BLOOMINGTON – How’s this for a whole new world?

Imagine strapping on a headset and being transported to the Mellencamp Pavilion on the Indiana University campus, where your vision is what Indiana quarterback Nate Sudfeld would see at practice.

Eleven defenders, a five-man offensive line, a running back behind you – and you can walk around, turn left or right and watch a play unfold, with it all seeming close enough and lifelike enough to touch.

"He can actually feel in real time the rush coming in, the coverages," Hoosiers athletic director Fred Glass said. "You are in the action. It is more than just looking at film."

This newfangled technical innovation is called virtual reality, which Glass believes is the next big thing in sports.

And Indiana is getting in on the ground floor thanks to a $5 million grant from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban for a technology center.

So far, the list of known dabblers in virtual reality has 10 colleges (Stanford, Arkansas, Auburn, Clemson, Vanderbilt, Ole Miss, UCLA, Dartmouth, Syracuse and Kansas) and one NFL franchise (Dallas).

The phenomenon is barely a year old, having taken flight last fall when Derek Belch presided over the marriage of sports and virtual reality for his master’s thesis at Stanford.

Belch, a former kicker for the Cardinal, served as a graduate assistant last season and was allowed by coach David Shaw to perfect the technology during practices.

By the end of the season, Belch’s software had become so immersive and so useful that he left Shaw’s staff to start up his own business.

StriVR Labs marketed its product at February’s NFL combine in Indianapolis, and the Cowboys struck a deal with Belch last month.

There are other companies – such as EON Sports, Google, OTOY Inc. and Facebook – testing the field, and Indiana associate athletic director Jeremy Gray visited some on a recent trip to Silicon Valley.

But according to Stanford associate professor Jeremy Bailenson, no one has done more than his former pupil Belch to advance virtual reality as an athletic training tool.

"Derek and I were the first ones to talk about football," Bailenson said. "The idea of using virtual reality to train has been around for a while. A lot of the funding for research for virtual reality historically has come from the military."

But the systems’ impact could be far-reaching in sports.

"The training part will be pretty amazing," Glass said. "I think the recruiting will be ridiculous, too, because we can send a set of goggles out and have a kid who is in Denver, Colorado, sitting in his living room, suddenly be taking a tour of the athletic facilities."

Glass claims Indiana will be the first school in the nation to own and run this technology itself rather than outsourcing the tools and process.

"I’m a big fan of when people use VR for the right reasons (such as) training our men and women to be better athletes and to be safer," said Bailenson, a longtime expert on virtual reality. "I applaud the efforts by Indiana. I’m excited to see what they do."

The effect at Stanford last year seemed evident.

Quarterback Kevin Hogan used Belch’s system regularly over the final three games. A previously sluggish offense ran off 114 points during that stretch, and the Cardinal won the Foster Farms Bowl.

"Coach Shaw will partially attribute the improvement in the red zone to the system," Bailenson said. "In general, virtual reality is an extremely effective training tool. When done right, it is equal to an experience. VR is a magnitude of film that is more realistic."

This is just the beginning of virtual reality, and it will be surely tweaked or overhauled in years to come. But Cuban brought it to his alma mater.

"It’s less than a handful of even pro teams," Glass said. "But they are all going toward it. It is going to distinguish us from pretty much any other university in the country."

cgoff@jg.net