TheOak

Then it is no longer American Football.

Rugby Saint II

With Roger Godhell in charge it won't be American Football for long.

TheOak

Roger doesn't run the league.

ChrisXVI

The owners sure don't seem to dislike his ideas.

Rugby Saint II

He's running the NFL.................in the ground.

Crusader

The main problem with concussion is not the direct blow to the head but that it sends the brain smashing against the cranium. Thats usually the big problem and what causes the concussion. Its also very hard to do anything about.

SaintsBro

Where this is all heading is helmets with sensors in them, which record the impacts and the force of the impacts, and then once you trigger a certain force, a bell rings somewhere and your helmet lights up and you are automatically out of the game. It WILL change the way the game is played, it will change the roster size and even impact coaching and strategy, but it will make it vastly safer by removing ANY arbitrary human element from the decision of who has gotten a concussion or who doesn't. When that happens you will see the game go towards more depth, more substitutions. Strategy will be about cobbling together a good scoring drive or two with your starters, before their bells all get rung, or resting players at first and then putting them in late in the game...

The other solution which sounds like lunacy but could actually work....is to make the helmets HUGE enormous puffy airbag type devices, so the players look like goofy bobble heads...looks silly to us, but I bet a modern helmet would look incredibly weird compared to an old-fashioned leather helmet, to someone of that era....

TheOak

Roger is the puppet for the 32 owners. The owners meet every year and decide the changes.

saintsfan403

Look at the newest generation of helmets. All the ones that receive 5 star ratings have wide facemasks that extend past the traditional field of view and wrap around most of the helmet. I expect that more teams are going to switch to the vengeance, xenith and riddell 360 model over traditional schutt and ridells.
As for big, puffy helmets-someone tried that before and the idea never picked up, google 'bulwark football helmet'.

SaintsBro

Interesting info in your post, thanks.

I wonder if it didn't catch on because it doesn't really improve safety, or if it didn't catch on because it looks really weird. Which relates to part of my point in my post, which was, if they changed it, by the time the next generation of football fans and players came to get comfortable with it, it will no longer look weird. Things we take for granted today like foam padding on the goal posts, artificial turf, or the really bright dayglo orange styrofoam pegs in the end zone, that stuff used to be weird and unusual and a novelty in people's eyes, at one time.