Technology Hits Football Field Sooner

NORMAN, Okla. -- Slip behind the wheel of a vehicle, step hard onto the accelerator, then crash head-on into a wall, and there's going to be damage. Glass flies. Metal crumples. Everything inside is flung about as the laws of gravity demonstrate its awesome force.

Now crawl into the cleats of Oklahoma running back Adrian Peterson. Take the handoff from Sooners quarterback Jason White, barrel across the line of scrimmage and head-on into a 300-pound nose tackle. Pads collide. Brains rattle. Bodies ache.

There's more than meets the eye with a peek inside an Oklahoma football player's helmet.

The two collisions have their similarities. Yet while the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration routinely studies the wreckage cause by automobile accidents, on-field impacts have long been overlooked.

Until now.

This season, Oklahoma became one of three schools (North Carolina and Virginia Tech) to use the Head Impact Telemetry System (HIT System) to monitor, analyze and record the severity of such on-field impacts.

It's another example of OU at the forefront of sports medicine and technology. In addition to its work with Simbex, Oklahoma has spent the last three offseasons working with Gatorade in a series of one-of-a-kind studies on heat stress.

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NORMAN, Okla. -- They insisted he wouldn't feel a thing. That the pill would pass through his body like the pizza he had devoured a day earlier. But Oklahoma offensive lineman Vince Carter wasn't so sure.

A pill designed by NASA? That gave off a magnetic signal? A pill that, beneath its silicon exterior, housed coils, circuits, crystals and a battery? Crawling along his digestive tract? "It was strange," Carter said. "I was a football player turned lab rat."

But Carter did what he was asked. And for good reason. A year earlier, his participation in an ongoing study by the University of Oklahoma and the Gatorade Sports Science Institute (GSSI) eliminated his troubles with cramping. The same thing happened for teammate Tommie Harris. So when scientists offered the radio-transmitting pill, designed to measure his core temperature deep in the pit of his intestines, he swallowed.

"It was like taking down a little white battery," said Carter, a 6-foot-3, 294-pound center. "It was a little hard to swallow -- took a bit more water than a normal pill. But I got it down. All in the name of science."

Continue Article at ESPN.com | OU - The Program

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ESPN.com will be reporting a season-long series on the OU program giving fans a unique perspective of the days, people and planning that lead up to college football each Saturday.

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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