Editor's note: This is one in a series on new technology being developed by the leading football-equipment manufacturers. None of the products mentioned in this article are endorsed by the NFL.
By Bill Bradley, contributing editor
Riddell sporting goods' SpeedFlex football helmet has gained a lot of attention this year. Riddell has tried to set a new standard with the headgear, incorporating a new facemask, shell, chinstrap mechanism and electronics into one package. The result has been hundreds of college and pro teams are wearing during pre-introductory phase.
Leading the push is Thad Ide, Riddell's senior vice president of research and product development. Ide has been with Riddell since 2000 and has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's in applied mechanics from Michigan State University.
He recently talked with NFL Evolution about the SpeedFlex helmet, why Riddell even thought of paramedics during the design process and what's next for Riddell.
What made you pursue technology in football equipment?
First of all, I'm a huge sports fan. Secondly, I wanted to work on products that had a strong human interaction. I worked in the biomechanics field in graduate school and had a real interest in working on products that interacted closely with humans. That, coupled with being a sports fan, really led me down this path.
Riddell has received a lot of press for its new Speedflex helmet. What makes it so special?
The Speedflex has a lot of great features going for it. ... One of the great features of SpeedFlex is that it's the first helmet that's been designed from the ground up to include Riddell's InSite impact-response system, which is a head-impact sensing technology. It measures impacts on the field and reports information about those impacts back to the sideline.
How long has this system been in development by Riddell?
This InSite system goes back about 10 years since Riddell first invested in on-field impact monitoring technologies that have been used, published and validated many times. That's sort of information has been used in a lot of ways to kind of change football for the better and make the game safer for people. One of those ways is to inform us on new helmet designs. The Speedflex helmet design makes use of that kind of vast array of data that has been accumulated over the past decade to kind of tweak the design and create some design features that better protect players based on real on-field data from head impacts.
What else is special about the Speedflex?
The Speedflex uses our "flex technology" that includes a flexible face-mask design. The face-mask attachment points are moved around to the side of the helmet. There are no face-mask attachments on the front and center location of the helmet. That's by design. We found through our testing if you strike a helmet in the front, then you can interrupt the path that the impact takes by removing the front face-mask attachment points and that allows the cage to flex. You can really reduce the impact forces that the player sees. That feature coupled with the very obvious visual feature in the front of the helmet -- the flexible cantilever system -- are designed to allow the shell to have more flexibility in the front. We found from frontal impact, which is most of the impacts the players see, we can get some good impact reduction by designing those features into the helmet.
Have your studies found an increase in wear and tear on the helmet with the changes to the facemask?
We haven't see any issues with that at all. With the faceguard especially we've incorporated a new stainless steel faceguard design that allows us to reduce the gauge of the wire. It allows us the benefit of improving the player's vision because they have less wire in front of their face. It also reduces the weight and increases a stronger, more durable product. It's a win-win-win there.
What were the major changes in the chinstrap?
The ratchet-lock chinstrap system was a well-received feature. We conducted focus groups and talked with a number of elite-level players from the NFL and colleges. One of the comments we heard was, "How come the chin-strap snap is the same one that was issued to me when I started playing football in 5th grade?" That's fair enough. That's become a real focus, especially when you look at the high school and college levels where they're treating a helmet coming off during play as an injury timeout. Besides the obvious reason to want to keep the helmet on the players' head, there are rules changes that are very much affecting that aspect of the game. ...We went to work and redesigned the chin-strap attachment system to not only make it a very intuitive, ergonomic design for the players to use, but also a very stable design that won't come unattached unintentionally.
Is it true you have even thought of paramedics with the quick-release facemask?
It's something that athletic trainers and first-responders very much like. You can easily remove the facemask with quick pushes of a button if you have an emergency on the field and need to gain access to the player. These are all things that a lot of people wouldn't consider as design features on a helmet, but you have to think of all of the constituents that are going to be using it. From the players who want the highest performance on the field, to the coaches having a responsibility to the players ... to the equipment managers who have to work on the helmet, we've incorporated a couple of nice features into the Speedflex to make it easier for those constituents. ... You have to take everybody who might have contact with the equipment into consideration.
Most major college football teams and the majority NFL teams have been wearing the Speedflex helmets in the spring practices and mini-camps. What does that say to about the sudden popularity of the new design?
I think it's great to see college programs, professional programs, high school programs embrace new technology like this. The development of football helmets is happening at a more rapid pace than it did 20 years ago. As new science becomes available and new testing, I think it's great that the game of football is embracing those changes as well.
The National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment announced that in late 2015 it will require helmets to protect against concussions. How will these changes affect helmets like the SpeedFlex in the next few years?
Nobody has seen (the guidelines) yet. NOCSAE has stated they're going to start reviewing a draft proposal at their board meeting that is coming up in a couple of weeks. Riddell will, of course, monitor the proposal very closely. We're really excited to work with NOCSAE on initiatives like this. We think we make the state-of-the-art, very best helmets in the industry helmets and anticipate any standards and any science that informs new standards to be something Riddell can work with very easily.
A lot has been written about helmet cushions like the Guardian Cap and in some states they have been banned while NOCSAE refrains from testing it because it is not part of the helmet. What does a helmet manufacturer think about these products?
One of the things to understand about how helmets are certified is that NOCSAE doesn't go out and test helmets. Helmets are certified by the manufacturers to meet NOCSAE standards. So if you modify your helmet in any way from the way it was originally was certified, the NOCSAE certification is voided. That's really the issue with after-market accessories at this point. It would be almost impossible to police up after all of them and test the product with every single one of them in all configurations. And what if somebody has more than one of these after-market accessories? The (different versions) just kind of get away from you. The way NOCSAE defines a helmet model is really important to this conversation. From our part, we're more than happy to look at any technologies that might improve the protective capacities of our products. The way the standard is written right now, it makes it very, very difficult for those products to be used in legal play.
What next for Riddell? Will you be taking that technology to other padding?
We expect to continue to monitor and produce some of the best in mobile science to improve head protection. I think the Riddell IQ platform, which includes the InSite sideline response system and some other interesting work that's being done in the genomic community in the different ways of looking at biomarkers as they relate to head injury, they all have great potential for the future of player safety.
It sounds like there could be a miniature computer inside the helmet someday.
I think the future of the helmet is not only to protect the athlete in the passive way that helmets do, but also to be an active information-gathering platform. You can imagine whatever information could be gathered and communicated from the helmet -- whether that's in a player-to-coach communication, player-to-player communication, the impact monitoring, biometric-monitoring technologies -- I think the helmet can be a very great package for providing a wide variety of information.
