The technological landscape in football is growing as fast as everywhere else. Everything is so much different than just a few years ago.
With all the new gadgets available for coaches and players, the most important piece of technology is becoming something coaches can hold in their hands. Tablets, which are starting out outsell laptops nationwide, are light, easy to use and perfect to store data and showcase the next play to be run.
Through tablets and a wide variety of apps that give coaches greater control over the game, ever-growing technology is gaining in importance from professional leagues to colleges, all the way down to youth leagues.
With the Microsoft Surface tablet, NFL coaches can take their work to practices and game day sidelines, allowing them to utilize the same applications that they do on their desktops.
Through apps such as iScoutPad, coaches can use their tablets to keep a running tally of the strengths and weaknesses of potential recruits and compare them to other candidates as well as players already on the roster to see how they may fit. Once a player has been chosen, the GameChanger app keeps the team’s individual statistics for comparison and the ability to zero in on problem areas.
For pregame needs, Coach’s Eye makes it easy to catch video during practice or a game and focus on a problematic stance or form. Coach’s Eye illustrates when a player should have went left instead of right by being able to mark the video.
In-game applications are probably the most popular to use, providing a futuristic feel as coaches monitor events live. Coachbase and First Down allow coaches to draw up plays, move players around and start from scratch when nothing else seems to be working.
And finally, for postgame, the Hudl app lets coaches take film from the previous game, make annotations at particular points of interest and then distribute to players digitally.
The tablet-oriented approach is much different than the traditional old -school methods of coaching. More coaches are seeing the value in tablets and their specific apps all in one device that can be used from anywhere.
Just as they do with the latest schemes and trends, coaches continue to adapt to technology. With the prices for mobile devices falling and the price for specialized software becoming more affordable, this technology is beginning to make its way down to the youth level, enabling coaches and players to learn faster and help them progress to the next level.