Reaction Time Assessment for Coaching Defensive Players in NCAA Division 1 American Football: A Comprehensive Literature Review

Reid, B., Schreiber, K., Shawhan, J., Stewart, E., Burch V, R. F., & Reimann, W. (2020). Reaction Time Assessment for Coaching Defensive Players in NCAA Division 1 American Football: A Comprehensive Literature Review. International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics. Elsevier. 77, 102942. DOI:10.1016/j.ergon.2020.102942.

Abstract

This comprehensive literature review seeks to understand the contributing factors that impact the reaction time in decision making of collegiate level, American football players who play on the defensive side of the ball. The goal of this study was to work with National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1 coaches to identify possible limitations and challenges for coaching staff to understand when training student-athletes to react to movement during game-time scenarios. Current literature focusing on football or other similar sports is limited; as such, this review gathers data across many fields of study and applies the findings to the reaction time in football players. This crossover of information was found to have a correlation to football as several individual decision-making factors were found to impact reaction time such as: cognitive fatigue, age, experience, player position, expectancy, uncertainty, and visual ability. These factors play a significant role in negatively increasing the reaction time for players, which thereby hampers the opportunity to stop the opposing team and impedes the continual positive progression of the football player. In addition to the contributing factors, the authors provided literature-based solutions to these issues which assist in achieving the highest performance of student-athletes.