The collapsible medical tent on the sidelines of Alabama football games last season will now be seen outside of Tuscaloosa and the Crimson Tide’s road games. That’s because the University of Alabama licensed the technology behind the tent to a spin-off company that will develop, market, manufacture and distribute the SidelinER, as it is now being called.

Kinematic Sports LLC is marketing the SidelineER to professional, collegiate and high school teams. UA helped secure a patent on the device and has given Kinematic Sports exclusive rights to market the medical tent, which was the idea of the Crimson Tide’s director of sports medicine Jeff Allen and four students from the UA College of Engineering.

According to one of the co-founders of the tent Jared Cassity, the SidelinER has been in high demand since its conception a season ago, and “phones are ringing off the hook” for the product. Up to this point, the Buffalo Bills will use it during their summer training camp and 29 Division I schools will also be using the tent this fall football season.

For the prep level, Kinematic Sports, which is founded and owned by three of the SidelinER’s original developers, is also offering the option of a sponsorship kit to high school teams to help with the purchase of the tent.

The SidelinER was birthed with player privacy on the sideline in mind and debuted in the Middle Tennessee game.

“When a player is injured, it becomes a spectacle,” Cassity said, “even more so in the NFL and professional leagues where you have sideline reporters, you have the media, you have fans watching. Everyone’s crowding around this poor athlete who has his entire career possibly on the line, and the first 10 minutes are crucial for evaluations.

“Often times, sadly enough, you see trainers holding up Gatorade towels, trying to provide some modicum of privacy for this individual. And Jeff Allen had the idea that there had to be something better.”

The tent retails for $5,000 and can be found at KinematicSports.com. There will be a limited production run this July to meet summer and satellite camp needs. The first will be 25 tents, while the next two will increase to 50 and 100.

The SidelinER was the result of a senior project by a group of UA engineering students after meeting with Allen, who had a need for player privacy. The first tent was made up of bed sheets and PVC pipes and constructed in a garage.

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