Dartmouth Uses VR to Experience Pounding from Power 5 School
HANOVER, NH — Dartmouth’s football program has reportedly begun utilizing virtual reality as a part of its game-day preparation. The Ivy League school believes that virtual reality could revolutionize the way football teams at the collegiate and professional level prepare for match-ups. In the meantime, Coach Buddy Teevens is hoping it can bring him closer to his second Ivy League Championship.
“We’ve seen some immediate benefits to our players from the few VR sessions we’ve had. Better recognition of coverage, better progressions, and because we are able to hold virtual reality practices indoors, a decrease in the number of sunburns our pasty nerds get while playing out in the field. Those are all wins in my book.”
However, the process of implementing VR into daily football practices hasn’t all been smooth sailing. The VR program used by the team was developed in-house by Dartmouth’s Computer Science program. Coach Teevens was the primary intermediary for the football program and ensured the software was tailor-made to fit the needs of his program. He instructed the development crew to only insert the best teams in college into the virtual reality platform. His reasoning: “We want our boys to compete against the best of the best. And since Clemson won’t schedule us, we’ll have to make do with playing them virtually.”
As a result, the development team only programmed the top-25 FBS Division 1 teams into the software. Players have had mixed reactions competing against this level of talent in the VR simulations.
“We are getting fucking blasted out there…er in there,” third-year starting quarterback, Eustace Winsome IV, begrudgingly admits. “Half the time I can’t even catch the virtual snap before there are four guys in my face. It doesn’t even matter which team we are playing against. These guys are too OP (overpowered). The dev guys really made a fucking mess of this. I think I could have played better than 2-28 with 6 INTs and 3 fumbles against UCF.”
Second-year running back, Dexter von Poindexter was described by teammates as “shell-shocked” and “traumatized” after his experience with the VR program.
“I didn’t have a single carry for positive yardage. I was pile drived into our own end zone three separate times…My player couldn’t make it through the first half before the game informed me that I was ‘too injured to continue.’ But what I really want to know is why the fuck the devs thought it was a good idea to add gore to the game? Not even realistic gore, like Doom video game gore. All I could see was green helmets getting crushed like eggshells, our linemen having their own arms ripped off and then beaten with them…At one point, I looked down and three of my ribs were poking out of my skin. These weren’t just nameless Dartmouth AIs either. The devs actually programmed each and everyone one of us into the simulation with near perfect detail. These are guys I know. They were screaming and begging for their lives. During the second game, I saw our center crawling away from the pile after the play. He’s one of my best friends on the team I had roomed with him as freshman. Big guy too, easily 6’4 325 lbs. The man was dragging himself with his arms because his legs had been ripped clean off during the previous play. He was leaving behind a huge trail of blood. Finally, a Georgia player sees our center trying to sneak away. He saunters up to our dying center before planting his cleat firmly into the center of his back and pressing him into the turf. The legless man looked me in the eyes and faintly whispered ‘Help me’ before the UGA player squashed his head like a pumpkin the day after Halloween. This VR shit is sadistic.”
Coach Teevens claims he specifically asked for the copious amounts of gore present in the virtual reality program as a way to “tough his team up mentally” and “cultivate a winner’s attitude.”
Dartmouth’s counseling center has seen a 230% uptick in the number of football players it has serviced since the launch of the team’s virtual reality program.
