Soft helmet covers:

Pro: I'm less likely to use it as a weapon to hurt people

Cons: On helmet to helmet hits they tend to "stick" instead of slide which can lead to broken necks supposedly. I don't know if that's true but that's the conventional wisdom

Possible solution: Have all the defensive players wear the covers. Offensive players don't!

Yes, you are.

Assume for simplicity that the two players that hit helmet to helmet are going the same speed (in opposite directions) and are the same size. (Changing one or both of these things just shifts the reference frame, and thus makes the math a lot harder — it doesn't change the fundamental result.)

When these two players hit, each one has to slow from whatever speed he was going, to a stop. And how long it takes his head — not his helmet, which really doesn't matter since we're not worried about breaking that — to make that transition from its pre-impact speed to a stop is what determines the acceleration. (How long it takes, or the distance covered — they're directly related mathematically.) So whether that time and distance are lengthened by compression of a soft outside shell or of soft inner padding doesn't matter. (It does matter for purposes of breaking the outer shell, but we're not worried about that.)

This works for helmet-to-helmet collisions. It works for impacts with immovable object.s (In this case, the one that matters is the ground.) The math gets messier with other collisions but the principle is the same: All that matters is how fast you slow down, not why. Hitting a hard object tends to hurt more than hitting a soft one, but that's because in practice hard objects don't tend to "give" as much as soft ones. But we're talking here about a hard object that's on a soft cushion, which evens things out.

(It doesn't always even things out when hitting objects that aren't equally massive. Things stay the same for the head, which again doesn't care why it is slowing down, but they do change for, say, the quarterback's hand, which isn’t massive enough to compress the inner padding of the lineman's entire helmet but would compress the little bit of outer padding it hit. And this is why you think there's a difference — because your experience is that hitting a hard thing tends to hurt more than hitting a soft thing. Your experience is correct — but your experience probably doesn't include a good comparison of hard-covered-soft-thing versus soft-covered-hard-thing, where you are approximately as massive and compressible the thing and are worried not about how much it hurts you but how much you hurt it.)

This is all counterintuitive, and I hesitated even to get into it because this is a tricky thing to teach even in person. (I used to teach physics to MCAT students.) But I promise you it's true. Your intuition about the physics of it makes sense and is common, but is wrong.


I'm sure there's a lot more to it, too; I went too far when I said it would "probably be good".

^ And wrt offensive versus defensive covers: Nice in theory, but obviously we can't arrange for all collisions to be offense/defense, so if there really is a stickiness-breaking-necks problems that's no good. Also, offensive helmets cause injuries too (albeit fewer than defensive helmets).

Nope, we're going to have to keep working on that one. I guess magnets are the answer.

(Nit: permanent magnets won't work because half the time they'd increase the violence of the collision, when the helmets' polarities were aligned. We'd need field or position sensors coupled to a strong electromagnetic system that could reverse polarity extremely fast and that was coordinated across all the helmets, to ensure that when one helmet approached another they would always repel each other.

Yes, this is impossible with current technology and yes, it's a totally dorky think even to talk about.)

On the silly magnet thing, don't you just have the polarization be opposite for the opposing teams? You assume that guys on the same team aren't going to try to run into each other. You don't just give all the players magnetized helmets at random with half of them attracting each other.

Will be amusing when the offensive linemen all start sticking to each others' heads though.

Think about car crashes when thinking about helmets (brain being the passenger) and it becomes obviously clear what helmets should do. Bobble head football with several layers of hard and soft materials might do the trick.

I am envisioning some awesome sports with giant, 3 foot wide spacious and crumpable metal helmets. Kind of looking like the alien guy on the flintstones.

Nope. Every magnet, and that's what each helmet would be, has a "north" pole and a "south" pole. North repels other norths and sticks to other souths, so you could have, say, everybody's north in the front so that front-to-front would always repel, but turn one of the players around and the same pair would attract.

It's funny you bring this up - I've lately been wondering about how the survival % in a nasty car wreck would be altered if passengers were wearing helmets?

pretty good read:

http://deadspin.com/5952643/shaken-u...cussion-crisis

Like people said, it's about the helmet.

And if the NFL was truly serious about reducing head injuries, they back out of their contract with Riddell and start using these ASAP:

Advanced helmet technology

Of course the NFL won't do it once the new helmet are on the market because their contract with Riddell supercedes player safety.

No, it's not just about the helmet and the science has show this conclusively. Yes, better helmets can cut down on concussions but not the micro-trauma.

Just the tackling, even with nothing making contact with the helmet, leads to micro-brain trauma due to inertia and sudden changes in momentum.

Don't get me wrong, helmets are big steps. I just don't think they, even with rule changes, will ever change the fact football is a contact sport that will cause a lot of concussions.

What I think will happen is decades of rule changes making football more and more like flag football until another sport finally takes over as numero uno.

Soccer has most potential to do that given the time frame involved. It's already the most popular sport at the youth level. It's a matter of capitalizing on that and building a Major League that can compete on Champions League level.

Two ways I can think of to go about this...

1. Somehow bribe enough European officials to setup a transatlantic (trans north pole really) schedule for MLS teams to compete at the top level.
2. Grow the CONCACAF Champions League enough to setup an international finals round to determine some "world champion."

Until then, I hope to god no more idiot parents let their kids play football. If they do, for the grace of god, get them health insurance.

That happens in sports without contact being the center of the game. How far do you really want to go down this slope?

NFL'ers are still modern-day gladiators. ultra badass. dying for a false noble cause.

that's going to me my conclusion regarding this matter. thank you 2p2 for helping me reach it.

I thought you were self-banned.

You're welcome.

- 2p2

Who knows, but right now high school football players concussion rates are more than double those of soccer and 7 times those of basketball

That's not even counting all the tackles leading to micro traumas even without any contact to the head. Not just making this up. Soccer players with similar concussion histories display fewer symptoms of head trauma (memory loss) than football counterparts. They are still working on this. But anecdotal evidence suggests even players without history of concussions are turning their brains into soup.

Old study but not a whole lot has changed other than more lip service.



PS: I love watching and betting on football. I also absolutely adore my fantasy teams. I'll just never let my kid play football.

So when football gets banned for being too dangerous, how many years before soccer is? Assuming it has roughly half the amount of concussions.

when dead soccer players turn up with alzheimher's-type brain mass in their 20's, 30's, 40's, and beyond, then it will face the same scrutiny.

cheers.

The game has no place in high school or below for one. Boys under the age of 18 can't make these choices.

Helmets are a red herring.

All physical sport needs to be banned

no, just the sports whose serious injuries are not incidental, but "part of the game" .

But their parents can.

Do you really think that high schools will have any problems getting parents to sign any dotted line that gets their kids in a high school uniform?

Soccer fans clearly have some massive brain trauma to be able to enjoy watching soccer, that has to count for something right?

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/...-denials-years

Yeah they are. Youth participation is down. They going too keep having more and more problems as more information comes out.