The idea that could spark a football revolution first stirred in the fall of 1999, from a chair in Steve Spurrier’s Gainesville office.
Teevens was Florida’s running back coach at the time. After practice one day, he sat down with Spurrier to discuss the team's depth at the position and the way reps should be handled in practice. Then Spurrier said something that would ignite a movement two decades later.
"Get them to game day," his boss told him.
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The idea was simple enough. In fact, Teevens thought it up after watching his son control a toy car with a joystick. He wondered if someone could create a much larger version and strap a tackling bag to the top. He funded a graduate program at Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering to see what, if anything, was possible.
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The latest version of the MVP—the third generation—weighs roughly 180 pounds and is capable of running a 40-yard dash in around 4.7 seconds, according to Teevens. They have constructed it to move and feel like a football player.