Football Equipment Guide

Posts Tagged ‘history of football helmets’

Which piece of equipment comes to mind when you first consider the overall subject of football equipment? For me, it’s the helmet. That single piece of equipment has gone through more evolutionary changes than intelligence of our presidents.

The football helmet dates back to over 100 years ago when the first one was used in an Army/Navy game. The football helmet wasn’t invented for the sake of players to protect their melons, but rather for ONE player who was told that he was risking death or instant insanity if he took one more foot filled shoe to the dome. That player was Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves and his leather helmet was crafted by a shoemaker from Annapolis. It took close to 3 years for the idea to catch on when in 1896 a Lafayette College halfback by the name of George Barclay so feared the fabled cauliflower ear on his “hearing organs”, which he felt was a direct cause of playing bare-headed, that he had a playing hat made. What a long way they have come; from playing hats to the intimidating shells of protection and communication we see today.

In 100+ years, we went from this:

To this badass piece of equipment:

The picture above shows a football helmet with a headset installed inside for easy communication with coaches and coordinators. Even this kind of awesomeness doesn’t come without it’s hangups. NFL rules state that all helmets with a headset in them must have a visible green dot on the back. A few times in 2006, the holder on the field goal attempt was told to pull up and throw or run at the last second because of a change the coaches saw on the field. This gave teams an “unfair advantage” in the eyes of the NFL. The new rules let each team know who is wearing a headset and who is hearing the plays being called. Boo hoo.

Fun Fact:

“Did you know that football helmets weren’t even required in the NFL until the 1940’s ? Even still, it wasn’t until the 50’s when polymer helmets were finally introduced and the face mask began to take on a simplistic but important role.”

Let’s not kid ourselves though, although they’re very protective, just like all things “protective” they are not 100% preventative (see:condoms).

It’s only throug true badassery that a player is able to do something like have his helmet knocked off of his skull and still wrestle for extra yardage (I originally made a typo there and said ‘tardage’).
For more on such, see January 15, 2007 issue of Sports Illustrated which shows pics of Jeremy Shockey of the Giants pushing for extra mojo in a playoff game versus the Eagles.

So just how much impact can this pieces of wired up plastic brain paddings take?
Hell if I know and hell if anyone knows, the numbers are always going to be based on how the football helmet was manufactured and how/where the wearer was hit. However, in 2002; Dartmouth College nerds developed a system called the Head Impact Telemetry System (HITS). Using this piece of software, nerds can measure the impacts of players in real game time. HITS is being used to have a better understanding of how concussions and other head injuries happen. A major advantage of the Head Impact Telemetry System is its ease of use. Lower-level dorks can operate the system quickly, easily, and efficiently. I shamelessly borrowed the above from absolute astronomy dot com and then inserted the word nerd a couple times.

Check back later…