On a Tuesday afternoon in September, you can find the same scene in almost every high school weight room in America: coaches with clipboards, linemen running through drills, and a stack of helmets waiting to be fitted somewhere close to the equipment room. They still have the same appearance as they did fifteen years ago. They are far more expensive. Since a multibillion-dollar industry has spent years promising parents otherwise, it is surprisingly uncomfortable to ask whether they actually accomplish more.
The statistics supporting the high school concussion epidemic in America are truly concerning. Over the past ten years, football participation has decreased in forty-one states. Some schools have completely stopped offering their programs. In one study, 110 out of 111 former NFL players had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease associated with repeated head trauma. That’s the level of professionalism. However, the issue has been subtly moving down to the high school level, where the children’s neurological development is still ongoing, the medical staffing is more dispersed, and the protective infrastructure is weaker. More than anything else, it’s possible that this is the aspect of the discussion that the industry prefers to keep quiet.
Former NFL lineman Scott Peters said that, and it really gets to the core of the issue in a way that no new product launch can. The primary purpose of a football helmet was, and continues to be, to prevent skull fractures. It performs that remarkably well. The brain sloshing forward inside the skull on a vicious tackle, which causes the kind of trauma that doesn’t appear on an X-ray but quietly builds up over seasons, is something it can’t completely stop. Accelerations of up to 150 times the force of gravity can result from an on-field collision. Researchers at Virginia Tech claim that the best new helmets restrict that to about 50 Gs. They claim that halving that figure is the aim. Nobody is certain if or when that will occur.
Nevertheless, sincere effort is being made. Helmets with a soft thermoplastic outer shell that compresses like an automobile bumper upon impact and internal column-shaped structures that buckle and twist to distribute force are manufactured by companies such as Seattle-based VICIS. The Virginia-based company Windpact is creating foam padding that works similarly to an automobile airbag, compressing during an impact and then expanding for the next one. St. Thomas Aquinas, a high school in Fort Lauderdale that may have sent more players to the NFL than any other in the nation, has experimented with everything from robotic tackling dummies to cutting-edge helmets. The goal is genuine. It’s unclear if it’s sufficient.
Additionally, a company called Defend Your Head offers a ProTech system that adds polyurethane foam and a slight rotational quality to an existing helmet like a second skin in order to deflect blows before they ever reach the hard shell underneath. It is a two-pronged line of defense, according to CEO Glenn Tilley. Notably, the product’s disclaimer carefully notes that it is not a panacea. It’s important to recognize that kind of candor, which is somewhat uncommon in this field. High school and collegiate teams have been implementing it gradually; in just one recent season, about 60 to 80 programs, including Penn State and NC State, signed on.
The more difficult issue, which the equipment manufacturers are unable to resolve on their own, is what occurs in rural or low-income schools where there is absolutely no trained physician on the sidelines. The NFL is able to place physicians on the field and neurological consultants in the booth. A small Oklahoma town’s Friday night game can’t. One solution being investigated is tablet-based videoconferencing tools that link sideline coaches with distant doctors in real time. Even though it produces fewer press releases, this approach is likely to have a greater practical impact than any helmet redesign. A quicker diagnosis is important. It’s important to get a child off the field. More important than everything else is the deeply ingrained football culture of playing through it.
There won’t be a single magic helmet, rule modification, or supplement that eliminates concussions, according to Dr. Michael Stuart of the Mayo Clinic. He continues to think that progress is feasible. That seems appropriate: cautious, truthful, and rooted. The research is genuine, and a large portion of it shows promise; the scientists working in this field are not frauds.
However, there is another version of this story in which the technology turns into a permission structure, giving programs and parents the impression that the issue is being addressed when, in reality, it isn’t. It is advisable to exercise caution when dealing with that version. Football is a collision-based sport. It’s difficult to avoid wondering if physics will always have the last say as you watch the industry scramble to engineer its way out of that fundamental truth.
