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The sight was a common one for Andrew Kolpacki. For many a Sunday, he would watch NFL games on TV and see quarterbacks putting their hands on their helmets, desperately trying to hear the play call from the sideline or booth as tens of thousands of fans screamed at the tops of their lungs.
When the NCAA’s playing rules oversight committee this past spring approved the use of coach-to-player helmet communications in games for the 2024 season, Kolpacki, Michigan State’s head football equipment manager, knew the Spartans’ quarterbackss and linebackers were going to have a problem.
“There had to be some sort of solution,” he said.
As it turns out, there was. And it was right across the street.
Kolpacki reached out to Tamara Reid Bush, a mechanical engineering professor who not only heads the school’s Biomechanical Design Research Laboratory but also is a football season ticket-holder.
Kolpacki “showed me some photos and said that other teams had just put duct tape inside the (earhole), and he asked me, ‘Do you think we can do anything better than duct tape,?” Bush said. “And I said, ‘Oh, absolutely.’”
Bush and Rylie DuBois, a sophomore biosystems engineering major and undergraduate research assistant at the lab, set out to produce earhole inserts made from polylactic acid, a bio-based plastic, using a 3D printer. Part of the challenge was accounting for the earhole sizes and shapes that vary depending on the helmet style.
Once the season got underway with a Friday night home game against Florida Atlantic on Aug. 30, the helmets of starting QB Aidan Chiles and LB Jordan Turner were outfitted with the inserts, which helped mitigate crowd noise.
DuBois attended the game, sitting in the student section.
“I felt such a strong sense of accomplishment and pride,” DuBois said. “And I told all my friends around me about how I designed what they were wearing on the field.”
Purdue Boilermakers vs. Michigan State Spartans Highlights | FOX CFB
All told, Bush and…
Source link : https://www.foxsports.com/stories/college-football/michigan-state-student-prof-design-crowd-noise-controlling-helmet-inserts
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Publish date : 2024-11-25 16:23:00
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