My Day with Bose and Tom Brady

I grew up in Watertown, MA. Born and raised. I went to school at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. I work in Framingham. I have been a New England Patriots fan from my earliest memories.

A short ride down the road from EH Publishing’s office in Framingham you’ll find the Bose Corporation Headquarters. Bose has been a longtime partner of the New England Patriots, and recently became the official headset provider of the NFL. When Bose reached out to see if I wanted to visit Gillette to test this technology out, I jumped.

The technology was none other than the headsets that you saw coaches on the sidelines at NFL games sporting last season. The headsets they use to call plays, make adjustments and, in the case of the Patriots, win a Super Bowl. Very cool stuff, but not exactly in line with what I usually write about.

This is not a story about the benefits of Bose NFL Headsets in your huddle space, conference room or corporate lobby. In fact, odds are you will never have a use for the headsets that I tested out on the field at Gillette Stadium. This is a story about my trip to Gillette Stadium to stand on the same field as some of the people I grew up idolizing, while demoing some impressive technology.

Taking the Field

The day started on the field surrounded by an empty stadium. Sean Garrett, VP of Engineering for Bose, explained the decibel levels that an NFL stadium can reach (up to 130), the efficiency with which coaches must communicate (135 play calls per game), and the distances that these communications must travel. NFL stadiums get LOUD. Coaches have seconds to make extremely complicated reads and decisions between every play. Offensive and defensive coaches have their own frequencies, while head coaches have switches to speak with offense, defense, the coaches in the box and the entire staff, depending on need.

We were presented with dual-headphone and single-headphone units. Bose technology dramatically reduces noise in real time, in a fraction of a millisecond, so coaches can hear every word between them. It was designed with weather‐resistant materials and exhaustively tested to ensure it can take a beating; From blistering heat in Miami to the frigid cold in Green Bay, it withstands snow, drenching rain, gusting winds, being thrown, dropped, grabbed, spiked and bathed in Gatorade.

After the presentation and some dinner, about thirty minutes before kickoff, we were brought down to the field to test out the headphones against the roar of the crowd and the stadium speakers.

I’m a believer in the idiom ‘Act like you’ve been there before.’ Well, anytime I might get the chance to walk on the field for thirty minutes leading up to a Patriots game I’ll be acting the same way – enthralled, entranced, overwhelmed, with very little to say and an irremovable smirk. Tom Brady was about eight feet away from me at one point. Bob Kraft walked right by me in a full suit and custom red and blue Nikes. Pat the Patriot trolled me as I was getting my picture taken. One of the end zone militiamen let me take a picture holding a rifle. And when the team rushed the field for the game, I was right there watching them pass by.

It was wicked, wicked cool.

The technology itself was supremely impressive. Patriots fans are fresh off a Super Bowl and one of the most controversial off seasons we’ve had in years. They’re riled up, and before the game they made plenty of noise. Mix in a stadium-sized audio system and you’ve got a situation where dialogue is yelled at the person standing next to you. That is, until you put the headsets on.

The noise cancellation technology, a variation of the same tech Bose uses in all of its headphones, cut down on the sound significantly. Communication from headset to headset was impeccable. I could hear every word being said crystal clear. It sounded a lot like the way they make fighter pilots’ voices sound when communicating with one another in movies. I spoke at a whisper at points and my counterpart was able to continue to understand everything I was saying. The microphones picked up ambient noise from the stadium and played a soft replica over the headphones, so you had a nice background soundtrack to the conversation. You could feel the sound outside of the headphones more than you could hear it, the bass of the speakers and the roar of the crowd brought pressure but didn’t penetrate the headphones. It was quite pleasant, honestly. I almost didn’t want to take the headsets off.

Get to the Point

So what was the point of me attending this event? Why ask me to test out a technology that none of my audience members had a use for?

While at the stadium I had the chance to speak with Sean Garrett, who helped to oversee the development of the headphones. Also Matt Ruwe, Senior Product Manager, about the research that went into creating the headsets. And Bob Maresca, President and CEO of Bose, about how football taught both of us the importance of being a part of a team. And Sherwin Greenblatt, first employee of Dr. Amar Bose and eventual president of the company. I got the same impression from each. They just wanted to share.

A few years ago the NFL came to Bose and offered to slap the company logo on the standard headphones the NFL had been using on sidelines. Essentially it was a marketing deal, it could have as easily been Papa John’s or Under Armour or any number of corporate sponsors, the difference being that Bose makes headphones. Bose turned them down, unwilling to place its reputation on what could be a product that doesn’t meet its standards.

Instead, Bose spent two years of research and development gathering input from coaches and communications personnel that have spent years on NFL sidelines, and created its own solution. Drawing from lessons learned through years creating technology for military and aviation, Bose created headphones specifically for coaching use during NFL games. They invited me and a handful of media members writing toward different audiences to say, ‘Look at how hard we’ve worked, look at how much we’ve put into this and look at what we’ve created. Do you like it?’ I did, and I’ll be hanging their project up on the metaphorical refrigerator to be admired.

If you’re looking for the point, here it is: If Bose brings the same passion, intuition, ingenuity, research and care to their consumer and commercial product line as they did to these headsets, then I’m willing to bet they have some seriously impressive solutions across the board. Matt Ruwe told me that Bose wouldn’t release a product unless it met a certain standard of excellence, proof positive in Bose’s refusal to display its name on headphones that didn’t meet their internal criteria. That’s why you don’t see a new version of the same Bose product every year. They take their time, work out the kinks and deliver high quality products, so they say and so they demonstrated to me.

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