VAR Football Ushers In New Age Of Training With Holograms In College Football
As one of the youngest coaches on every sideline he inhabits, Austin James Smith has always sought to challenge the traditional way of doing things. In fact, Smith was barely older than his players when he began developing the framework for the company now known as VAR Football.
VAR Football is a Virtual and Augmented Reality training suite, developed by Smith, that allows football players at every position to get extra reps to help build comfort and familiarity within a system without hours of physically grueling practice. Smith’s claim is that, by training virtually, players are able to read, think and react almost instinctively when they’re put in game situations.
VAR Football’s system uses two main pieces of technology — the HTC Vive for the virtual reality training piece, and the Microsoft HoloLens for augmented reality training. By using in-house developed software and commercially available VR technology, VAR Football has been able to use cost as a significant product differentiator to stand out in the marketplace. By greatly reducing the barriers to entry, Smith says that programs no longer have an excuse not to be on the cutting edge.
The majority of Smith’s current clients are high schools, mostly in Texas, where VAR Football is now based. But now, college football programs are starting to take notice. Texas A&M is the first FBS team to have adopted the program, according to Smith.
And there could be more.
“We’re selling it at every school we go to because it’s an easy sell,” Smith said. “Over the next few years, there should be absolutely no reason that every pro team and every major college football team does not have this in their offices. If not, they’re just dinosaurs, they’re just not getting it.”
To understand how VAR came about, you have to understand more about Smith’s background and the influential football minds that have surrounded him.
Growing up in rural Louisiana, Smith was obsessed with football. Part of his love of the game stemmed from playing in high school in Shreveport under Doug Pederson, an offensive guru who has since gone on to become the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. When Smith graduated high school, he came right back to coach at the age of 19. As a young offensive coordinator at West St. Mary High in Baldwin, La., Smith could already see how traditional coaching methods were not catching on with his players.
“Within my first year, I realized, all this chalk talk and drawing plays on the dry erase board is just not getting to ‘em,” Smith, now 27, said. “I had to capture these kids’ attention to get what I needed done.”
Smith turned to Tecmo Super Bowl, the classic NES football game, to add more excitement to teaching his playbook. And while, it may be archaic compared to modern console games, Smith immediately saw a jump in his player’s engagement and in turn their performance.
After turning the high school from a perennial cellar-dweller into an offensive juggernaut, Smith advanced to the college ranks. As he moved from school to school over the next several years, he used his technological background to hone his ideas to incorporate newer and newer technology into the way the game is taught.
“By the time I got to UCLA, it had gotten to virtual reality and that’s when it got really cool,” Smith said.
Smith’s first season at UCLA coincided with the arrival of highly-touted freshman quarterback Josh Rosen in the fall of 2015. Smith, then an offensive assistant, fine-tuned his virtual reality system specifically for Rosen, and the results would soon manifest on the field.
“I had the Rose Bowl, I had our uniforms, I had our Week 1 opponent, everything programmed in there. So the entire summer, he would go in there and get on and rep it out, rep it out, rep it out,” Smith recalled. “Sure enough, when he stepped on the field, he had done it all in the headset. There was nothing he hadn’t done and seen from that perspective before.”
Rosen opened with a spectacular opening pass on the first play of the game and would go on to throw for more than 350 yards and three touchdowns in his collegiate debut. Rosen would later be named to the Freshman All-American team, and despite a year cut short by injury, is already considered a Heisman Trophy candidate and likely a top NFL draft prospect for 2018.
Smith has since moved on from his assistant role at UCLA and after serving as quarterbacks coach at Southeastern University was named the head coach at Calvary Chapel High School in Santa Ana, Calif.
Southeastern quarterback Railond Garrett is a redshirt junior at Southeastern and a regular attendee for Smith’s virtual training sessions. Garrett had played limited time during his first two seasons at SEU, but when Smith and his offensive system joined the program, he took learning the playbook with the rest of the quarterbacks on the roster. Garrett explained that prior to Smith’s arrival, the offense at SEU was fairly basic and that it took him time to get used to the complex options and reads in the new system. But, training in the VR system helped lower the learning curve.
“The virtual reality world, that’s where we make our mistakes. If the games moving too fast, too fast to read in the virtual reality world, when you get out on the field it all slows down for you. It just falls into place,” Garrett said. “(It) actually helps calm us down as a quarterback corps and so when we get in the game, it’s all situations that we’ve already seen before.”
And for Garrett, a backup who rarely saw live snaps, training in VR helped him excel when given the opportunity. In last season’s finale, in the NAIA playoffs, Garrett was selected to go in after halftime, as Smith hoped that a change at quarterback would spark a comeback for his offense. Garrett had a career game and more than doubled his passing attempts and yard totals for the season in that single half. And while SEU ultimately lost the contest, Garrett’s level of comfort and precision against the nation’s top defense was testament to the value of the countless hours he had spent in virtual training.
In addition to his coaching responsibilities at SEU, Smith has continued to build his product with the help of one of the game’s most revered coaches. Hal Mumme is regarded as an offensive mastermind and is credited with being one of the inventors of the prolific Air Raid offense during his time at Iowa Wesleyan and, later, at Kentucky. After meeting through mutual colleagues at Southern Methodist University, the two decided to team up in 2015.
Mumme’s system relies heavily on the passing game and focuses on the quarterback’s ability to read defenses and improvise at the line of scrimmage. Mumme, now head coach at Belhaven University, saw the advantages that virtual training could give quarterbacks and readily agreed to help consult for the company, in addition to bringing investors and football know-how to the table.
“When I saw his product, I knew it was perfect for us. Kind of the coming of the future, if you will, of playbooks and the way kids learn these days,” Mumme said. “It gives you those kinds of instant instincts you need. The milliseconds between what you see and when you release the ball in the progression on the pass offense is really important.”
With Mumme and the recognition his name brings on board, Smith has been traveling the country these past two years showcasing his products at conventions, colleges and high schools. That includes Nevada, where Hal’s son, Matt, is the new offensive coordinator and high on the product as well for use with the Wolf Pack program.
While there are competitors in the VR space, those systems can often cost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars. Smith’s system retails for less than $6,000.
“I said, ‘…There’s no way that technology costs a hundred thousand a year,’” Smith said of recalling his research of some of his competitors’ programs. “Some people do the video, and some people do 3D, but we’re the only ones who do both. There’s no reason this shouldn’t be used every major Division I football program right now. Because if they aren’t, they’re behind…You need this yesterday, and you can afford it. High schools can afford it, and that was the whole point.”
Performances like Rosen’s and Garrett’s help vindicate Smith and give credence to the claims that his system can offer all the benefits and more of its highly priced competitors. It’s Smith’s vision that drives VAR Football and he hopes that, soon, coaches at all levels of the game will share in that vision of an arsenal of modern football training tools.
“Before you step on the field, you can simulate a practice, simulate a play, everything you need to do can be done before you take the field. And that should be able to be done on any football team in America.”
