No. 25 Tennessee and Georgia Tech are playing on Monday at Atlanta’s bonkers new Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Here’s a relatively new thing: LED down markers.
Inventors at another southern school have spearheaded the LED Down Marker Era. LED down markers, in general, seem to be the product of an entrepreneurship and research partnership at Auburn. It’s not clear if these came from that partnership, but the idea’s the same. 247Sports reported on it last year:
Victory Game Clocks developed the idea with the help of a 16-student class at Auburn University’s School of Industrial and Graphic Design, along with guidance from Auburn football equipment manager Dana Marquez, Wes Fuller, a member of Auburn’s chain crew on game days, and Auburn alums Avery Kennedy of Victory Game Clocks and aerospace engineer Chip Mayfield.
“The old dial-a-downs were so cumbersome and top heavy, they were just a pain to move around,” Marquez said. “This is more anatomically built correctly. It looks the part, but the official can actually just run with it and it kinda fits right in there. It’s balanced. Those were all the cool things that we got to do.”
Auburn uses the LED down markers at all its home games. Here’s one in action on Saturday against Georgia Southern, at the top of your screen below:
Electronic down markers are not a revolutionary development in the future of college football, but they look kind of spiffy. I like ‘em. Do you?