The 2024 college football season soft launched on Saturday with four Week 0 games worldwide, starting with a contest between Georgia Tech and Florida State in Ireland and ending with Delaware State taking on Hawaii at the Clarence T.C. Ching Athletics Complex.
In the two other games across college football, Montana State upset New Mexico on the road, while SMU rallied late to steal a win at Nevada.
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In all four games, one common issue between teams that played was in-helmet communication between coaches and players. A new NCAA rule passed in April allowed teams to use radio communication between coaches and a player on each side of the ball.
Players in the earlier slate of games appeared to struggle getting their bearings with the new communication system. For the University of Hawaii, it was no different between head coach Timmy Chang and quarterback Brayden Schager, who had to endure heavy rain and wind during Saturday night’s contest.
“There was a couple of times I couldn’t hear because of the wind or the rain or something, so we’d have to go to our other operation, which I think we handled well operationally all night, but it was a little challenging from time to time,” Schager said. “We had practiced for that and we knew what we were gonna do when the comms went out so I was happy with that.”
Other notable rule changes in college football in 2024 include tablets on the sidelines and a two-minute warning at the end of each half, similar to how the NFL operates.
It is up to each program to provide their own equipment for in-helmet communication. Delaware State did not have it on Saturday.
As the rest of the country begins playing games next week, Chang believes helmet communication will be a major adjustment for teams kicking off for the first time. That includes UCLA, who kicks off the DeShaun Foster era on Sept. 1 at UH.
“I think everybody had problems,” Chang said following Hawaii’s’s 35-14 win over DSU. “In the three games that I saw, including ours, the three Mountain West games, everybody had a little problem with it. You can see the quarterbacks (struggling). The kinks gotta get ironed out and figured out and whether the wiring’s not right in the helmet or the satellite’s not picking up, it happens. The rest of the country that’s playing next week, everybody’s gotta be ready to adjust.”