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After last year’s sign-stealing fiasco involving Connor Stalions and the eventual national championship-winning Michigan Wolverines, college football finally adopted in-helmet radio communication for the 2024 season.
But the new comms have not gone off without a hitch. Teams have struggled to get calls in from their coordinators to their players due to noise, and some programs had to switch the person sending in plays due to communication problems.
Now, the entire Big 12 conference has had to send back their helmet communication devices to the manufacturer due to concerns over unencrypted messages.
Big 12 Schools Using Unencrypted Frequencies To Send In Play Calls
“We’ve got to have a game whose integrity is not questionable in any way on a Saturday afternoon,” Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt told ESPN. “We owe it to the 120 young men on our football team to ensure that happens, that it’s a game of fair competition and the same set of rules are enforced.”
The Big 12 works with a company called GSC for its helmet communications. The same company works with the NFL as well. But the two communications systems are not the same.
“We’re using a system that is not encrypted. And it’s the same company that provides the NFL. And the NFL’s is encrypted. So I’m going, ‘Why the hell isn’t our system encrypted?’ Whose miss is that? Why would we even have thought about using a system that wasn’t encrypted?” a Big 12 school administrator told The Athletic earlier this week.
Non-encrypted frequencies mean plays could be intercepted by someone on the same frequency. That’s a far easier method than sign stealing. It would also provide the other team with far more information than stolen signs.
“There are concerns that others can listen in or access opponent (coach-to-player) comm,” a source from a Big 12 school told The Athletic.
None of the SEC, Big Ten, or ACC have experienced problems. But sources from all three told The Athletic they were unaware of the potential for issues.
A Big Ten athletic director said that he was told that the frequencies would be encrypted. Obviously, that turned out not to be the case. Now, college football is left with a larger problem than it had to begin with.