Texas coach Steve Sarkisian has an easy fix for the NCAA to wipe out college sign-stealing
Coach-to-player communication exists in the NFL and has been experimented with in college football. So what's the wait?
Texas coach Steve Sarkisian did something extraordinarily rare Thursday. He actually requested that the press write something.
“Everybody write an article on why doesn’t college football have coach-to-player communication so I don’t have to deal with sign stealing,” Sarkisian said in his regular-scheduled Thursday video press conference. “I spend half of my week changing signals and signs rather than coaching the game of football.”
It's a topic that has been at the top of college football ever since Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh was suspended for an alleged infraction. The Longhorns coach believes that while it's absolutely an issue in college football, a fix is quite easy: the NFL has helmet-radio communication that Sarkisian used for two years while he was the offensive coordinator of the Atlanta Falcons. The NCAA, however, has prohibited the use of such technology since 1994 over concerns about the logistics and costs for smaller schools.
Sarkisian sees it as a paper-thin excuse.
"There's no shortage of money in college football, clearly. So that whole idea that it's a competitive disadvantage for those that can't do it or that stadiums aren't equipped to, don't have that type of technology, I don't buy it, I don't understand it," Sarkisian said.
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The NCAA does have the tech, and it has already been used in a college football game before. Chris Vannini of The Athletic mentioned a system developed by a company called Coach Comm which was used in a game between Grambling and Southern last November.
The implementation of the system was described as a success on both sides. There have been conversations among the conferences, but one legitimately difficult roadblock described in the same story has been helmet liability and warranty. If the helmets teams use are modified, it opens schools up to lawsuits for potential head injuries.
Sign stealing may not be quite as easy of a fix as Sarkisian would hope for, but he said installing the system isn't just about his frustrations with the scandal. It's also about how it distracts the world from the game.
"At the end of the day, that shouldn't be at the forefront. There's too many great stories, too many great players around the country that are playing good football, too many teams that are playing good football right now, for us not to be talking about those things," Sarkisian said.