From the College Athletics edition of September 19, 2026
Brewer et al.: DI coaching staffs use sports tech amid workload and 24-h monitoring privacy concerns
University of Florida / Frontiers in Sports and Active Living · College athletics / coaching practice and performance technology · United States (single NCAA Division I university)
- Publisher
- Frontiers in Sports and Active Living (PMC full text)
- Original publication
- September 1, 2025
- Source retrieved
- 2026-09-20
What happened
Five focus groups with 17 DI coaching-staff members show GPS/IMU, force plates, and motion tools are embedded in practice when aligned with coaching goals, supporting decisions, individualized athlete management, and communication. Staff also face growing technology demands; privacy concerns about continuous or 24-hour monitoring appeared in three groups. Study is coach-side qualitative evidence, not an AI accuracy benchmark.
Why it matters
Explains the operating reality athletic departments face when layering AI/analytics on wearables and force-plate stacks—capacity, relational trust, and monitoring-scope limits—complementing archived athlete-interview CHI work with coach perspectives.
Evidence and measured results
PMC/Frontiers full text: methods (five focus groups; 17 staff; team sports listed), technology inventory categories, findings on decision support and communication, privacy concern count (n=3 groups), and limitations (single well-resourced DI site; no athlete voices).
Limitations and uncertainty
Single DI university; team sports only; coach perspectives only; qualitative themes are not measured injury or performance outcomes.
Put this evidence to work
Lighthouse Advisory interpretation, grounded in this source. Enriched 2026-09-20; this does not change the original publication date. Each role follows the same checklist so takeaways compare across sources.
Sales
Role takeaway
- Customer problem
- DI staff juggle overlapping performance technologies while worrying that continuous monitoring erodes athlete trust and burns coaching time.
- Stakeholders
- Sport coaches
- Sports performance / sports science
- Athletic trainers
- Student-athlete representatives
- Compliance/privacy
- Discovery questions
- Which sensors are mandatory for practice versus optional recovery?
- Who interprets GPS and force-plate outputs day to day?
- Where have athletes or staff raised 24-hour monitoring concerns?
- How much staff time is spent wrangling dashboards weekly?
- Value hypothesis
- Consolidating tools and clarifying purpose limits can improve decision support without adding surveillance load—consistent with coaches' reported benefits when tech aligns to goals.
- Potential engagement
- Three-week technology inventory and privacy/purpose workshop with coaching staff and compliance.
- Unsupported claims
- That qualitative themes prove injury reduction
- Vendor-specific accuracy claims
- Generalizability from one well-resourced DI site to all divisions
Pre-sales engineering
Role takeaway
- Fit
- Integration, role-based access, and purpose-bound telemetry across existing performance stack.
- Architecture and integration
- Unify GPS/IMU, force-plate, and video metadata under shared athlete IDs with coach vs medical views and retention schedules.
- Prerequisites
- Current tool inventory
- Identity mapping for athletes/staff
- Consent and purpose registry
- Constraints
- Evidence is qualitative and single-site
- Team-sport bias in the sample
- Vendor lock-in on proprietary exports
- Security
- Disable continuous/24-h collection by default; encrypt exports; audit coach downloads of wellness streams.
- Proof of value
- Percent of tools with documented purpose and owner
- Reduction in duplicate manual entry steps
- Consent coverage for continuous monitoring
Delivery
Role takeaway
- Work
- Inventory, retire/redundant tools, draft monitoring purpose policy, train interpreters, and set staffing budgets per platform.
- Dependencies
- Coach availability for focus workshops
- Vendor export access
- Compliance review
- Ownership
- Director of sports performance owns stack rationalization; compliance owns monitoring purpose policy.
- Skills and adoption
- Coaches learn what each metric is for; analysts learn communication limits with athletes.
- Governance checkpoints
- Purpose review before enabling 24-h modes
- Quarterly stack rationalization
- Athlete feedback channel
- Acceptance criteria
- Published access matrix
- No undocumented continuous monitoring
- Staff time budget assigned per active tool
- Risks
- Surveillance creep
- Coach overload
- Ignoring athlete perspectives not sampled in the study
Implementation considerations
Lighthouse Advisory interpretation across the operating dimensions a public-sector buyer must settle before this evidence becomes a design. Each note answers the question under its heading for this specific source.
Architecture and integration
What must connect, and where does the AI sit in the workflow?
Prioritize integrations that reduce duplicate data entry and surface role-appropriate views; avoid always-on athlete telemetry defaults without purpose binding.
Governance
Who approves, reviews and stays accountable for outcomes?
Written purpose limits for continuous monitoring, coach access tiers, and workload budgeting for sports-science support should accompany any new AI feature on existing sensors.
Security and privacy
What data, permissions and controls need testing?
Continuous/24-h monitoring raises consent and surveillance risk even when tools are performance-labeled; separate optional recovery tracking from mandatory practice load capture.
Accessibility and workforce
Who is affected, and what skills or accommodations follow?
Budget analyst/AT interpreter time explicitly; otherwise technology shifts unpaid cognitive load onto coaches and athletes.
Procurement
What should contracts, pricing and exit terms secure?
Require interoperability and purpose-limiting configuration in RFPs; avoid buying always-on monitoring packs by default.
Operating model
Which teams own the service once it runs?
Treat sports tech as coached practice infrastructure with clear owners, not as ambient surveillance.
Publication history
- 2026-09-19College Athletics · Issue 134 resources
Stable resource ID: brewer-collegiate-coaching-sports-tech-2025