College football teams to use high-tech mouthguard sensors as NFL studies head trauma
Four research universities are partnering with the NFL to collect data on head trauma sustained during play, the league said in a Nov. 23 news release.
To collect data, football players at the University of Washington, the University of Alabama, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Wisconsin will wear custom-fit mouthguards with sensors in them.
Those sensors will collect kinematic data — or data pertaining to the motion of each player — including “impact speed, direction, force, location and severity,” the release said.
Helmet sensors have been used for research purposes in the past, but mouthguard sensors could help researchers achieve another level of understanding, The Associated Press reported.
“We wanted to get inside the helmet and closer to the target of interest,” NFL chief medical officer Allen Sills told the AP. “That’s where the mouthguard seemed to be a natural choice because it’s closest to the brain and allows us to see what the body is actually feeling.”
The NFL plans to use insights from the data to shape its approach to injury reduction and its efforts to decrease head trauma. The organization states that the use of such data, along with the use of improved equipment and rules changes, has helped make the sport safer.
The league said players from all four universities have been wearing the “smart” mouthguards throughout the 2021 football season and that players at 10 NFL clubs have also been wearing the devices.
Jennifer Langton, the NFL’s senior vice president of health and safety innovation, told the AP that the league wanted to partner with research universities with strong football programs and that players could participate on a volunteer basis.
“We’re pleased to be part of this collaborative player-safety initiative,” Dr. Kimberly Harmon, professor of family medicine and orthopedics and sports medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, told GeekWire. “I look forward to collecting data that ultimately improves our ability to protect football players from head trauma at all levels — youth, high school, college and professional.”
The data collected will be made anonymous, though each university will receive a statistical analysis of its specific team to help it curb injury. The information will be analyzed by the NFL and NFL Players Association’s independent engineering experts and NFLPA-affiliated consultants, the release said.
“Player safety is important to the health of our game, so anything we can do to assist in gathering research that could potentially make the game safer, we’re happy to do,” Mack Brown, head football coach at UNC-Chapel Hill, said in a university news release.
The NFL first launched the mouthguard sensor program in 2019 as part of its $60 million Engineering Roadmap program, intended to “improve the understanding of the biomechanics of head injuries” in football and to incentivize the development of improved protective equipment, like helmets, according to the program’s website.
Each university’s Independent Review Board reviewed and approved the terms of the study, the NFL said in the release.
This story was originally published November 23, 2021 at 6:39 PM with the headline "College football teams to use high-tech mouthguard sensors as NFL studies head trauma."