Thursday, May 26, 2016

Ahead Of The Curve

Patriots.com has a story under the headline, Tackling Tech: Can Tech Save NFL Training Camps? Interesting that in some regards, the college game has led the way, with Dartmouth on the cutting edge.

From the story:
(Virtual Reality) headsets provide the ability for endless reps that can mimic game-time situations for a signal caller without the risk of bodily contact.
Dartmouth was one of the first football teams in the country – pro or college – to get started with VR. Check out a San Diego Union-Tribune story from last spring detailing the Big Green's early entry into the field. From the story:
(Derek) Belch has fielded interest from dozens of teams at every level of football this spring, but so far, Stanford, Vanderbilt, Clemson, Auburn, Arkansas and Dartmouth are STRIVR Labs’ first official partners. As of mid-May, Belch said he’s also in serious talks with several NFL teams and expects to sign with a handful by this summer.
The Patriots story mentions "helmet telemetry." Dartmouth was part of a helmet telemetry study as far back as 2006. Check out a USA Today story from 2006 noting as much.

And the Patriots story includes this:
There were many muffled laughs by old-school football "purists" many months ago when Dartmouth College grabbed some headlines for using special, task-specific robots to star in routine and replicable drills for the college's football practices.
Now comes news that the owner of Pittsburgh Steelers, Dartmouth alum, is bringing some robots to his team with the support of Head Coach Mike Tomlin.
One small correction. While Dan Rooney is a Dartmouth alum, the team's "owner" is not.
Headline for a story out of Penn State: Father's Advice Drives Penn State DC Brent Pry; The Nittany Lions' new defensive coordinator has capitalized on great advice from his dad, who is also a college football coach.

From the story (LINK):
It has often been noted that Penn State assistant Brent Pry is the son of a coach.
His dad’s best professional advice? Prepare to be fired.
The dad, Jim Pry, was Dartmouth's offensive coordinator in 2010 until he and the college "parted ways." See a story in The Dartmouth. Pry has been at Bethune-Cookman ever since.
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Calling it the game of the year, the Harvard Crimson newspaper takes a blow-by-blow look at last fall's game-for-the ages between Dartmouth and Harvard. (LINK) (Corrected ;-)
Speaking of Harvard, a story about what might be the toughest and easiest schedules of the fall on the STATS site puts the Crimson's slate on one side of that ledger. Wanna guess which one? (LINK)
A story out of Michigan State reports that former Spartan Larry Fowler, who coached freshman football and varsity wrestling at Dartmouth in1957, has died at age 83. (LINK)