Jason George to Provide Innovative Leadership in Wake Forest Football’s Sports Science Operations
4/28/2021 12:00:00 PM | Football, General
Former NFL Strength & Conditioning coach will integrate existing infrastructure within the football office
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- Jason George has a history with head coach Dave Clawson. Long before George's 11-plus year NFL career, and long before Clawson ever set foot on Wake Forest's campus, George and Clawson were just two first-time coaches at Fordham University in 1999. Clawson, of course, the new head football coach. George, his new strength and conditioning coach.
"We probably made a million mistakes together there," George said. "But we did enough to have success, and both of us moved forward in our careers in different ways".
The familiarity with Clawson, and George's respect for the work he's done in Winston-Salem, made it an easy decision to join Clawson's staff as Wake Forest's first ever Director of Integrated High Performance.
George, a former Sports Science coordinator for the Houston Texans and long-time NFL strength & conditioning coach, will lead the Deacs' high performance program, overseeing data analysis in performance, sports medicine, nutrition and sports psychology, among other disciplines.
"Jason George is someone with tremendous experience in the sport science field and his credentials and outstanding work with multiple NFL franchises speaks for itself," Clawson said. "Jason has worked with some of the best athletes in the world, along with coaches, trainers, and staff members across all departments. His expertise will be invaluable as we move forward and look to raise the standard of success within our football program."
George, who is finishing up his Doctor of Psychology degree from the University of Arizona (Global Campus) this spring while starting on staff, has always been interested in a holistic perspective of performance. Or, in football terms, four facets that make up performance: developing physical characteristics in athletes, developing their technical movement skills, helping them understand the tactics of the sport and the psychology of performance.
Most football programs, including Wake Forest, all have different departments to help develop those four core areas. George will be tasked with making sure the philosophy and data from areas such as sports medicine and strength & conditioning works together and complements each other.
"This position is about integrating all four of those things," George said. "And trying to make sure everybody's not zoned off into silos, that we're all communicating and getting good integration with those four pieces."
Additionally, George will help innovate existing technological innovations the program already uses, such as Catapult metrics (GPS, accelerometers and gyroscopes worn by players under their pads) through advanced data analysis. He also will help integrate new technologies into the program as they become available.
George has extensive experience with these systems from his time in the NFL. Before leading the Texans' sports science operation, he served as head strength & conditioning coach for the Chicago Bears under John Fox and designed Athlete Management Systems for the Denver Broncos.
But the key, George notes, to making these technological innovations useful is smart data analysis.
"It's about not reducing the data so much that it doesn't give you enough information, but not expanding it so much that it causes paralysis by analysis," George said. "Giving them (coaches) metrics that are useful and deep enough to make good decisions, but not so deep that they can't understand what's going on with them."
Clawson is excited to see what George can do with existing infrastructure in place, as well as what he can do to expand the sports science initiatives in the football office. Having a lifelong learner like George in this position will only make the team stronger, he said.
For his part, George knows he's just getting started. And is already looking forward to what data might show years down the line.
"Longitudinally, you're going to see more changes in how, say, a freshman develops from their freshman year through their senior year, and how those metrics become more important," George said. "We're looking for relationships between those types of variables, but also looking for when we put in an intervention, whether it's something in the weight room or something with return to play, measuring the effect of how that intervention creates change and develops the qualities that we're looking at.
"The more information that we have, longitudinally, over years and time, the more actionable changes that we'll be able to make."
