Miami Of Ohio Coach Goes Full ‘Old Man Yells At Cloud’ Mode While Ripping Use Of iPads During Games

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The NCAA gave teams the green light to follow in the footsteps of the NFL by letting players and coaches use iPads to take a look back at previous plays during games this year, but Miami of Ohio coach Chuck Martin made it very clear he’s not a fan of the new change while treating us to an early contender for College Football Rant of the Year.

It’s been ten years since the NFL entered a new age by partnering with Microsoft to supply teams with the Surface tablets that are now heavily featured in sideline shots that routinely capture players harnessing them to analyze footage as a game unfolds to help them make necessary adjustments.

The fallout of the Conor Stalions scandal last season highlighted just one of the ways college football is trailing the NFL on the technology front, but over the offseason, the NCAA made some notable changes to close the gap.

The hand signals at the root of that aforementioned controversy will be less essential now that coaches can use their headset to communicate with a player on the field before the snap, and schools will also be able to use tablets to review video for the first time ever (the SEC, ACC, and Big Ten will all be using iPads, while the Big 12 opted to go the Microsoft route).

As far as I can tell, the NCAA didn’t release any specific numbers when it came to how many people were for and against that second measure, but during a press conference that was held on Wednesday, Miami RedHawks head coach Chuck Martin asserted he’s the only person in the country who was in the “No” column before explaining his rationale.

Martin—who recently made headlines for calling out Alabama for stealing his kicker—channeled his inner Luddite while bemoaning the change, saying:

“Everybody’s all excited about the iPads. I was the only coach in the country that voted against them. 

In the old days, you actually had to watch the action; figure out what was going on. You had to go make adjustments. I can get a nine-year-old kid to watch the play on an iPad and say ‘Listen, that guy was running wide open up the seam. We should cover him.’

I hate all of it. I used to like it when you had to coach. You used to have to make in-game adjustments. Now the iPad will make them for you. 

Pretty soon there will be robots on the sidelines. You won’t even have to hire us. We’ll have fake officials, fake players, fake coaches. It will be like playing [College Football] 25.” 

I can’t say I agree with Martin’s sentiment or am even able to follow most of his reasoning here, but I was nonetheless very entertained.