Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM PRESEASON 2024 5 T echnology rules the day in 2024 in everything we do. Work, leisure, etc. Everything. Even football. Spe- cifically, to a heightened degree starting this fall, college football. Teams from all three NCAA divisions, obviously including Notre Dame, will be allowed to use up to 18 tablets to re- view in-game video on the sideline. The dozen and a half devices are to be split among the coaches' booth, sideline and locker room. Throw an interception? A quar- terback's only way to figure out what happened isn't to hear it from an of- fensive coordinator calling down from the booth, as was customary for several seasons. The signal-caller can watch it for himself via the broadcast feed and camera angles from the coach's sideline and coach's end zone. Miss a tackle? Miss an assignment? Defensive players can visually discern what went wrong by watching their mishaps immediately after they occur. Offensive players can do the same if they don't pick up a block or if they run the wrong route. Sound like a game-changer? That's because it is one. You see National Foot- ball League players using tablets all the time — infamously throwing them onto the ground or into the bench if they don't like what they see — but what they saw are not moving pictures. Rather, stationary ones. The NFL allows its players to review stills. College players will watch the ac- tual film. "That's going to be pretty cool just to be able to look at it and say, 'You can see the tendencies,' and say, 'Here's where this guy is' and such.' You're not just drawing things up," Notre Dame run- ning backs coach Deland McCullough said. "I'm excited to be part of it and see how this thing unfolds. It's only going to be able to help." Maybe not. Notre Dame defensive coordinator Al Golden and McCullough were regularly using a tablet not long ago as NFL as- sistants — Golden made it to the Su- per Bowl with the Cincinnati Bengals in the 2021 season and McCullough won it with the Kansas City Chiefs in 2019. Golden remembers when the NFL tested using video instead of pictures. The consensus among coaches was the video was too invasive. Overwhelming, even. They settled on the photos. Football games are only 60 minutes. They're over in roughly three hours. Adding in an element of watching what's happening just after it happens and trying to process it before the next series can be harder than it sounds. Golden is taking a cautious approach in the way his Notre Dame defensive players will utilize the technology. He doesn't want to cloud anyone on his side's judgment about what's transpir- ing and what needs to subsequently take shape. "We have a bigger challenge," Golden said. "Don't grade the game. There's go- ing to be real-time — like if you get your butt kicked on a play, there's going to be real-time footage of you getting your butt kicked on a play. Refocus, reload, put it behind you and go. Same thing with the coaches. "We're not there to grade the game. We've got to be really concise in our coaching points. Watch what we have to watch, and then talk to the players about what's coming up next and where we're going on the next third down, where we're going on the next red-zone play." Watch any National Hockey League game and you'll see players instantly stare at their tablets upon getting back to the bench after a shift. Often times there are only a couple minutes before their next one. If you don't know what you're looking for, your in-game review session can be a little helter skelter. The skaters who elect to take advan- tage of the technology generally have it down to a science, though. That's the intended point of use. It's supposed to be an aid, not a hindrance. Teenage and young adult student-athletes, though, won't always have the same discipline as a 30-year old hockey veteran. Notre Dame coaches like McCullough and Golden and perhaps all the way up the line of command to head coach Marcus Freeman have another teaching task beginning this season. They cannot let Notre Dame players get in their own heads or allow their performances to tail off in response to video they're seeing of themselves throughout the course of a game. Confidence is real in sports. It flour- ishes or wanes in response to stimu- lants. There might not be a stronger stimulant than essentially looking in the mirror and seeing for yourself what mil- lions of people are watching and talking about in living rooms, bars and on social media across America. "You can get enamored with it," Golden said. "We had it for three pre- seasons in the NFL … and there's a lot of times you look over to the bench, and everybody's looking down at the iPad. We've got to be careful with that." ✦ GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com Notre Dame running backs coach Deland McCullough and the rest of the Irish staff will have to monitor their players' usage of film review on tablets starting in the 2024 season. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER Walking A Fine Line With In-Game Tablet Usage