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    • College football helmet communications misses another NFL plan gone wrong
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    College football helmet communications misses another NFL plan gone wrong

    Kathleen William Posted on

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    Now it's helmet communications, the latest in a long line of things that don't fit.

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

    “Sometimes it feels like we're running around with good intentions and plugging holes,” LSU coach Brian Kelly told me in July about college football's shoot-first-and-ask-how-the-damn-thing-works process. to copy an NFL model.

    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 it sounds, it shouldn't be a surprise.

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

    College football is not the NFL. No matter how university presidents, conference commissioners, athletic directors, coaches and players try to make it fit.

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

    Recruiting is not the NFL Draft, free agent movement is not free agency, and pay-to-play is not the salary cap.

    The NFL is a multibillion-dollar corporation with countless research and emergency response efforts, all aimed at making one of the world's most successful sports bulletproof against outside influences.

    College football is a multi-billion dollar coalition of small businesses that publicly stand together in search of common ground – and behind the scenes do everything they can to separate themselves from one another.

    The NFL is a highway. One way in, one way out.

    College football is a labyrinth of confusion and dismay, walls and obstacles moving with each season. A perfectly imperfect symphony of chaos.

    Which brings us back to college football's recent failure to copy the NFL. Three decades ago, the NFL took the then-state-of-the-art step of using helmet communications. They were tired of giving signals, shuffling players in and out with play calls, and stealing signs from opponents.

    Does this sound familiar?

    This offseason, the NCAA Rules Committee adopted the most basic helmet communication processes, and I know that will shock you, because this week it became a convoluted mess of finger-pointing and conspiracies. Texas Tech has asked the Big 12 to watch its games against TCU and Baylor (both losses) to make sure everything is in order.

    If you can't beat them, they'll have to cheat.

    All of this came months after defending champion Michigan had a former employee scouting future opponents and stealing signals. You'd think — after the defending national champions' former head coach was suspended three games by his own conference during the season for the sign-stealing fiasco — college football wouldn't venture into the great unknown without helmet communications (that's sarcasm). the exact model the NFL uses.

    The exact model and process.

    But instead of copying it in letters — including the all-important encryption of devices — college football opted for this big step with open channels of communication, and now Texas Tech is (subtly) questioning how it lost by 24 points to Baylor. I swear I'm not making this up.

    This of course leads to the conspiracy that someone has a scanner somewhere in the stadium and is listening in on pitchside communications to give one team a competitive advantage over the other.

    Now the Power Four conferences have sent the devices back to the manufacturers, who will now install software updates with encryption – and send them back in time for the games on Saturday.

    Absolutely hilarious.

    Watching this circus from outside the tent, I turned to a Power Four coach Wednesday night who was so nervous while explaining to me the overreaction to another sign-stealing incident that he finally blurted out that blocking and Tackling might be the better way.

    Let's just assume that one person in the stadium has a scanner, and let's just say that person can find the right channel, even though most stadiums now have WiFi access and between 65,000 and 105,000 cell phones are packed into a small space. Give or take 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: figuring out what the team's play call is.

    Since the headsets turn off at the 15-second mark of the game clock, the person with the scanner, who was in no way affected by all the Wi-Fi signals and cell phones in close proximity to each other, is affected by Mandarin Chinese into the football language To translate, go to your 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 change of play call on the field.

    In a total of 15 seconds.

    And you wonder why college football is unable to comply with NIL policies, player movement, pay-to-play, non-conference schedules, and pretty much everything else the sport can get its hands on, not to be understood as he moves ever closer to the limits of the sport's NFL model.

    Just block and tackle, baby.

    This is as perfectly imperfect as it gets.

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

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    Kathleen William
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