Mark Stoops reacts to helmet communications, tablets, other college football changes for 2024

College football has implemented a number of new changes this year to how things are handled on the field, from instituting a two-minute warning, to allowing teams to use tablets on the sideline, to helmet communications for quarterbacks and key defensive players.

It’s a lot to take in. Kentucky had a leg up on one element of change.

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“I think with us, we had the opportunity, we were one of the teams that experimented with the tablets in the bowl game a year ago,” coach Mark Stoops said on an SEC teleconference call on Wednesday. “I felt like that was relatively easy transition. We felt like it was helpful. I communicated with the SEC head coaches in the offseason on that.”

That’s not to say there wasn’t some level of adjustment to the new tablets in college football. Kentucky has worked to make sure it’s utilizing them in practice, when normally you wouldn’t necessarily fully huddle up on the sidelines.

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“It is a different system, and we did spend quite a bit of time on that just making sure everybody was comfortable and during our scrimmages and during certain practices where we actually went to our position on the bench and went through the tablets, went through the series and make sure everybody was comfortable with it,” Stoops said. “So I think that’s important.”

College football is frequently adjusting and tinkering things, so getting used to new rules is nothing new for coaches. It’s just a matter of ironing out those kinks.

Perhaps the most impactful change in terms of quality of play could be the implementation of headset communications for quarterbacks and a key defensive player.

That will allow coaches to communicate directly with their players on the field.

There are a lot of ways that can potentially go wrong, which is why Stoops and the Wildcats are being careful to ensure they don’t trip up on the new college football change.

“Obviously the headset communication, we’ve been doing that every day in practice from the spring through all fall camp and through scrimmages,” Stoops said. “So we’ve tried to head off as many problems as we can and get comfortable with how we’re dealing with that communication.”

Finally, college football has implemented a new two-minute warning. That should take considerably less adjustment, as coaches and players alike are at least familiar with how it works in the NFL.

It’s just a matter of getting used to it at this level.

“With the two-minute warning that’s just another variable that we have to take into consideration,” Stoops said. “I think it’ll just depend on the situation there.”