Are Standard Football Helmet Test Trustworthy?

At the forefront of the concussion debate in football is the safety measures taken to help prevent concussions.  What seems to be the most popular topic when looking into new safety measure for the game is the development of the helmets the players wear. This makes the most sense, being that a concussion is a head injury and a helmet is design “protect” your head. However, the problem with this new development is the nature of study’s being conducted on different brands of helmets, with each study seeming to have several articles associated with contracting their legitimacy. You also have to worry about a certain industrial marketing approach companies will take around these studies.

In researching studies about a specific helmet brand and it’s effectiveness in preventing concussions, one must try their best to look for studies that take marketing out of the equation. The best study that can be done for this issue is one that remains unbiased toward each company. This is exactly what Virginia Tech  has claimed to do.  The university has become famous in the last few years for their studies around new football helmets, giving each helmet a specific rating of their effectiveness against concussions. They claim to do so through the means of “providing unbiased helmet ratings” that are “100% independent of any funding or influence from helmet manufactures”.  An ABC News goes through the process of these test. It consist of first lifting a specific helmet 6 feet into the air, then dropping in onto a hard surface. Each helmet is lined with sensors which measures the impact of the blow between the helmet and the hard surface. From this data collected, researchers will then give a helmet a rating from 1-5, 5 being the most effective. This is about the extent that this article stays relevant to the issue, for it then goes into a marketing spiel around a specific brand.

This method used by Virginia tech is one that many other companies have mimicked, and the rating scales created through test are a very much understood baseline for many minor leagues in picking a helmet brand. However there are also a number of studies that says Virginia Tech is doing it wrong. A Bloomberg Business brings up a very plausible flaw in this Virginia Tech method, in that it is run under the assumption that we know the mechanism which cause concussions. In the Article, Robert Erb of Schutt claims that concussion could be caused by a specific blow to the head, or it could not and that modern science just isn’t sure about that yet. He also claims that the Virginia Tech study may also not be accurate because “concussions are like snowflakes, no two are the same”.  This same argument is present in a Stanford University Article. In it, they do a Meta analysis of the two studies conducted by the university. In this, researches find two very different results from the standard “guillotine” approach with sensors like the VT study, and when the same sensors are used for a player in an actual game or practice. These field test, conducted by Fidel Hernandez of Stanford were able to measure high rotational velocities that have been claimed to relate to concussions. The rotational velocities that can be measured on the feild but not in the lab.

This is just one of many reports in which one side has made a claim and many other have contradicted that same claim. However, it is very interesting that the Bloomberg Business article was published with a Schutt executive as a source to negate the VT study, when the VT study found many of Schutt manufactured helmets not worthy of a 5 star rating.

Other studies such a UCLA search has began to contact experiments with a similar sensor report, while others like Phys.org have looked into the effect of sound waves on concussions. While there are countless articles that negate these as well. In conclusion, it is clear that the world of Football helmets and safety is a very complex and unclear field because of two main reason. One, that the true cause of concussions is still very much in question, and two, because of the mass market of these items makes it such a economical blow when one article questions the safety of a company, forcing the company to publish an article disregarding the others study all together.

What I have concluded from this is that there will never be one clear cut answer as to what helmet is the best. There are just too many third variables that can relate to the likelihood of a player getting a concussion (ex. size and experience). For me, one thing is for certain, the only fool proof approach to avoiding these head injuries is to simply stop playing football.

3 thoughts on “Are Standard Football Helmet Test Trustworthy?

  1. John Michael Federici Post author

    Thank you for sharing that study! I do however hold some issue with comparing rugby to football. The overall goal of each specific sport is vastly different, along with the extreme differences in the size of many NFL players. However, this study still brings a very compelling argument to the table.

    As far as the actual study I agree that there need to be more on field study done. The controlled nature of a lab test with helmets may look pretty on paper, but there is not logical way that someone can argue that the conditions seen in those labs are consistent with that seen on the field. If more field test were in fact done, I believe that we could begin to see more proof that helmets really in fact to little to nothing to stop these head traumas.

  2. Aubree Sylvia Rader

    Football safety has been a big topic in the news lately with the death of two high school football players as a result of injuries sustained during the game. You can read about them at http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/high-school/report-evergreen-football-player-who-died-from-head-injury-had-suffered-previous-concussion/ and http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/evan-murray-new-jersey-high-school-football-player-dies-after-n434246. Another test that should be researched besides the best type of helmet is neck safety with football players. A hard, heavy helmet may protect the brain from a concussion, but is it putting additional strain on the neck? And what about chest safety? Why do football players not have chest protection that extends past the upper portion of the chest? Your article really dove into the studies already done on helmet safety and was interesting to read, maybe you could expand with future posts on other safety concerns involved with football players.

  3. Brendan Feifer

    Hi John,
    I really enjoyed reading this, especially with concussions being such a prevalent facet in football everywhere, from peewee to the NFL. I liked how you amalgamated each study and then the rebuttal of each study into consecutive paragraphs. It made it easier for me to read and analyze, as I am sure it did for others.

    You hit the nail on the coffin when you ultimately stated that there are simply too many third variables that play a factor in helmet safety. As thorough as the studies you used were, I wish they could have taken helmet-to-helmet hits into consideration. This has become the new prioritized obsession by football leagues all over, and in the NFL you could even face suspension and a hefty fine for doing so. I think you’d really enjoy this study compromised of NFL head statistics vs. rugby head statistics. Obviously rugby players don’t wear helmets, but nevertheless give this study a look and maybe you can do a second bog post on it!

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