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Responding to the increased focus on player safety in football over the last several years, the Texas Longhorns have installed sensors in the helmet of each player, becoming the FBS team to do so across the entire squad.
Learn more about the specialized helmets in this Longhorn Network clip:
“Our mission in the athletic training room is to provide a safe and healthy environment for our players,” says Anthony Pass, UT’s head football athletic trainer. “I think with this system we’ve done that by utilizing cutting-edge technology to monitor the hits they receive while they’re at practice.”
Officially, the program is known as the Riddell InSite helmet monitoring system.
Using a transparent helmet as an example, Pass shows the various sensors monitored throughout which measure factors like G force and direction of hit. That info is then sent to a sensor held by trainers on the sidelines.
Of course, in the finished product fans can’t see the sensors or tell anything out of the ordinary is going on.
If the helmet takes a hard-enough hit the trainers will take a look at the player to make sure all is well.
“We were the first of the Power 5 schools to integrate the Riddell InSite system into every helmet,” Pass says. “That means everybody at practice has one. We have great coaches that teach them the proper technique in how to tackle, block and keep yourself safe. What this does is gives us that thing that we can’t see.”