In 14 years as a college head coach, TCU’s Sonny Dykes has grown increasingly embarrassed standing next to his assistants holding the oversized play cards for the offense.

“You turn a football game on, and you have people holding these signs up with women in bikinis and all these things,” Dykes said. “Then you have people holding banners up to block the people from seeing those people. Before long, you could have guys dressed as monkeys signaling plays. It just got to the point where it was like a circus.”

Luckily for Dykes, the days of quarterbacks frantically looking at a massive crying Michael Jordan meme sign with the game on the line are over. 

On April 19, the NCAA Playing Rules Oversight Panel allowed coach-to-player communication through a helmet radio for one player on each side of the ball. Now, play callers can communicate with their quarterback or defensive captain directly until there are 15 seconds left on the play clock or the ball is snapped, whichever comes first.

Calls for helmet headsets increased after former Michigan staffer Connor Stalions led an elaborate sign-stealing ring that included attending future opponents’ games and filming sideline signals from the stands. While helmet headsets likely prevent a scheme of that magnitude, Baylor head coach Dave Aranda, set to call defensive plays this year, doesn’t believe signaling will go extinct, and therefore, neither will the gamesmanship of deciphering the code in real-time. Ten other players on the field without a radio need to know the play. 

“There’s still going to be signal stealing,” Aranda said. “There’s too many people on defense, particularly. If you’re talking to your linebacker or your safety,  there’s too many people in between the back end and front end. So there’s still going to be some form of signaling.”

However, player-to-coach communication will have a massive impact on college football offenses that prioritize tempo. North Texas finished second in the nation last year with 79.3 plays per game and head coach Eric Morris worries that he operates faster than the headset can handle.  

“I don’t care about it cutting off at 15 (seconds), I want to know when it cuts on, and (when) I can start talking to him and start getting the play call in,” Morris said. “There’s a bunch of times where we train our quarterbacks after he hands the football off, his eyes come directly to me, and I might have the next play in while the other play is going on.”

While tempo offenses may find a new nitrous gear, Morris foresees the game as a whole actually slowing down as coaches attempt to run through every possible scenario with their quarterback pre-play. But other coaches, such as Houston’s Willie Fritz, are keenly aware of this pitfall and have already worked to mitigate it. 

“One thing I’ve heard from a lot of people is that sometimes there’s too much chatter on there,” Fritz said. “You’ve got to make sure you do a nice job of being direct, being to the point, and giving a guy maybe one little clue or one little hint that would help him on that play and not giving him over-analysis paralysis.”

The influx of new technology is changing how programs practice. UTEP head coach Scotty Walden used his athletic trainers’ walkie-talkies and gave his quarterbacks RadioShack earpieces to mimic the helmet headsets during summer OTAs. Sam Houston head coach KC Keeler mentioned the Bearkats will swap 7-on-7 and inside practice periods for more live scrimmages to work out the kinks.

“We’ve set up a lot of scrimmage-type opportunities early in training camp - game-type opportunities - so we can really work on that,” Keeler said. “Stuff that you probably wouldn’t do that early in training camp, now you are.”

Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian, who coached with helmet headsets as the Atlanta Falcons offensive coordinator in 2017 and 2018, said the main benefit of player-to-coach communication is that the quarterback can quickly disseminate a coaching tip to other offensive players without a headset.

“Sometimes just voice inflection from the coach helps the quarterback understand the importance of something in a play,” Sarkisian said. “It does allow you to give some subtle tips and reminders, and it may not always be for the quarterback. It may be for the running back or the right guard.”

Aranda predicts those coaching pointers will translate to fewer mental gaffes in critical moments. 

“In the NFL, there’s always been a higher level of awareness,” Aranda said. “With them, situationally, I can tell a guy, ‘Hey, we can’t let this guy get out of bounds. Hey, we’re in this mode.’ If you’re on offense, (you can tell) your quarterback, ‘Hey, tell Richard when he gets the first down to go down.’ You didn’t have the ability to say that (in college).”