Vijay Kalivarapu
runs the game day application in C6.
Photo courtesy of Vijay Kalivarapu.
(October 17, 2015) There
you were, inside the C6 virtual reality room at Iowa State University,
surrounded on six sides by 100 million pixels and completely immersed in the
sights and sounds of game day at Jack Trice Stadium.
The band marched in I-S-U formation. The cheerleaders did
flips. You turned around and took a look at the new stands and the Sukup End
Zone Club. The “Cyclone Weather Alert” played on the big video boards. Then the
visiting team entered the stadium to boos from the full-house crowd.
The Cyclones kicked off, forced a fumble and recovered the
ball. After a quick touchdown, the Cyclones celebrated in the end zone and,
when you looked up, fireworks exploded over the stadium.
Sounds cool, right? And fun, sort of like being inside a
video game.
Well, all that immersive 3-D technology and the virtual
reality expertise in the College of Engineering could be the Cyclone football
team’s latest recruiting advantage, said Gerrit Chernoff, the director of player
personnel for the Cyclone football team.
Chernoff is in charge of the team’s recruiting department
and part of his job is to find new and better ways to recruit student-athletes
to Iowa State. The best way is to bring them to campus for a game-day visit,
but there are only six home games a year and expenses-paid, official visits are
restricted to high school seniors.
But the team talks to younger players. The recruiting season
also extends well beyond the football season. And Iowa State’s recruiting territory
includes football hotbeds such as Florida, Texas and California. How could the
team provide a game-day experience to off-season visitors and maybe even
out-of-state prospects?