adapt it.

The SEC and Big Ten are not the NFC and the AFC. The College Football Playoff is not the NFL Playoff.

Recruiting is not the NFL Draft, the free agent movement is not free agency, and compensation for play is not the salary cap.

The NFL is a multi-billion dollar corporation with layers of research and contingency, all aimed at making one of the most successful sports on the planet proof against outside influence.

College football is a multibillion-dollar conglomeration of small businesses, each publicly uniting in search of common ground — and each doing everything it can behind the scenes to separate itself from one another .

The NFL is a highway. One entrance, one exit.

College football is a maze of confusion and dismay, where walls and obstacles shift and shift with the seasons. A perfectly imperfect symphony of chaos.

This brings us back to college football’s latest failure to copy the NFL. Thirty years ago, the NFL made the decision to use headset communications, which was state-of-the-art at the time. They were tired of signals, moving players around with play calls, and stealing signs from opponents.

Sound familiar?

So this offseason, the NCAA Rules Committee adopted the most basic processes when it comes to helmet communication, and I know this will shock you, it has this week become a convoluted mess of blame and conspiracy. Texas Tech asked the Big 12 to review its games against TCU and Baylor (both losses) just to make sure everything was okay.

If you can’t beat them, they’re cheating.

All this a few months after the reigning national champion Michigan had a former staffer scouting future opponents and stealing signals. You’d think — after the former head coach of the defending national champions was suspended by his own conference for three games during the season for the sign-stealing fiasco — college football wouldn’t venture into the big unknown to headset communication (that’s sarcasm) without the exact model used by the NFL.

The exact model and process.

But instead of copying it to the letter — including the all-important device encryption — college football decided to take this big step with open communication channels, and now Texas Tech is (subtly) wondering how it lost money. 24 points against Baylor. I swear, I’m not making this up.

This, of course, leads to tinfoil conspiracies that someone, somewhere in the stadium, has a scanner and is listening to sideline communications and giving one team a competitive advantage over the other.

So the Power Four conferences sent the devices back to the manufacturers, who will now install software updates including encryption – and return them in time for Saturday’s games.

Absolutely hilarious.

Watching this circus from outside the tent, I contacted a Power Four coach Wednesday night, who was so flustered in explaining the overreaction to yet another sign stealing, he finally let slip that maybe blocking and tackling was the best way to go.

Let’s just say a person in the stadium has a scanner, and let’s just say that person can find the right channel despite the fact that most stadiums now have Wi-Fi and there’s between 65 and 105,000 cell phones in a confined space. More or less an apathetic fan base.

This person will find the right channel, and it will be clear and can be heard and understood without interruption. And then the hard work begins: understanding the verbiage of the team’s play calls.

Since the headsets cut off after 15 seconds of the playback clock, the person with the scanner who has not been affected in any way by all those Wi-Fi signals and nearby cell phones each other must then translate what amounts to Mandarin Chinese into football speak, switch to their team’s channel and send the play call.

At this point, the sideline personnel must assess the opponent’s defense (or offense), decide how to adjust, and then signal the play call change to the field.

In all 15 seconds.

And you wonder why college football can’t figure out NIL guidelines, free agent movement, pay-for-play, non-conference schedules and just about everything else the sport gets its hands on while moving closer to more and more of the NFL Model.

Just block and tackle, baby.

This is about as perfectly imperfect as it gets.

Matt Hayes is the senior national college football writer for USA TODAY Sports Network. Follow him on @MattHayesCFB.