iBacks, meet the iPad.
Stanford announced over the weekend that it will become the first college football team to outfit all of its players with iPad playbooks.
From the release:
Stanford Football today ushers in a new era with iPad playbooks for the 2012 season. With the start of the Cardinal's fall training camp, each Stanford player and coach is receiving an iPad outfitted with a digital playbook powered by Denver-based partner PlayerLync. Five professional teams in the NFL are currently equipped through the same partnership, and Stanford is proud to be the first in college football to take this leap forward in operational efficiency, cost reduction and environmental responsibility.
"It's exciting and an honor to be the first university in the nation to partner with PlayerLync," says Bradford M. Freeman Director of Football David Shaw. "Being at the forefront of technology that can help us do our jobs better and help our player learn better, while at the same time being environmentally conscious and cost effective, is part of what Stanford is all about. Stanford University provides our scholar-athletes with the best tools on and off the field to excel at the highest level."
"We are proud to team up with Stanford in taking the technology lead in the NCAA," says PlayerLync Co-Founder, President and CEO Bob Paulsen. "We know that Coach Shaw did his research in choosing the best tools available for the team. By combining PlayerLync's industry leading platform with the talent and intelligence of the Cardinal football organization, Stanford is in exceptional position to continue their tradition of success for many years to come."
The voluminous paper playbooks which consumed trees, money and countless man-hours of production are now a thing of the past for Stanford Football. The training camp playbook, weekly game playbooks and daily notes are now all immediately published from the coaching staff to the players via unattended content synchronization, ensuring that Stanford's players have all the right information as soon as it is available. Documents and video are automatically pushed to each team member's iPad without their involvement.
The digital playbooks also feature facile navigation that makes learning easier and more efficient for players, including an intelligent and searchable interface.
The [value] of a playbook has in the past also been equal to its liability, but Stanford's new digital playbooks represent a revolutionary advance in security. If misplaced, the PlayLync playbook can be immediately and remotely wiped clean. All data is also securely stored on a Stanford server, without a third party managing, maintaining or securing the Cardinal's proprietary assets.
And you have to imagine that it's a pretty handy recruiting tool as well. Come to Stanford and we'll throw in an iPad. Not a bad sell.
Stanford players were not available for comment because they were all playing Angry Birds.