This college football season, some quarterbacks will practice their dropbacks and throws contending not with an imposing linebacker but instead with a hologram of one.
Those players, and indeed players at every position on the field, will be using VAR Football’s virtual and augmented reality technology to get in necessary off-the-field practice and train themselves to read and react quickly in live game situations. So far, among the schools to have used VAR Football technology are Nebraska, Nevada, Texas A&M, Oregon State and Washington State, according to CEO Austin James Smith.
Nevada head coach Jay Norvell purchased the VAR system, which uses HTC Vive’s VR headset and Microsoft’s HoloLens for virtual and augmented reality training, to help his team practice within a particular offensive scheme, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal. With NCAA rules keeping live practice time to just 20 hours per week, off-the-field practice is vital: “So much of this offense is about repetition and this gives us those reps,” Norvell told the Gazette-Journal.
Smith, who developed VAR Football, told SportTechie in March that Texas A&M was the first college adopter; Nevada and the others soon followed suit. Many colleges across the country use a similar virtual reality program by STRIVR, but Norvell told the newspaper that STRIVR is prohibitively expensive for schools with tighter budgets.
For Nevada, VAR Football also runs in the family. The team’s offensive coordinator, Matt Mumme, is the son of Hal Mumme, who is a co-owner of VAR and the inventor of the “Air Raid” offense that the younger Mumme runs.
“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,” Hal Mumme told SportTechie in March. “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.”
Nevada’s football program uses the virtual reality in particular. During spring practices, a coach would stand behind the quarterback and record every play with a 360-degree camera, then upload the footage to the computer, Brandon Crosby, Nevada’s offensive quality control coach, told the Gazette-Journal. The quarterbacks could then put on the VR headset and review the play as if they were once again in the middle of it. For the other quarterbacks, a TV shows the play from the point of view of the quarterback wearing the headset.
Quarterbacks can use the room and its technology at any time to go over plays and practice VR reps — the room is set up for dropbacks and simulated throws. Currently, Nevada is only using VR for quarterbacks because it is much harder to take high-quality film of each position during a live practice, the Gazette-Journal reported.
The program also plans to bring a VR setup when it travels for games, according to the Gazette-Journal. The extra practice opportunity could make a difference for a quarterback performing in an unfamiliar setting.
“The biggest thing when we were looking at it was, ‘Is it going to be beneficial or is kind of a gimmick?'” Crosby told the newspaper. “For us, it’s been really beneficial. Even in the little time we’ve used it, I think it’s helped out our quarterbacks tremendously.”
