As a wave of college football coaches employing the hurry-up, no-huddle offense take the game in a new direction, at least one of them is in favor of a technological advancement, as well. Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze, now entering his fourth season with the Rebels' hurry-up offense, said Tuesday at the annual SEC meetings in Destin, Fla., that he would prefer college quarterbacks to have audio receivers in their helmets just as NFL quarterbacks do.
"Technology, anything that will help our game, I'm for that," Freeze said. "I'm really for ... I wish we had a microphone in the quarterback's helmet. I really would like that."
The receivers in the helmets of NFL quarterbacks allow coaches to communicate with them while on the field, and the defense is permitted to have a player with the same advantage. Freeze made the comments within the context of talking about his team's blowout 42-3 loss to TCU in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl. His full remarks were posted to youtube.com by insideolemisssports.com (see 5:05 mark). Freeze joked that Ole Miss' hurry-up offense wouldn't be encumbered by the NFL rule that silences the receivers when the play clock reaches a certain point, as Ole Miss can have the ball snapped by that point, anyway. He understood the NFL rule to silence receivers with 10 seconds on the play clock, though they are actually silenced at 15 seconds.
"I'd love that -- we could talk to him the whole time then," Freeze said with a laugh.
Although there isn't any way to predict how soon (or how far off) it might happen, Freeze just might be seeing the future. The notion of calls being overturned based on video replay would have seemed far-fetched at one time, too, and that has proven to be a successful addition to the college game. But as with anything new, there would be plenty of opposition to the idea from coaches convinced it would benefit themselves less and others more.
Freeze, for his part, sounded more like he was thinking out loud than advocating.
Then again, thinking out loud is where advocacy begins.
Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter *@ChaseGoodbread*.