By james art Communications between coaches and players during Power 4 college football games this season are taking place on unencrypted frequencies, sources told ESPN on Wednesday, a revelation that raises questions about whether they could have been compromised.
Texas Tech athletic director Kirby Hocutt said he raised the issue during a call with Big 12 athletic directors on Tuesday after learning the Red Raiders’ helmet communications were unencrypted and accessible to anyone with a scanner and the know-how to locate the frequencies.
The Big 12 has instructed its 10 schools playing games this weekend to send their communications devices back to GSC, the provider for all 68 Power 4 teams this year, for a software update that will provide encryption, sources confirmed to ESPN.
Modules and breakers are expected to be updated and returned in time for Saturday’s games.
The Athletic first reported the Big 12 equipment request.
Texas Tech requested a report from the Big 12 on its recent games against TCU and Baylor to ensure the integrity of the games were not compromised, and the conference is complying with that request.
“We have to have a game whose integrity is not in question in any way on Saturday afternoon,” Hocutt told ESPN. “We owe it to the 120 young men on our football team to make sure that happens, that it’s a game of fair competition and the same rules apply.”
Neither school has made specific allegations that an opponent may have accessed their frequencies during a game, and several Big 12 and Power 4 coaches and officials question whether a competitive advantage could be gained if that happened.
This is the first college football season in which in-game use of helmet-based communications and tablets between coaches and players has been allowed at the FBS level. The NCAA approved the rule change in April, six months after opening an investigation into Michigan’s alleged signal-stealing scheme under former official Connor Stallions.
A frequency coordinator made the discovery in late September while preparing for Texas A&M-Arkansas game at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The coordinator notified the SEC of his findings, as did Baylor and TCU, who forwarded the information to the conference.
The heads of football operations for the SEC, Big 12, Big Ten and ACC have worked together with GSC in the four weeks since to investigate potential concerns and move to a more encrypted and secure platform.
“We have been aware of the issue and have been in communication with the GSC and our fellow conferences as well as our schools,” the SEC said Wednesday in a statement. “We are not aware of any cases of the system being compromised during games. GSC has developed an update to resolve the issue and we have notified our schools of the opportunity to update their systems at a time of their choosing.’
The revelation that college football teams did not use encrypted frequencies upset several Big 12 athletic directors who believed the Power 4 schools had the same encrypted setup used in the NFL, sources said.
The GSC could not be reached for comment.
In the Big 12, concerns about potential vulnerabilities were not addressed at the AD and head coaching level until Tuesday.
After Tuesday’s call, the Big 12 sent a memo obtained by ESPN to ADs and coaches acknowledging that someone with intimate knowledge of the frequency scanners and the GSC system could have heard the communications.
“GSC and the frequency experts we consulted shared that the risk of someone being able to access this communication is very low,” Big 12 Chief Football and Athletics Officer Scott Draper wrote in the memo. “The four conferences met weekly to discuss next steps and each chose the same path forward to inform the chief equipment managers of what we knew. As an interim step we have changed the frequencies until the software update from GSC is complete. In retrospect, the conference should have shared this information with you.”
The Big 12 notified equipment managers at its 16 member schools of the switch to backup frequencies in early October, but some officials may not have forwarded the information to their football staffs. Multiple broadcasters in the Big 12 conversation told ESPN they were unaware of the issue until Hocutt reached out to him on Tuesday.
Texas Tech (5-3, 3-2) lost 59-35 to Baylor on Oct. 19 and 35-34 to TCU last Saturday. The Red Raiders opted to move forward with a different coach-to-player system of encrypted communication provided by CoachComm for their game against No. 11 Iowa State on Saturday, sources said, rather than wait for a software update or the results of a Big 12 inquiry.
“Our football coaching staff and I were made aware yesterday of the communication issues between players and coaches in the helmet across the country,” TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati said in a statement. “As with any inquiry, we look forward to assisting the Big 12 Conference in the review process.”
Baylor athletic director Mack Rhoades said, “We stand behind the integrity of our game-time operations and overall program and are happy to cooperate as needed with conference officials.”
In the SEC, the league has communicated with all of its programs about the security update available through the GSC. The league office is alert to the issue, sources said, but there is no high level of concern about compromised communications.
The Big Ten has been aware of the conversation around helmet communication and has not had any issues. Programs update their technology like others in sports.
The ACC league has been monitoring the issue for nearly a month. At no point did ACC teams raise concerns with the league office. They all had the opportunity to send their equipment to GSC for an update, which some have already taken advantage of. ACC officials do not have significant concerns, in part because no programs expressed concern and all continued to use the system in October.
Officials from the Power 4 conferences were assured by experts that the risk of communication vulnerabilities between coaches and players was low. But a source at one Big 12 school told ESPN that its team purchased a scanner earlier this month after learning of the potential vulnerability and was able to locate its own coach-player communication frequency during practice.
Still, there are mixed opinions among other Big 12 officials about whether teams can gain a competitive advantage during a game from communication between their opponent’s coaches and players.
The frequency doesn’t broadcast all headset communications between coaches, which would be invaluable, but only what one coach says to one player on the field — usually a quarterback on offense and a quarterback on defense — and only when the coach holds a button to talk to them , before the communication is interrupted 15 seconds before the click.
An opponent tuned into that frequency would also have to know how to decode their playcalls and effectively communicate their own team’s adjustments before the snap, a much more challenging task than stealing a signal from the sideline.
“There’s no real advantage,” argued a Big 12 personnel chief. “One, you’re speaking a different language. Second, if you think you could implement in real time what they say and try to do it in the field, you are mistaken. You’re just being your stereotypical paranoid football coach. You can’t pass it on to the kids fast enough.”
ESPN’s Pete Thamel contributed to this report.
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