Gallaudet Football Team Debuting 5G Helmets That Will 'Change the Landscape' for Deaf Players (Exclusive)

AT&T and Gallaudet created the first 5G-connected football helmet for deaf and hard-of-hearing student-athletes who use American Sign Language on the field

Calling out plays on the Gallaudet University football team is a different experience from most college teams.

At Gallaudet, a private university in Washington, D.C. for the education of the deaf and hard of hearing, players rely on the huddle — which the school actually invented in 1894 — to sign plays to each other without the opposing team figuring out their next moves. Every step of the game requires going into a huddle, losing them the ability to make quick changes on the field.

But on Saturday, the team will get to debut an exciting new technology that will change the game for the athletes.

AT&T and Gallaudet have collaborated on the first 5G-connected helmet, which allows their coaches to send plays from a tablet directly onto small screens in the visor of players on the field, making the game more inclusive for student-athletes who use American Sign Language.

"I don't think our players and our coaches have put this into context how big this is," head coach Chuck Goldstein tells PEOPLE. "Gallaudet University in the 2023 football program is going to be the first time that any team has used a one-way communication device for a visual communication device. It's been done with an audio one-way communication device, but it's never been done like this."

The school was an innovator in 1894, when quarterback Paul Hubbard invented the modern-day huddle. And now, coach Goldstein says through the technology, "we have the opportunity to change the landscape of college football" again through the debut of the 5G-connected helmet.

The specifics of the technology are fairly simple: coaches on the sideline select a play using a tablet that will send the play to a lens inside the helmet. The quarterback wearing the helmet will receive the play in augmented reality on the digital display located within the visor using AT&T 5G.

The Gallaudet football team faces a handful of challenges on the field, and Goldstein hopes the helmet makes communication easier for the team. "Here at Gallaudet, it doesn't matter who's on the team, who we play against — we're never going to have a level playing field. We just won't," he says.

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Goldstein continues, "Sometimes we have to live with mistakes because we can't get somebody's attention normally in our community, if you want to get somebody's attention, you have to touch them if you're close or they have to see you, and not all the time our players are looking at the coaches."

The 5G-connected helmet "isn't going to level the playing field," but "it's going to help bridge the gap," says Goldstein. "I'm going to be able to get the attention of our quarterback. This technology, it's not going to maybe win us a game, but it's going to increase our chances and that's all our players want. They just want the opportunity to compete and be successful like anybody else in the country."

Gadaullet's quarterbacks, Brandon Washington and Trevin Adams, tell PEOPLE they're excited to see how the technology performs when the team takes on Hillbert College on Saturday.

"I really enjoyed wearing the helmet," says Washington, who adds that the plays came through "very clear" when he used the helmet during a practice.

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Washington hopes the helmet will make the Bison a more efficient team. "I feel like it'll speed up the pace with our offense when coach calls the plays," he says.

Adams agrees with his teammate. "I think the helmet's going to really help our offense be faster when we're in our huddle. We're not going to have to step away to the coach and get the communication happening there right now. It'll just show up. We just don't have to leave the huddle. We can just be there. We can call our plays. We can just be a lot more efficient that way. And also, the defense cannot read our offensive signs."

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“Together with Gallaudet, we are proving that connecting changes everything,” said Corey Anthony, senior vice president network engineering and operations at AT&T. “Our expertise in connectivity combined with Gallaudet's legacy of breaking down barriers has created a helmet that not only transforms the way deaf and hard of hearing athletes engage in sports but opened up endless possibility for innovation.”

Coach Goldstein says he's not sure "what's going to happen" when the team debuts the technology on Saturday, "but we're going to tell the world what this thing is all about and what it can do."

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