The podcast delves into the intricate history and cultural significance of the football helmet, a central icon in American football. Host Darin Hayes engages with experts Noah Cohan and Timothy Brown, who share their insights on how the evolution of the helmet has paralleled changes in the game itself. The discussion covers the helmet's transition from rudimentary leather models to modern plastic designs, emphasizing safety innovations and the impact of branding and aesthetics in the sport. The guests highlight the importance of the helmet not only as protective gear but as a symbol that connects fans to their teams, illustrating how the helmet's design can evoke loyalty and identity. They further explore the relationship between helmet technology and player safety, revealing how advancements have influenced tackling techniques and injury prevention strategies in football. The episode is rich with anecdotes, historical context, and expert opinions, making it a must-listen for any football enthusiast interested in the deeper meanings behind the gear that defines the sport.

You can check out Noah Cohan's book Unbeautiful Watchers

Tim has plenty of articles and books on football at FootballArchaeology.com

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Don't forget to check out and subscribe to the Pigskin Dispatch YouTube channel for additional content and the regular Football History Minute Shorts.

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As we start this episode, let's ask ourselves a question.

What is the most symbolic item in American football?

If you answered the football helmet, you might be right.

And we have two guests today.

They're going to share some expertise on this subject.

Noah Cohen and Timothy Brown coming up.

In just a moment to talk about.

The football helmet and what it does for football.

This is the Pigskin Daily History Dispatch, a podcast that covers the anniversaries of American football events throughout history.

Your host, Darren Hayes is podcasting from America's North Shore to bring you the memories of the gridiron one day at a time.

Hello, my football friends.

This is Darren Hayes of pigskindispatch.com welcome once again to the Pig Pen, your portal to positive football history.

And boy, we have an exciting episode for you tonight, something special.

We're going to talk about some of the equipment of football, the history and some new ideas, a piece of equipment we're all very familiar with.

And joining us tonight are a couple guests.

First of all is one we're very familiar with.

That's Timothy p.

Brown of footballarchaeology.com Tim, welcome back to the Pig Pen.

Thank you, Darren.

Glad to be back as always.

Get to talk about football stuff.

Yeah, absolutely.

And Tim, you approached me not too long ago on an individual that, an expert in a field of some person that has talked about some football equipment and some new ideas and bringing up some, some old ideas that may us modern folks like myself weren't quite aware of.

And maybe you could explain the relationship and, and introduce our other guests.

Sure.

So if you're looking at this on screen, you're already seeing Noah Cohen.

No one is a professor at Washington University in St.

Louis and, you know, does, you know, variety of research, some of which is, you know, surrounds the issue of football helmets, safety and kind of, you know, imagery and issues along those lines.

I'll let him explain that.

But yeah.

So, you know, I'm not even sure how if I reached out to you first or you reached out to me, but, you know, one way or another, you know, there's some places where our research overlaps, you know, because I do the history of, you know, anything related to football.

And so it kind of overlaps some of his interests.

And, you know, we connected and have had a couple of conversations.

And so without further ado, I'll just, you know, if you want to just kind of give a little background kind of things that you're, that you research your interests, you know, as it relates to football.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Tim.

And thank you Darren, for having me on.

It's a real thrill to be here.

I've listened to some of the podcasts and enjoyed very much.

And you know, I may be the one who works at a university and has a fancy degree, but Tim, your research and what you are able to do on footballarchaeology.com is just so incredible.

And your publications.

I especially love your most recent book, the History of the football itself, because one of the things about sports studies, such as it exists in the American university is we think a lot about the history and ethics of football, but these things tend to trace themes of power, themes of capitalism.

We're not often paying attention to little details like how the football came to be, the shape it is and and that history is just so fascinating and frankly, really important.

As we're going to talk about tonight in the context of the football helmet, I think the folks on my side of the ivory curtain or whatever metaphor you want to make really need to be paying more attention to how important things like equipment are for the connection that American fans have to the game of football and to all sports, really.

But I think also the football helmet is something special, something to stand distinctive.

So before we get to that conversation, just as you requested, a little more background on me.

I do teach at Washington University in St.

Louis.

I also got my Ph.D.

here about 10 years ago.

I came into the English Ph.D.

program and quickly realized I wasn't I like reading books, obviously, or I wouldn't have applied, but I but I wasn't going to do a traditional dissertation and fortunately I found an advisor who was open to someone who wanted to study popular culture.

So I did a dissertation and then a book about sports fans based on writing novels, histories, online writings.

Just thinking about the role of the sports fan and how we attach ourselves to our favorite teams and how they interconnect with our own personal narratives about family or region or what or nation, however else we form these these bonds.

Sort of what I was working for.

I was fortunate enough to turn that dissertation into a book.

It's called We Average on Beautiful Watchers, Fan Narratives and the Reading of American Sport.

It has to do with football a little bit.

Some of the fan narratives that I study are about football, but it's not primarily a football book.

Excuse me.

No, if you could, where can folks get a copy of the book?

As long as you're letting them know about it, I'm sure they'll want to.

Get it's on your Mega retailer, your Amazon Walmart.

But it's also available through Bookstore.com or other ways that you can order it through your local bookstore.

If you're interested in getting a copy, it's from the University of Nebraska Press, which is an academic press.

I strive my hardest to make it a publicly accessible book.

In terms of the style of writing, I'm not sure I entirely succeeded.

I'm hoping to succeed much better on this next book project.

But yeah, it's out there and I encourage you to check it out if you're interested.

But how did I get to Football Helmets from a literary studies PhD and a book about sports fans?

Well, part of that is autobiographical.

I was not allowed to play football as a young boy.

I was very small.

My mother was worried, but I don't know if because she wouldn't let me because I never had that experience of getting knocked around on a football field.

I became obsessed with football, particularly the helmets.

That was something that I especially connected to.

I felt like the football helmet and my connection to the game begins in the mid to late 80s.

So the football helmets, you know, were not what they look like now, if you can see behind me on the video, but pretty close, you know, the plastic shell, the multi bar face mask, that's sort of the form that I connected with.

And so that was a personal passion of mine.

I was always following football.

But then as I got to be an academic and started thinking critically about, you know, as I said earlier, issues of power, issues of capitalism, issues of, you know, sort of consumerism, I started thinking, why was I so attracted to that helmet?

And was my experience, you know, typical?

I wouldn't say it's typical necessarily, although there is a large sort of uni community out there, folks who really pay attention to sports uniforms, the helmet among them.

But I do think, and part of what I'm arguing in my new.

My new project is that there's something fundamental about the modern plastic shell safety helmet that distinguishes it as singularly important in the iconography of football.

And so I set out to do a project on that.

And I'm fortunate in my field, which is in American studies, now that it's a multidisciplinary field, we're allowed to sort of pull things from all kinds of different realms of scholarship.

So I've learned a ton from historians like Tim.

I've learned from material culture studies, the people who study objects and how they're consumed in our culture.

Obviously, I'm still thinking about fans because I'm thinking about how fans Connect with those things.

I'm thinking about players too.

I've done some interviews for the project, so the idea is for it to become a book.

I haven't quite placed it with a publisher yet.

I have some options, but I'm still thinking them over.

But my hope is that within a few years it'll be out there and available for anyone to read.

The title isn't definitely set yet, but one of the strong contenders is the one you can see on the screen if you're watching on video gridiron the history, meaning and power of football helmets.

I'll stop there.

Oh, very, very interesting.

That's for sure.

For sure.

Now Tim, you know, you have done a lot about the helmets, as Noah said, you know, and some of the history of the helmets.

Why don't you give us sort of the, the 25 cent tour on football helmet?

Yeah, I'll try to keep it, you know, fairly brief.

But you know, so like when football direct, you know, descended from, from rugby, there, there were no helmets.

There wasn't a, you know, at least a perceived need for it.

And that was kind of the nature of it.

1906, passing game comes along and then there was kind of a trend to try to get rid of as much equipment as possible to make the players lighter and, you know, faster.

But, you know, and the helmets that they wore were mostly can padded canvas with then tending towards leather.

By the mid-20s you get a helmet that, you know, when we think about a leather helmet, they were pretty much at that stage, you know, by the mid-20s.

Leather helmets remain in place till really until the early 60s.

And then those really took off after World War II when plastics were available and they became the dominant.

You know, as the 50s progressed, plastic helmets kind of took over.

But there was a big movement to keep them out of the game.

There were some coaches that, like Notre Dame, you know, Paul Horning won the Heisman Trophy in 56.

I think it was, you know, wearing a leather helmet, you know, so there were some coaches who just thought that plastic helmet was dangerous.

So they stuck with, with leather.

The NFL banned them for one year, you know, in the late 40s.

So there are, you know, efforts like that.

But eventually they, you know, there was just enough of a safety factor, you know, with the, with the, the plastic that that kind of, the plastic won out.

And by the 60s, pretty much everybody's wearing face masks as well.

You know, that, that took, you know, really until the early 60s, I would say, before face masks were almost, you know, becoming universal, you know, put it that way.

So, you know, and then since then, it's really been an evolution and improvement of the functionality of the helmet in terms of, you know, going from the suspension helmet to the padded helmet to then the air pocketed helmets.

And it's been a while since I put a helmet on myself, so sometimes I'm not even sure what's inside those things anymore.

But so that's kind of like the functional side of the development, you know, and a little bit of, a little bit of, you know, just the materials that they're made of.

But I, I haven't, I didn't talk about kind of helmets as icons and I guess I'll, you know, maybe let that, let you talk about that.

No, though I think we wanted to talk a little bit about the, you know, the Guardian.

So here I'm saying that helmet is seen as dangerous and yet everybody wears them, you know.

Yeah.

So.

Well, what's interesting to me about the period that you describe when plastics first come in and there's this, there's a real contestation about should we allow this?

Right.

That part of the argument against the plastic helmets is the danger they pose to the lower extremity, right to knees and ankles.

Is that correct?

Is that based on your research?

Well, that was certainly some of the examples of the danger were a Harvard quarterback breaking his leg, getting hit by helmet.

Those kinds of things were specific examples that led to some of that.

Yeah, that's really interesting because part of what the plastic helmet does really well obviously is protect your skull.

CTE research has shown it probably doesn't protect your brain, but it does protect those sort of physical form of your skull.

And early football injuries often, sometimes fatally involved skull fractures.

So it really protects your skull.

But it's much worse obviously for someone's legs because we've probably all of us seen at some time or another in our experience watching football, some gruesome highlight of somebody getting hit in the knee with a helmet and the things that can happen in that moment.

But yeah, so there's sort of this trade off happening and it's not clear cut and you mentioning Paul Horning in the leather helmet.

One thing that I was gobsmacked to learn on a research trip to Notre Dame is that they went to the plastic helmets with the golden dome like they still have, and they went back to leather.

Paul Horning wearing a leather helmet was on a return to leather after they had already adopted plastic.

I believe Johnny Lujak, who I think won the Heisman and in the 40s, won it in a plastic helmet.

And then Horning, who comes after him, is back to wearing leather and there.

And, you know, the golden dome look is so iconic.

It connects to their campus and all these things.

But there was actually a period where they went away from that, which is kind of unfathomable, I think, from a modern perspective.

So, yeah, it's a much more unsettled period than people think, based on the research that I've done too.

I mean, we think of these sort of technological developments as following a clear upward path, but there was at mid century some sort of jerking back and forth about whether this was going to be the way it went.

Obviously, it is the way it went, and I think it's not only because of the icon stuff that I'm going to talk about and the decoration, but I think that certainly factored into it.

Yeah.

You know, one of the other interesting things that, you know, I've written about it, but, you know, it's still easy to forget, is that when, when players first started wearing face masks, and this is Post World War II, there were, there were earlier versions that were more for protecting the eyes and noses.

But, you know, one of the big complaints was that they protruded so far from the helmet that, that those are.

The face mask seemed to cause injuries.

So there was a while in the, in the 50s where rather than having a, you know, what we think of as the bar kind of face mask that protrudes from the helmet, instead they, they wore these masks and oftentimes they were clear plastic and there were several brands, but those rested directly on the cheeks and so they protected you and you know, you wouldn't get a broken nose, but it was, it was a different form.

And again, primarily because they wanted to protect the other players, you know, and, but those, those were gone by the, by the end of the 50s.

So.

Yeah, and the history of plastics factors in here too.

Right?

I mean, part of what's going on is as the, the chemical corporations are developing newer and better plastics, but for the early part of the helmets and these different face protections, there's a lot of Cracking going on.

They're breaking the helmet.

One thing that I couldn't believe when I learned is that the reason so many helmets have a stripe down the middle of them is they actually use that stripe to connect the two plastic halves of the helmet.

That's why there's a stripe.

It has a functionality or had a functional purpose in forming the helmet was to.

And so then people picked up on the fact that there was this stripe and they started, you know, painting it a different color and that's how we ended up with one of the most iconic and sort of basic modern helmet decorations.

Yeah, well, like army.

Army was one of the first teams to have plastic helmets.

They had the gold helmet with the black stripe and that's exactly what it was.

So yeah, if I could put it here a little bit.

You know, I'm a former football official so I'm going to look at it from sort of the official and the rule side here a little bit.

It's all football injuries but they have some data on the spinal injuries and head injuries that ended up terminating death.

It's kind of interesting.

They took these in spans of almost 10 year periods.

It's.

Well it spiked in the 50s and 60s to 128, 155 and those decades.

So you know somewhere is it almost has a thing with the face masks coming in the plastic helmets but it looks like they spiked up when the plastic helmets came in the injuries because players using them as weapons.

In the same study they attributed to some of the lower Deaths being by two major things.

1976 by having the.

The rules change a little bit.

So they're having spearing as being more of a point of emphasis and being penalized.

They look at those as two major factors are sort of the trend to decrease those which.

But one, one injury and one death in football is far too many.

So I'm glad they're still advancing it and we're looking at that.

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, from my vantage point, I mean, there were, there are, I think, other contributors.

One is that the early plastic helmets went further down on the neck and they didn't have some of the padding on the bottom.

And, you know, like, we have the.

The nose guards.

You know, now they're largely decorative, but so, you know, kids would, you know, players would die from it.

It was basically a guillotine effect, you know, that the.

Their head would get pushed back and the helmet would strike their spine.

And so that was part of the problem.

But the other was that because of the protection that was offered, that was offered, you know, there was just a lot, you know, coaches taught head into the chest, you know, and so the, the nature of tackling especially, but, you know, and blocking a little bit less.

So, you know, you put yourself, you put players into.

Into harm's way through the techniques that were taught.

Now, nobody teaches that anymore, or at least they shouldn't.

But, you know, that, I think had a lot to do with it.

I mean, obviously, plus improvements in the helmets themselves.

But the way that, you know, players were taught to tackle and block has changed and changed for the worse initially and now for the better.

Yeah.

The interesting thing about the face mask is how it changes the action at the snap because suddenly you just launch yourself into that person.

Nowadays, guys have their heads up, of course, so there's less spinal injury.

But it's still the case, obviously, that the.

The sort of the helmets are clashing on like, basically every.

Every play in a way that in early football there was, you know, horrific contact and much more brutal injuries.

But the faces, you know, they were breaking noses from time to time, but the faces weren't sort of quite meeting in the same way that they are now.

So one of the really interesting things about football safety debates that I hear now is these.

These various people who, who believe, rightly or wrongly, I think probably wrongly, but believe that rugby is safer.

And they say part of the reason is because they don't have helmets.

So guys don't low lead with their head and face in making contact.

And I think there's something to that, but I'm not sure it's better that way.

So I'm fascinated by the face mask.

Cause I think the face mask is almost as important as the helmet shell itself in terms of how it changed the game.

Because it, it not only provides safety, protecting the.

The Face area.

But it also just changes the, the sort of fundamental point of contact for the, the snapping action.

Yeah.

I mean, you look at the old film and I mean it.

There's, you know, other changes too.

Like, you know, offensive linemen can extend their arms and block, you know, now when.

And you couldn't do that until the late 70s.

So.

So that changes the nature of blocking as well.

But, you know, I mean, back in the day, you know, it did crab blocking and body blocking and you know, there were you just.

The game was different.

Yeah.

So it's.

And you know, like, you know, I mean, I hear the calls from time to time about changing to a rugby style game, but the minute, you know, little Cody breaks his nose or gets a big scar on his face, you know, mommy's not going to be very happy about that and she'll put a helmet back on her little boy.

You know, I mean, it's.

But if you just even look at a different sport where they don't use the helmet to punish, you know, hockey, you know, but the late 70s, about the time when they started adding helmets on and it gradually went, you know, people were grandfathered out and did it.

And I think they've seen a lot of less injuries to heads.

Of course they're taking pucks to the head and getting hit by a football and get hit by a puck in the heads, two different things.

But they're, they're not using them as weapons as our gridiron players are.

And I think that's part of it.

And Tim, something you said, you know, back when we played, you know, 60s and 70s, we had coaches that taught us, you know, see what you hit.

So you had to have your face up.

You may, you might, you know, take your face mask into an opponent, but you were never dropping your head down.

And you have, you know, severe injuries like the Ryan Shazier injuries of a few years ago.

Really sort of an awakening, I think to the NFL to say, hey, we got to stop this.

And defenseless receivers and quarterbacks and, you know, no hitting above the, the shoulders and the head neck area.

Sort of.

I think that's promoting some of the safety now.

Yeah.

Well, and the other thing, like, you know, rugby still doesn't allow tackling below, below the waist.

Right.

So you can tackle between the shoulders and the waist.

So, you know, whereas football, it's.

Yeah.

I mean, you can't tackle the head, but otherwise it's open season.

Right.

So, so it makes it, you know, makes it a different game.

You know, it's even like the original back before helmets were around much the original reason for knee pads was to protect the tackler's head.

It wasn't to protect the player's knees.

You know, so that's, you know, that's one of those things that has changed, you know, quite a bit now.

And now people barely even wear knee pads.

The high payers.

I'm refreshing my early football history because I'm teaching a football course this semester.

And so I just read Oriard on Michael Oriard, a fantastic historian and scholar of early football on Walter Camp.

And I hadn't remembered that.

Camp led the charge among the old rules committee.

You know, Harvard, Yale and Princeton essentially made all the decisions until the early 20th century.

Led the charge to allow tackling below the waist and got a lot of criticism for it because people felt the game got more brutal when there was tackling allowed before below the waist.

But yeah, that, that, that was came pretty early to American football.

That as, as Tim said internationally with rugby, they still don't allow it.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I just in kind of in preparing for this, for this podcast, I was doing a little bit of googling and I came across, I'd never heard of it before, but American Sevens Football League.

So it's basically tackle football without helmets.

And there's, you know, there's teams all over the country, but I'd never come across them.

So I've got to do a little bit of looking into them.

Are you're familiar with them, Noah?

Yeah, I've been looking into lots of different alternate leagues and I think and this ties into sort of my argument about the football helmet, which is to say I think the football helmet at this point, you know, 75 years on into his history, more or less is so important to the, the spectators connection to the game that we couldn't get rid of it even if there were a definitive argument for the safety.

The the Dallas Cowboys star or the Green Bay Packers G or the Michigan Winged helmet is so essential to the way that fans connect with the game that you, I mean, I think I will argue in this book that the.

The helmet is more important to football than the football itself.

That that essentially the helmet has become the preeminent symbol of football.

I mean, for me it was always the helmets crashing before Monday Night Football.

They don't do that anymore because of cte.

They don't want to emphasize that the Helmets are crashing into each other.

But, but that was part of my fascination with the helmet.

And I really, truly believe that even people who don't pay a lot of attention to sports uniforms, when they think of football, they're thinking of their team's football helmet.

And then that is so essential that essentially the primary purpose of the football helmet these days is as a branding device, not as a safety device.

Obviously everybody says the right things about safety being the most important.

And if you ask, you know, football helmet aficionados will say, of course I want the best things for the players.

But then they'll turn around and complain, let's see if I can lean the right way.

They'll turn around and complain about the new and I can't point in the right direction, the new and different holes that all these football helmets have.

Because if, if you came of age like I did in the, in the, you know, mid-80s, the football helmet is a smooth shell.

It's a blank canvas.

You can put any design on it you want.

Nowadays, if you look at these helmets, you know, the golden dome last night is all punctured by holes.

It's no longer the smooth golden dome.

So I think for, for, for the kind of people who do notice the helmets, the, the safety technology is starting to get in the way of the sort of beauty of the object for them.

I don't think that'll, that'll affect things.

I think safety will win out.

But it is interesting to me that because of the way the safety technology has developed, there's a certain segment of fans are starting to get a little bit upset about it.

A better, even better example of this is the Guardian caps, which I know, Tim, you want to talk about if you believe the NFL statistics, and there are some people who don't, but if you believe the NFL statistics, they're extremely effective at reducing the harm that, that for each, with one player wears one, the impact reduction is 10%.

If both players at the point of contact are wearing it, the impact reduction is 20%.

And according to their statistics in preseason in which all players are mandated to wear the Guardian CAPS practices, that is the reduction in concussion incidents reporting is something like 52%, which is huge.

They look terrible.

I know that the Guardian cap company is working on making a sort of better looking one.

But part of the way I, I'm no scientist, but part of the way the thing works, as I understand it, is that the independent panels, being independent is important because it helps deflect and sort of defray the contact as it comes in.

So how these things will develop and how much the look versus the safety will matter is.

Is fascinating to me.

I think it's also interesting that they're so big, no matter how they make them look.

They.

The helmet itself has got, I mean, from what, what's behind Tim?

They had to bulge out over the ears.

That's how thin they were.

Nowadays, they're, they're much bigger.

And now you're adding a Guardian cap on top.

It's even bigger than that.

There's beginning to be a kind of a Great Gazoo dynamic.

That's a really dated reference, but a Great Gazoo dynamic with, with some of these players wearing these helmets, especially the skill position players.

You notice it if they're a running back and a wide receiver and they've got this big puffy helmet.

I think that reduces some of the visual appeal of the game.

And I think that visual appeal is really meaningful.

I don't know if you saw the recent days they've published pictures on social media what Guardian Cap 2.0 is going to look at.

Like released in February.

And instead of having the small ice cube looking things all over it, they're sort of symmetrical in size.

They have those around the helmet.

But there's one big area on your gridiron icon area that's in.

The example I've seen is a Georgia Tech.

It has the big gt, you know, implanted on there.

Everything else is gold.

It looks much more aerodynamic and much more like a football helmet, except for being the padded look, you know, having the, the grooves and stuff in it.

So maybe they're onto something there.

Maybe they're making some advance.

It does look better than the like sock they're pulling over them now or whatever.

They're doing the logos on top of the thing.

But the very fact that pulling the, the, the sock over their head with the logos on the side just shows you how important that space is, that that sort of iconicity of the side of the helmet.

It's, it's essential in a way that, you know, hockey helmets don't have a logo on them or if they do, it's a corporate sponsor.

You know, baseball helmets, until recently in the.

Well, they have the helmet in the front, but it's not a, it's not a side profile thing.

And basketball, there are no helmets at all.

So I really think it's one of the things that makes football distinctive and gives it a real visual appeal.

No, no.

Why, why do you think that the Guardian cap folks and their technology can't get with the Rydell and the shoots and some of the other big helmet companies and just incorporate this padding because really what the.

The padding.

Tim alluded to it earlier, doesn't know what the inside of a football helmet looks like.

Well, it looks like the guardian cap on the inside is what it's been in like the last to 20 years.

Now they put that inside padding on the outside too.

And why can't they incorporate that into the shell of the helmet at the manufacturer level?

I think they probably can.

It's just the question of it's just going to get bigger and bigger.

I mean, what, what does happen now is instead of giving you a helmet that, that the equipment managers help you inflate or deflate to the your fit.

They pre.

In the preseason.

They have reps from the helmet companies.

I'm talking about Power 5 schools and NFL teams.

They have reps from the helmet companies come and use a laser measurement system to laser measure each player's head and then they each get a custom foam liner for their helmet.

So there's no more sort of adjusting it on the fly.

You've just got something that just fits comfortably all the time.

The.

In talking to former players for my book project, all of them talk about having a headache for the first two weeks of, of some of fall practice.

Like just getting used to having it pressing on your head.

Like, even if you weren't, you know, participating in contact, you still had a headache just from wearing the helmet.

Those days are gone.

The players don't have to deal with that anymore.

It feels great when they put it on.

But as to your question about inside versus Outside, I think again, I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me the likely answer is the reason the statistics reflected that it's better with the Guardian cap is not because there's something special about being it on the outside really.

It's just that the more padding there is, the better.

And um, because it, it absorbs more of the contact and there's less sort of sloshing of your brain inside your skull.

Now.

Now I guess maybe, you know, we've heard a little bit, you've talked a little bit about the argument of, you know, some folks saying, oh, maybe go to rugby without helmets.

Why couldn't there be like a hybrid?

Why.

Why the hard shell?

If the padding is what's doing the most protection, why not have more?

Almost like a pilot's cap, you know, the old World War II pilots, not leather, but have it.

This Guardian Material that you're snug to your head.

It's, it's got some padding.

I wonder if something that would have merit those exist.

And the place that they're worn is flag football.

Texas Sevens.

Texas Sevens, they're sort of spring football that they play and other flag exhibitions or games at all levels.

Also for women, by the way, because I think it's something like eight states now have varsity flag football for girls.

They do have exactly what you're talking about.

Soft shell helmets that don't.

There's no face mask.

It sort of looks like an old school leather helmet, only it's not made of leather anymore.

It's, you know, it's a soft padded helmet.

And something that has begun to happen with those is as you just talked about with the adapt latest adaptation of the Guardian cap, they're starting to make those soft helmets with display space on the side for logos.

So that's really fascinating to me.

I mean I think a certain stripe of football fan will never want to go away from tackle.

They would deride, you know, flag football as basketball on grass.

And it is, you know, a different looking game but with the increasing strategic reliance on the passing game at all levels of football, it's not as different as it used to be.

You know that really passing the ball is, is, is the winning formula for most teams.

Although maybe not last night seemed to be a lot of running the ball sure was championship game.

So I think it's really interesting to see how flag football develops and how the, how the gender dynamic factors in too because I think the NFL is hugely championing, championing, championing if I can say that.

The flag game, but only for girl, only for girls after the age of about 10.

So Troy Vincent, there's a whole, there's a whole NFL page about flag football on the NFL's website.

And Troy Vincent, who works for the NFL has this whole thing about how we love flag football and we want everyone to participate in football and you don't have to be a, you know, boys.

It's not just for boys anymore.

And then later on he says, you know, after they reach a certain age, boys will of course move on to tackle football.

Only then it's only, we're talking high school varsity.

That's only for girls.

There is a sort of weird sort of combination of promise.

Like we're excited to get more people connected to football.

But like vague threat in the, in the growing popularity of flag football first.

Then they have the, then they have the best NFL players each year Playing flag football now at the end of the year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Gavin.

Gavin Newsom in California vetoed a bill last year, I think, that would have outlawed tackle football under the age of 12.

And so it had passed both houses of the, the California state legislature.

And he got a lot of pressure from a lot of people to veto the bill and he did.

So it's really, it'll be interesting to see how that translates.

You know, California's population is huge, but they're no longer.

There's still a lot of great football recruits come out of there.

But now, in addition to Texas and Florida, they're regularly surpassed by states like Georgia and other smaller states just because the cultures are so different with regard to youth football and that kind of thing.

Like a bill almost being passed in California that would have banned it under the age of 12, I think is indicative of some of the culture shifts happening.

You know, that's not going to work well.

Well, they, they did shift in other equipment though, because, you know, about 15 years ago, officials, we were told that we had to start checking arms and legs and no hard plastic.

You know, the, remember the old shin pa.

Hard plastic.

And other than the shoulder pads and the helmet, you can't have anything hard on there.

So some of their arm pads and splints, you know, have to be half inch foam padding on any, you know, cast or anything that a players, an injured player is wearing.

So they are softening up everywhere else on it except for the upper body, which is kind of, kind of interesting.

Well, you know, shoulder pads are a fraction of the size they used to be.

And I just, I couldn't believe how big the shoulder pads were like they were out here and now they're so small.

Like the, and the, and the, the knee pads are gone.

Basically.

It's like they're wearing biker shorts out there.

A lot of the guys.

It's, it's interesting.

Yeah, the Pads, too, have really changed.

So how about if we, you know, we shift over to and really kind of jump on the whole iconography, Right?

And.

Yeah, and they're, you know, to kind of do again, a little bit of a historical perspective on it.

But they were always just leather or canvas.

And they did it because they wanted their eligible pass receivers to stand out.

They wanted.

They wanted their quarterback to know who to throw the ball to.

And so, and, you know, now, you know, it took a while for the forward pass to catch on, but still, most teams just kept with regular leather.

University of Chicago has puts a logo on the back of their helmet.

As far as I know, they were the first ones.

Washington, in Seattle, they had logo on the back of their helmets in the late 30s, mid to late 30s.

And then we get, you know, the, the best known example is, you know, the, the LA Rams.

Fred Gerke, you know, who played for them, paints Rams, you know, logos on the helmet.

So he got a dollar a piece for those too.

The premium.

Is it right, Tim, that it was on leather for only one year?

Did they switch to plastic the next year?

That's what I seem to find.

I don't know that, you know, you know, there's.

I'll have to look at some of the, you know, some of the images.

I have to confirm that.

But, but, you know, I mean, one of the things that's interesting too is that the.

So as that switch occurs, there was also a demand.

So there were.

There were teams that were trying, that were.

Would, in the 50s that would have their receivers wear a different colored helmet than their lineman.

And the NFL approved that like 48.

And then, you know, there's high schools and, you know, people at all levels doing that.

But so even after the Rams, though, logos didn't really come on for a little while, you know, and it really was late 50s, early 60s, which I think is probably a television play.

But the, you know, at the same time, in the mid-50s, the National Photographers association said, hey, put, put numbers on the players wherever you can because it's, it'll be easier to identify them.

So that's when all the helmet, you know, numbers, you know, conferences required teams to put, you know, numbers either on their, on their shoulder pads, sleeves or helmets.

And most put them on helmets.

So those, you know, so that slowed college adoption of logos, whereas pretty much the NFL had them all, you know, by mid-60s I think everybody had, you know, other than the Browns.

And so.

Can I interject him?

Sorry to interrupt.

This is my great.

Right, this is my great white whale and Tim is actually the one who called me on it.

In one of my articles I wrote is is definitive proof that Roselle pressured people to put helmet logos on there.

I can't find it, but I'm sure that's the case because he works for the Rams in when Gerke's painting the helmets, he's the one who brings in the TV contract.

And all of a sudden right around that time period, everyone but the Browns, because Paul Brown hates him or something, everyone but the Browns puts a logo on their helmet.

So I'm sure that Roselle had something to do with that, but I can't prove it.

I really want to prove it because everyone lauds Roselle for, for the TV stuff and rightly so.

I mean that, that was a sort of paradigm shift in the popularity of the game, in the popularity of, of like sports in general.

Because you know, baseball had been on TV since the 40s, but it's really football that becomes the first TV sport.

And the helmets are such a huge part of that because you know, as I think you posted pointed out in one of your posts, Tim, you in the leather helmet days, you know, you couldn't really see what was happening in the middle of the scrum at the line of scrimmage anyway.

So it didn't matter what was on their helmet.

But with a zoomed in perspective of television, right, like all of a sudden you've got this beautiful shot of the, of the two, the offensive and defensive lines lined up against each other.

You've got the helmet going down the line, the same design repeated like it's this visual spectacle that's like so I mean here I'm nerding out because I get excited about it.

It so entices people, right?

And I know Roselle had to have figured that out, but can't prove it.

I, I can, I can add to your conspiracy theory because think about this.

The.

The LA Rams before the Cleveland Browns were the Cleveland Rams.

They won the NFL championship, moved to the west coast.

So the Browns Sort of, you know, replace the Rams.

And there's probably resentment because it was how many times you have a champion team move out of the city and move, you know, 2,000 miles away.

So there, there you go.

First they were here in St.

Louis as a champion again.

Yeah, yeah, that's, you know, I, I, I'll try to figure it out, too.

But I also hope Tim, who's a.

Believe me, I've been looking.

I just, I can't seem to find it.

So, but yeah, so, I mean, it's, it's, it's interesting, too.

I mean, like, one of the things you talk about how important the helmet is, the branding purposes, and yet you have teams like Oregon and many others who switch the look of their helmets every other day.

You know, I mean, so, which is kind of like, to me, I think of consistency in branding as being so critical.

And for them, part of their branding is the variation.

Right.

And the creativity that comes with, you know, some of those helmets.

So it's, it's an interesting, you know, I guess, juxtaposition, but just returning a little bit to that eligible ineligible thing is, you know, even, you know, as late as, like, the, I can't think of when Bear Bryant passed away, but like, in his last seasons, he was still, you know, we think of the crimson helmet for Alabama, but if they were playing Mississippi State, Alabama wore white helmets, you know, because they, you know, he wanted his receivers to, to, to, to stand out.

And by then teams, everybody on the team had to wear the same helmet design, so he couldn't differentiate his receivers.

So, you know, there's images out there with Alabama in those white helmets with the numbers on the side.

Yeah, I think my favorite piece that you uncovered, and again, all credit to you, Tim, for all this work you've done, which I had never realized I mentioned earlier, the 92 Rose Bowl.

I work at Washington University in St.

Louis, but I am a Seattle native, so I'm a big fan of the University of Washington, the other Washington.

And in the 90s, after the whole scandal with Don James because of a stupid Billy Joe Hobert took money from a booster or whatever ridiculousness it was.

So Don James retires and his defensive coordinator, Jim Lambright, became the coach of the Washington Huskies.

And one of the things that Lambright did to try to sort of make the team his own and sort of distinguish himself from, from James was to switch the helmets from gold to purple.

And I always thought, well, that was a dumb decision.

The gold is iconic.

And of course, as soon as he was no longer coach.

They switched back to gold.

But what I didn't realize until Tim.

And so that.

So getting everybody to wear purple helmets was, in fact, directly connected to part of what Tim is talking about, which is that, you know, in the early days of helmet decoration, the standard that we have now where everybody's helmet looks the same unless you have, like, merit stickers.

Right.

And then it can look slightly different for Ohio State or whatever.

That wasn't assumed either.

It wasn't necessarily the case that the design would be uniform across all the helmets.

The captains might have different helmets as.

As Tim saying.

And there's.

There's that example of army, where everyone's wearing gold, except the receivers are wearing bright orange.

They look totally different.

There were, you know, the.

The numbers being a utilitarian purpose.

There were.

There were a lot of different ideas bouncing about about what one could do with helmet design.

But ultimately, the branding and the consumer appeal is what wins out.

And this, I think, is part of the.

The reason Oregon is the way it is is because Oregon figured out, you know, we don't have a tradition of national championships to fall back on.

We're not Penn State or Notre Dame or Alabama.

You know, we don't have.

Our tradition isn't anything anybody really cares about.

So our.

Our tradition will become.

Innovation will become changing the helmet and the uniform every week.

And the added bonus of that, something that Phil Knight, I'm surely realized quite well, is that then you've got more helmets and more jerseys to sell to fans.

And since the helmets are so iconic, you know, the Oregon fan getting the particular look that they like, being able to sell 22 different styles of helmets instead of just one for Penn State, I think is, you know, very intentional because that, that, that.

That helps the university and Nike make a lot more money.

Yeah, well, you know, the thing about the, you know, the coach coming in and changing things, you know, that was, you know, I mean, now.

Now it's just kind of taken for granted, I guess.

But it used to be that when, you know, if you got a losing program and you need a new coach, that that guy needs to be able to bring in new uniforms and including, you know, changing the helmet, changing the decal, because we want to look different because we don't want to look like the old guys.

That's why we fired them.

You know, so that kind of stuff is I just find really interesting.

But yeah, so the other thing that has changed in all this is that, you know, the, the rest of the uniforms have changed as well.

So, you know, back in the day, you know, before plastic helmets, you know, teams, two teams might appear on the field, both wearing black jerseys, you know, that there weren't rules about the colors that you had to wear.

And you know, over time, I mean, the NFL did their.

You know, before that, a lot of both NFL and college had like, you had to have contrasting colors and it was the home team's responsibility to be contrasting because they, they had extra, you know, they didn't have to bring both sets, you know, with them on the road.

Now, everybody was already doing it by then, so it was.

They codified the rule, you know, made it official, but everybody was already doing it.

You know, I mean, and a lot of that was.

It was first put in for TV purposes because if you're in a stadium, you can tell the green shirt from the blue shirt, but if you're watching on a black and white television, you can't tell the difference.

So, you know, it was a television and the money is what drove the change in the color of the uniforms.

And then and now because the uniforms are always different, it's a little, it's less important for the helmets to be different.

You know, so two teams with white helmets can play and nobody thinks anything of it because one of them is going to wear a dark jersey and one's wearing a white jersey.

Right.

So.

But I remember it was only a few years ago that UCLA and USC got to play in the contrasting colors again.

They had.

Because that's what.

Until 83, until that rule change, that was their thing.

They always.

UCLA wore the Cardinal, I guess it would, they would call it and, and, or sorry, USC wore the Cardinal and UCLA wore the, the powder blue.

And then when they, some reason they, the.

The rules I think loosened like four or five years ago and they started being able to do color on color again.

Yeah.

And you know, I mean, they've, they also do the things like in the NFL, you can, you can get, you got to get a waiver ahead in advance of the game to where the, like for the Cowboys always wearing white Jerseys, that kind of thing, you know.

Right.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a fascinating thing.

And I do need to do a shout out for ucla.

I'm repping them tonight.

One of my sons did his masters there and they're playing Wisconsin tonight.

I shouldn't even be saying this because now we're going to screw up which date this podcast gets to run.

But anyways, they play Wisconsin tonight, so I'm using reverse psychology because I want the Badgers to win.

So the ancient Big Ten rivals ucla.

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Goes back a long way, young man.

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, he.

I just think it's an interesting thing, you know, just looking at the, like the, this was the original plastic helmet, you know, behind me.

Right.

And you know, I, you mentioned the, the protrusion around the ears.

Now, you know, that kind I think goes back to like the old, the days of the old dog eared helmets, you know.

And then, you know, there were some models of the leather helmets that had the protruding ears and others that didn't.

So why one brand did that and others didn't?

You know, it's one of those mysteries of, you know, that we'll never, never understand.

But.

But yeah, I mean, that's a lot of space to put a pretty cool logo, you know, right there.

One thing I'm curious about, Tim, and maybe your research you've uncovered this is it seems to me that in the leather helmet era at the, at by the time that the sporting goods companies were producing lots of different models of leather helmets.

So I'm talking, you know, Rawlings and Wilson and there's several more.

They were a lot of companies doing this.

There wasn't, there weren't logos, but it seemed to me that they were doing decorative things of a certain kind with the strips of leather.

And I wonder, you know, the one helmet that's that the plat, the helm, the design on the plastic still looks like it could, could be strips of leather.

Is that iconic Michigan design with the sort of wings or ears, whatever they are, and then the three stripes.

And if you look at their helmets from that era, they did, they had strips of leather like that and they had the strips.

And then if you look at these sporting good catalogs, there are other ones that have the same little ear things that aren't Michigan helmets.

So I wonder how much form followed function or how much the.

Like.

I gather the Michigan design came first from Princeton because it was supposed to be tiger stripes or whatever.

But I wonder how much that design actually emerged from just what the helmet manufacturers were doing with the various sort of strips of leather on there and whether you found anything to that effect.

Well, you know, so the, this, the straps preceded.

So they put the straps on initially, I think it was just, you know, just a way to construct the helmet.

And they, they weren't, they didn't view them as decorative.

And, and in fact Ohio State wore them before Michigan did.

Wow.

And, but, and that was to add the pad was to add protection to the forehead.

So it was a functional issue.

But you know, the designers made them in a, in a variety of different ways.

And the striping, you know, there were a variety of different striping elements too, but it was, I want to say it was 36, but somewhere in there football was still at a point where when leather helmets were, were primarily brown, it was easy to.

People sometimes couldn't tell a helmet from a ball.

And there were, there were running backs who would literally take their helmet off and throw it on the ground to simulate a fumble.

So the, then the NCAA required teams to have to paint the straps in contrasting colors to.

So that it couldn't be.

So your helmet couldn't look like a ball.

And they also basically, since then, you know, you can't wear a uniform that looks, that has the same color as the ball.

So you know that, that all kind of came in at the same time.

Unless you're the retro Illinois helmet that they wore this year against Michigan.

Yeah, that was really fascinating.

I thought that was cool.

Those are really cool, like leather.

And they did a really good job.

Yeah.

I saw some social media video of like the guy who like airbrushed each helmet.

This wasn't like the helmet manufacturers just, just printing it that way.

There was like an actual artist who did each one.

That's pretty fascinating.

I thought those were, I thought those are great looking helmets.

Yeah, they were.

They looked really sharp.

Yeah.

So I mean, I don't know if I answered your question with that, but so it's.

Yeah, you know, that's where the, that's where the kind of the multi color helmets came in to distinguish them from the ball.

I mean that, that was the purpose behind.

So that sort of, that sort of ear formation from your research you think came first from the helmet manufacturers trying to enhance before it was ever decorative.

Yes.

To pad that.

So it was a way to add pads to the forehead.

And there was a lot of.

They had, you know, belief that the, you know, they needed to protect the temple.

And so the wing often went over the.

Just how that's so interesting, that's really fascinating.

You know, we're talking about brows.

This is how nerdy we are.

And earlier you talked about the nose bumper and how that's, you know, mostly decorative.

And with.

With most helmets, if I can lean the right way, point the right way, you know that it is because there's a bar.

There's a bar below where the nose bumper is.

But the new Axiom helmets on a lot of the models, they've gotten rid of that bar.

And so the nose bumper has a purpose again.

It could.

It could be pushed down and hit you.

Literally hit you in the nose.

I thought that was really, really interesting that the.

The sort of helmet technology, the.

The changing shape of football helmets has brought us back around to the.

To the place where you need a nose bumper on your helmet.

It's not just a place.

Well, I mean, for a long time that, you know, I mean, the nose bumper.

So the initial nose bumpers were plain.

And then somewhere along the line, I think it was Rydell started putting.

Rydell, you know, became a way for them.

They got the NFL to agree to let.

To do it on all the helmets.

It's not the case anymore, but for.

A long time, yeah, but, you know, I mean, so that was one of those things where, you know, it's like an appendix.

There's a name for it.

I can't remember what it is.

The thing about the.

The Axiom helmets without the crossbar, though, is they.

They look really weird.

I mean, to anyone who's paying any attention, like me, they look really weird.

And I think they have.

They've had enough complaints from players and maybe fans or others about how they look that they've now retrofitted them such that you can get a model that does have a crossbar.

Because when they first.

The Axiom helmets first came out, you could not get an Axiom helmet with a.

With a metal bar across the forehead line.

It just wasn't possible.

You could have the visor or no visor, but you could not have the metal bar.

But now they.

They've.

This past season was the first season where they've introduced that crossbar again.

So that's another way that, like, we've naturalized the look of the face mask as part of it.

And when you remove part of that face mask, look it.

At least to certain people, it looks really strange.

I don't know.

We're kind of.

We're running kind of late on our time I think, you know, Noah, is there any, any other kind of pearls of wisdom that you think we should all, all know or that you want to dispense?

No, I mean, I'm just, I love the conversation.

I love the chat with you, Tim and Darren.

I'm nerding out over here, so I'm not, I'm not feeling like I'm dispensing any wisdom necessarily.

I'm just enjoying.

Enjoying a great talk.

So, you know, thank you for having me.

I'd be.

I'd love to come back some other time.

I don't know if it can get any nerdier or more esoteric tonight, but I'd love to go there because I, I love talking about this stuff.

No, absolutely any, anytime.

You're both welcome to come on here.

And there is no time limit on helmets.

Everybody loves to hear good helmet story because like you said, they're the iconic pieces of, of football.

And I want to thank you both as a Western Pennsylvania, because Noah, as you've been talking, I'm seeing Penn State helmet behind you being the pure white behind you.

And Tim, you have the, the one.

You know, the Steelers only have their logo on one side of their helmet.

So I'm envisioning that helmet behind you as being the Steelers helmet.

So we thank you here in Western Pennsylvania.

That's another great helmet story that they were like, we're gonna try out the logo on just one side of the helmet to save money.

And then they're like, we'll just keep it that way.

They just, because they were saving money on trying out the logo, they just stuck with it.

And now it's just the way the Steelers helmet look.

And they took the, the US Steel logo too, to put on there.

Yeah, Yeah, I love that too, because you can always tell when a Steeler's helmet has been like, they flipped the image if they're facing the wrong way and you could see the logo.

Yeah, absolutely.

So.

So gentlemen, I really appreciate you coming on here and sharing your knowledge and sharing your insight on, on this great piece of Americana, the American football helmet and you know, for North American football helmet, because Canadians in football wear the same style helmets, so we do too.

So we appreciate the, the conversation and thank you for the great history.

Yeah, a lot of fun.

A lot of fun.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Really, really good to know that you're studying all this.

And, and I just.

For other listeners, Noah's is teaching a class on American football this semester.

And so 25 lucky students, you know, got the chance to join that class.

So hopefully they appreciate the course and have a lot of fun with it.

Yeah, I'm really good grades, too.

I'm really enjoying it and I'm getting a lot out of it from them as well.

I mean, in part because, you know, as I said at the top, I never played tackle football competitively and I've got varsity football players in my class, so they certainly have knowledge that I that I don't to contribute to the class discussion.

And it's, it's been really, really enjoyable so far.

So, yeah, thanks for mentioning that.

Sounds good.

All right, thanks, gentlemen.

Very good.

Thank you.

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