Anthony Pass, the head athletic trainer for Tom Herman and Texas, has a new cutting-edge tool at his disposal to monitor players and the hits they sustain to the head.
Starting this season, Texas has outfitted all of their Riddell helmets with sensors that monitors the hits that every player on the roster sustains during the course of a practice. Within each helmet is a set of sensors that records it, interprets the data in G-Forces, location, direction and severity, and then sends it to a handheld device used by the training staff.
If the hit is hard enough, trainers will receive a signal on the handheld device saying that “Player X has sustained a hit.” Trainers will also be notified of repetitive hits by the monitoring system to give them a heads-up of something they might need to keep an eye on.