Blue! 42! How helmet radio changed the NFL

Twenty Thousand Hertz

Dallas Taylor

Music, Design, Arts, Music Commentary

4.8 • 4.1K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2019

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For decades, NFL strategy slowly evolved from each team running a dozen different plays, to rigid schemes with coaches sending in orders through codewords and secret signals. Then, one piece of audio technology revolutionized the game. Beginning in the early 1990's, the NFL allowed coaches to speak directly to their quarterbacks through radios in their helmets. What followed was an instant increase in excitement for the nation's most popular sport, spawning a high-scoring era of fast paced offenses. Featuring former Super Bowl winning coach, Dick Vermeil, current LA Rams Head Coach Sean McVay, Bose Senior Project Manager Matt Ruwe, and Bose Distinguished Engineer Dan Gauger. Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by Dallas Taylor and produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound. Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Watch our video shorts on YouTube, and join the discussion on Reddit and Facebook. Become a monthly contributor at 20k.org/donate. Visit mystery.20k.org to enter this weeks mystery sound. Subscribe to The Truth wherever you get your podcasts. Or go to the truthpodcast.com. Episode transcript, music, and credits can be found here: https://www.20k.org/episodes/blue42 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Bunch right 95 keeper, right-wise slide, sprout left exit, Richard Nixon.
0:07.3	You're listening to 20,000 Hertz.
0:10.1	I'm Dallas Taylor. Football has been America's most popular for decades, but the game has changed
0:34.2	dramatically in recent years. Modern NFL play calls are a complex language of code words
0:39.6	that, to most of us, just sounds like complete nonsense.
0:43.4	All right, let's go west slot right.
0:45.8	72 Z bingo, you split, can it, 58 Lexus, Apple, 314 hammer.
0:59.7	Music Apple 314 Hammer. Just like you don't have to be an audio file to listen to 20,000 Hertz, you don't have to be a
1:04.1	sports fan to appreciate this episode.
1:06.6	So stick with me here.
1:07.9	By the end of this episode, you're going to know some things about football that even normal
1:12.1	fans don't understand.
1:13.8	Anyway, to the uninitiated, football can look pretty haphazard.
1:17.3	But that couldn't be farther from the truth.
1:20.0	Strategy and play calling is a huge part of the appeal of football.
1:24.3	And that's what originally drew Dick Vermeal to the game.
1:26.7	I got involved in football as a high school student, my sophomore year in about 1951.
1:33.0	So it's been a long time. Then I went on and played high school, then junior college, then
1:36.9	college, then became a high school football coach. And I really loved it. I loved the
1:43.0	X's and O's part of it. It just fascinated me. It's like a chess game, how you move them around and all that.
1:49.3	Play calls today might be beyond the comprehension of even the most diehard football fan. But when Coach Vermeal was starting out, the game was far simpler.
1:57.6	I called my own plays in the huddle as a player in high school and junior college and in
	...

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