BERKELEY, Calif. — For a preseason scrimmage in August, the University of California football team tried to replicate the game day experience as best it could. It stayed in a hotel the night before. It scheduled the kickoff earlier than usual to acclimate to the time zone in which it would play its season opener at North Carolina. And it spent the whole week of practices tapering down.

For this last task, the Golden Bears relied not just on traditional methods, like fewer and simpler drills. They also relied on little chips implanted in the players’ gear capable of confirming that they were indeed working less.

The devices, made by the company Catapult, use GPS to record not only distance traveled but also “explosive plays” and “load” — a term for the physiological toll a movement takes.

In fact, wearable technology has burrowed into college football this season as never before. Sleep is tracked to understand how a player recovers — and to nudge him to recover more. Accelerometers tell coaches how quickly a defensive back gets to the line of scrimmage. Most top teams seem to be doing something, but the technology is no longer limited to power-school programs with the resources and staff members to make use of them; even Division II Grand Valley State of Allendale, Mich., became a Catapult client last year.