NFL to weigh rule changes after helmet study; Congress examining football concussions, Leach

NFL to weigh rule changes after studying helmets

As the NFL heads to the playoffs, the league is groping for a way to find a safer helmet and considering offseason rule changes to provide more protection from concussions.

Congress is still on the NFL’s case, too, and will examine head injuries in football again Monday, a day after the regular season ended with Miami Dolphins quarterback Pat White being carted off the field because of a helmet-to-helmet collision.

One researcher who recently conducted crash-dummy tests on five manufacturers’ helmets for the NFL worries about what good will come of efforts to measure how much safer players are than they were a decade ago and understand where improvements could be made.

“There’s some really frightening potential for how this data is used,” David Halstead of the Southern Impact Research Center said in a telephone interview. “In other words — and the NFL, I’m sure, wouldn’t like me saying this — my concern is that somebody makes a direct comparison and says, ‘This helmet performed 40 percent better, so you’re 40 percent less likely to be injured.’ That’s absolutely incorrect.”

Halstead is particularly concerned the NFL’s study will be construed by high schools or youth leagues as recommending a particular helmet, even if the league insists that’s not its intention.

Instead, NFL officials say the goal is to do basic scientific research that will give players and equipment managers more information about helmets and will help manufacturers know where they could improve equipment.

“The majority of players are still wearing helmets designed in the ’90s,” NFL spokesman Greg Aiello wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. “That’s a key reason we wanted to initiate more research on helmets.”

The NFL and Riddell have had a licensing/sponsorship arrangement since 1990 — the current deal is set to expire after the 2013 season — and teams are eligible for price breaks from that company. Each player can choose what helmet he wears; most go with Riddell, whose Web site notes it’s the “Official Helmet of the NFL.”

The first round of the NFL’s helmet testing, done from October to December at Halstead’s lab and another lab in Canada, looked at how two helmet models made 10 years ago and present-day models responded to blows at various angles and speeds, up to about 22 mph.

Specific, helmet-by-helmet data won’t be released before March, but Halstead did offer this summary: “Some of the new helmets, not surprisingly, tested significantly better in certain locations than the 10-year-old helmets. Some of the new helmets didn’t perform any better than a 10-year-old helmet, which is a little surprising.”

He is scheduled to testify at a congressional hearing at Detroit’s Wayne State University School of Medicine on Monday, the House Judiciary Committee’s second recent look at football head injuries.

Other witnesses slated to appear include former NFL players Kyle Turley and Ted Johnson, as well as Ira Casson, a doctor who resigned as co-chairman of the NFL’s concussion committee amid accusations of bias. The House panel had hoped Casson would testify at its Oct. 28 hearing; he did not attend and later said he was not formally invited.

Casson’s resignation — and that of his co-chairman, David Viano — was announced by the NFL less than a month after that hearing, and the league hopes to have selected a replacement before the Super Bowl. There are five finalists for the post, according to NFL Players Association medical director, Thom Mayer, who said he will help the NFL’s medical advisor recommend a new leader of the concussion committee.

Lawmakers also plan to ask an NCAA representative about Texas Tech coach Mike Leach, who was fired after allegations surfaced that he mistreated a player diagnosed with a concussion.