My first football helmet didn’t fit me. After waiting in line for gear with the rest of the high school freshmen, I got to the front and Coach looked at me, handed me my pants, jersey, pads and helmet, then motioned to the next guy.
I took my stuff to my locker and examined my new helmet. Well, new to me. This thing had already had a life of its own, and I could feel it when I put it on. Tight in some places, loose in others, dinged up double-bar face-mask, an uneven chinstrap and deep grooves and divots on the outer shell, painted over, but one can always see the scars.
The helmet bounced when ran and rattled when I hit. It did not fit my head correctly, and yet I played a collision sport at full speed and leaned into every hit, just like so many before me, and so many after.
Late in that freshman season, my first playing tackle football, it was the middle of the week and the very end of practice. It was starting to get dark and I was playing scout team tight end, which, at 5’7”, 130 pounds, I was drastically undersized for. As I ran down the middle of the field looking up at a badly overthrown ball. Our overly-eager sophomore safety, Joel Grabscheid, decided to hit me anyway, right in the temple. BANG! It went momentarily black. Then brown, then slowly I started coming out of it and my friends helped off the field and onto the sidelines where practice continued. It always continues. That we can count on.
For me it continued for the next seventeen years—in high school, college and pros—time spent pulling on a helmet every day and going out to play the game I knew was violent, and that I loved anyway.
My two worst football concussions book-ended my football life. That one as a freshman in high school, and the other was the second to last game of my career, November of 2008, Thursday Night Football in Cleveland. I was diving across the middle for a ball and Willie McGinest hit me in the exact same spot as Joel Grabscheid, only a little bit harder. Good thing for me, I was a little bit stronger now and my helmet was a whole lot better.
Football is a fast and violent game. No matter how safe you try to make it, there will always be risks, and getting hit in the head is one of them. We love the sport so we accept that risk. That said, the scenario I described above, about the difficulty finding helmets that fit, or more importantly—that mitigate the risks of head trauma—is all too common. Many high school programs don’t have adequate equipment; out of date, damaged, and wouldn’t pass safety inspections. Not only that, but to replace those bad helmets and supply an entire team with new ones is far more money than most programs can come up with. This alone can leave communities behind, and with it, talented student-athletes.
The Denver Broncos organization, with a long-standing tradition of community service, and now led by new ownership, the Walton-Penner Group, are doing something about it. Last week the Broncos announced a new Initiative called “All in. All Covered.”, in which they’ll be supplying brand new, Riddell Axiom helmets to every one of the 277 Class 5A High School football programs in the state. That amounts to over 15,000 helmets (helmets that run about $1000). This program manages to address both of the major contributors to the recent struggles of Colorado high school football: Cost concerns and health and safety concerns.
In youth sports, and in high school, your gear and your equipment can become a status symbol. What shoes can you afford? What shoulder pads? What private teacher? What travel bag? And what helmet?
When you slip on your football helmet, you become someone else. This is the power of football. In many ways, the quality of that helmet will effect who you become. An uncomfortable helmet like the one I got in high school, and getting hit feels like getting clapped on the top pf the head by a thunderbolt, and leaves you feeling vulnerable.
But when the helmet slides on smooth and fits snug—like those Riddell Axioms will—and contains the latest in helmet safety technology, including sensors and software to monitor your individual brain health, hugs your features, encloses your head and allows a full field of vision—well, then the player can feel comfortable and play free. And just as important, their parents who ate sitting in the stands holding their breath because the game is so intense, but can feel comforted know that their sons are protected as well as they can be.
Every high school player in Colorado, and every family member of that player, deserves to have that feeling, and now, thanks to this generous gift from the Broncos, they’ll have it.
The entire state of Colorado is All In and All Covered.
