Spags: Cowboys Getting A Cool Hook-Up
IRVING, Texas - Bill Bates couldn't help from laughing the other day when he heard his former teammate and the head coach he once worked for say he was going to make the Cowboys wear their dark blue jerseys for the season opener in Jacksonville, Fla.
Jaguars head coach Jack Del Rio knew the temperature Sunday afternoon at Alltel Stadium is expected to be in the high 80's, with 70 percent humidity, making for a heat index of 91, and figured the sun would take a worse toll on the visiting Cowboys if they were wearing dark colors instead of the traditional road whites.
"He was trying to put us in our dark jerseys," said Bates, the former Cowboys safety and special teams ace obviously still considering himself part of the team even though he worked a year for Del Rio as the Jaguars' assistant special teams coach, "but it ain't gonna make a difference."
Well, the jersey color will certainly make less of a difference since the Cowboys will be utilizing the air-cooled shoulder pads being provided by the company Bates now works for - The Williams Sports Group, featuring the Temperature Management System out of Jacksonville. The TMS significantly cools down the player while on the sideline, and does so without creating more moisture, as does those air-conditioned fan systems.
The TMS system is being used by a few NFL teams and colleges.
The Cowboys used the TMS in their two home preseason games last month with impressive results, if you consider they had no heat-related incidents while playing with the temperatures in the 90's at Texas Stadium. This innovative system has a non-intrusive bladder inside the pads which allows cool air to circulate and cool down the body. Players simply hook up hoses connected to PVC tubing coming from the air conditioning unit behind the benches to the back of their shoulder pads for cool air while on the bench.
"They make a big difference," said ninth-year veteran Greg Ellis, using the system for the first time this summer.
"They definitely help cool your insides down," veteran guard Marco Rivera says.
Now not all the players will use the cooling system, mainly because of the smaller pads they wear - kickers, quarterbacks and deep snappers. And then there is 13th-year corner Aaron Glenn, who says he has been wearing the same shoulder pads, though reconditioned a few times, his entire career and didn't want to change a thing.
Jacksonville already has been using the cooling system, and had the Temperature Management System in place for training camp. Other NFL teams using the system on a partial basis are Houston, St. Louis, Green Bay and Indianapolis. Some of the colleges using the system are Florida, where its medical research department helped develop TMS; Clemson, UCLA, North Carolina State, Georgia Southern and South Carolina.
"It's just a great way to fight heat illness," said Bates, who also is spending time helping coach his kids at Nease High School in Ponte Vedra, Fla. "It's not the cure all, but helps fight it."
And the, uh, cool thing for Bates this weekend will be finding himself back on the sideline. The former 15-year Cowboys player (1983-97) will be working the system behind the Cowboys' bench with two of his triplets, 17-year-olds Graham and Hunter, who this past football season at Nease, which won the state title, actually started a few games as, uh, twin safeties. They will be in charge of fill-ups, plugging the hoses into the players' pads.
So something new for the Cowboys on Sunday, and even an old vet like Ellis says you got to keep rolling with the punches, as he found out, having moved from defensive end to linebacker in this his ninth season.
"You got to keep evolving," Ellis said. "Just like the Matrix: Plug me in."
Jaguars head coach Jack Del Rio knew the temperature Sunday afternoon at Alltel Stadium is expected to be in the high 80's, with 70 percent humidity, making for a heat index of 91, and figured the sun would take a worse toll on the visiting Cowboys if they were wearing dark colors instead of the traditional road whites.
"He was trying to put us in our dark jerseys," said Bates, the former Cowboys safety and special teams ace obviously still considering himself part of the team even though he worked a year for Del Rio as the Jaguars' assistant special teams coach, "but it ain't gonna make a difference."
Well, the jersey color will certainly make less of a difference since the Cowboys will be utilizing the air-cooled shoulder pads being provided by the company Bates now works for - The Williams Sports Group, featuring the Temperature Management System out of Jacksonville. The TMS significantly cools down the player while on the sideline, and does so without creating more moisture, as does those air-conditioned fan systems.
The TMS system is being used by a few NFL teams and colleges.
The Cowboys used the TMS in their two home preseason games last month with impressive results, if you consider they had no heat-related incidents while playing with the temperatures in the 90's at Texas Stadium. This innovative system has a non-intrusive bladder inside the pads which allows cool air to circulate and cool down the body. Players simply hook up hoses connected to PVC tubing coming from the air conditioning unit behind the benches to the back of their shoulder pads for cool air while on the bench.
"They make a big difference," said ninth-year veteran Greg Ellis, using the system for the first time this summer.
"They definitely help cool your insides down," veteran guard Marco Rivera says.
Now not all the players will use the cooling system, mainly because of the smaller pads they wear - kickers, quarterbacks and deep snappers. And then there is 13th-year corner Aaron Glenn, who says he has been wearing the same shoulder pads, though reconditioned a few times, his entire career and didn't want to change a thing.
Jacksonville already has been using the cooling system, and had the Temperature Management System in place for training camp. Other NFL teams using the system on a partial basis are Houston, St. Louis, Green Bay and Indianapolis. Some of the colleges using the system are Florida, where its medical research department helped develop TMS; Clemson, UCLA, North Carolina State, Georgia Southern and South Carolina.
"It's just a great way to fight heat illness," said Bates, who also is spending time helping coach his kids at Nease High School in Ponte Vedra, Fla. "It's not the cure all, but helps fight it."
And the, uh, cool thing for Bates this weekend will be finding himself back on the sideline. The former 15-year Cowboys player (1983-97) will be working the system behind the Cowboys' bench with two of his triplets, 17-year-olds Graham and Hunter, who this past football season at Nease, which won the state title, actually started a few games as, uh, twin safeties. They will be in charge of fill-ups, plugging the hoses into the players' pads.
So something new for the Cowboys on Sunday, and even an old vet like Ellis says you got to keep rolling with the punches, as he found out, having moved from defensive end to linebacker in this his ninth season.
"You got to keep evolving," Ellis said. "Just like the Matrix: Plug me in."
posted by The Gryphon at 9:10 AM
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