Football Safety Essay

Football is one of America’s favorite athletic games played and watched by thousands of people. Today, professional athletes, adults, teenagers, and even young children have worked together on many levels while playing competitively in this, hands on, contact sport. However, one major concern about this sport is its equipment and its overall safety. Thus, the sport of football, its equipment, and its means of protection need to be considered essential in helping players succeed and remain both competitive and injury free whenever playing. Football is a competitive game played world wide and it was introduced in 1920. It is played in elementary schools, high schools,college, and professionally. When someone plays in elementary/middle school

Next piece of equipment is the shoulder pads that were invented in 1877 to protect the shoulder and chest. One such crucial and necessary equipment is the shoulder pads that give a broad-shoulder look to the players. The football jersey generally covers the shoulder pads.The shoulder pads in football is credited to one L.P. Smock, a Princeton student who is said to have designed the pads in 1877, eight years after his school faced Rutgers in the first ever college football game. The pads effectively absorb the physical blows during the matches. They shield every player's shoulders along with the sternum area from injuries. The next piece of equipment, this part of the uniform, is very crucial; it protects the thigh, knee, and hips. They were invented in the 1890’s The thigh pads are the biggest leg pads and are worn underneath the pants. They protect the quadriceps muscles from collisions with other players and the ground. There are many different sizes for players at different positions. Thigh bruising, in particular, can tamper with the player

They want to fix head to head collisions that cause concussions without a shock absorbent helmet. They need a lightweight helmet that is cheaper so more players can access it. They also want the helmet to effectively dissipate the energy from hit after hit on the football field. The new design aims to blunt some dangerous physics that today's models ignore. For head protection to be the most effective against the speed and weights of players on the football field the researchers said it has to block impulse.The new helmet has to have the design approved based solely on the peak force that the helmet can withstand. The design has to be built with mock cross-sections of materials that stood in for the brain and skull in various helmet designs. The helmet consists of three materials that amount to more than the sum of their parts.The first layer is similar to hard polycarbonate. The second layer is a flexible plastic. The third layer is a visco-elastic layer. The U-M researchers received $250,000 to take their technology to the prototype stage. The researchers also pointed out that their system is drastically flexible. Also that different materials could be used to tune different incoming pressure waves. The results were that in the experiments the current helmet model did little to block impulse. The researchers could tell this by how much the speckled pattern on their brain layer