This guy came prepared with his own football helmet.

Football Helmet

The football helmet is an essential piece of protective gear used by all football players.  The hard plastic helmet is designed to protect the head and brain from injuries that can be sustained during  the game, while the modern face masks help prevent facial injuries like broken noses and damaged teeth.  If you're playing a version of tackle football in the United States or Canada, then you will become very familiar with the football helmet.  Modern helmets are made of a hard plastic, with internal padding and additional features, but they did not start out this way.  

The History of the Football Helmet

The football helmet wasn't used during the early years of the game, but rather became an innovation of player after their initial introduction to the game.  The actual inventor of the football helmet is still unknown, but many have been labeled as the first to don the now traditional piece of headgear.  The first potential candidate for this innovation to the game was a man by the name of George "Rose" Barclay, a halfback who played for Lafayette College.  He was known to wear straps of leather and earpieces to help protect his ears from damage.  While this is a likely candidate, other potential creators of the football helmet include James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, and Joseph M. Reeves, who had a crude mole skin cap made to help him play in the Army/Navy game of 1893.

The early potential creators of the football helmet would eventually lead to way to the basic helmet being made for use by the majority of players.  These basic helmets were made of various strengths of leather with a fabric cushioning on the inside.  As the years progressed, players would move into using harder leather, better cushions, and start including things like ear flaps to protect the ears and chin straps to help the helmet stay in place during play.  During this period of time, helmets were still an optional piece of protective gear, and many of the pros still chose to play with the head's exposed.  Many of the early greats and Hall-of-Famers would go on to play the rest of their career without ever putting on a helmet during play.

The late 1930s and the 1940s would see drastic changes in the protective aspects of the sports teams.  John T. Riddell is credited with creating the first primary plastic football helmet in 1939.  The style closely mimicked the leather helmets that many players had become used to, and while these helmets were not well made, they did show progress in the gear.  It was with the plastic helmet that the face mask was also introduced.  Sadly, due to poor construction, the plastic helmets were not adopted immediately by the NFL, and were in fact banned.  Thanks to WWII, there was a drastic shortage in supplies needed to make a quality football helmet out of plastic, and they had since become known as the protect gear that would break, with some players shattering several during a game. 

In the 1940s, the NFL made a rule requiring players to wear a football helmet during play, but the leather helmets were used at first.  They had taken on a very comfortable and sleep design over the years, being constructed of tough leather with decent internal padding.

In the 1950s, polymers would make the leather football helmet obsolete, and polymer helmets with face masks would become common place on the field.  With the polymer football helmet, the game was  then changed, and a slight variation of these football helmets are still used in major play today.  A player from the Los Angeles Rams, a team at the time before moving to another major city, was one of the first players to paint the team logo on their helmets. 

With face masks becoming required, the game did have to change.  The now common face mask call, where a player tackles another by pulling on their face mask, would now need to be put into place due to the potential injury and unfair advantage that it granted to certain player.  Styles and fashions would change and adapt, and the majority of teams would eventually adopt logos and team colors on their helmets.  Currently, the Cleveland Browns are the only team playing in the NFL who does not have some form of a logo on their helmet.

Most things with the helmet have not changed, but further advances in shape, padding, and construction have been put into place to help further protect players from injury and to help keep the helmet on the players head during game play.  New rules put into place in 2004 would eliminate the one bar face mask from play.  Where standard face masks were a small cage designed to protect the face, the single bar face mask was just that, a single bar.  The NFL has since deemed them less safe than full face masks, and they are no longer allowed in regulation play.

Parts and Styles of the Football Helmet

With each part of the standard football helmet, there are several different variations of each part.   The main parts of the football helmet are;

• The Polycarbonate Frame - This is the main part of the helmet that is designed to protect the majority of the cranium.
  
  
• Chin Strap - A padded piece of plastic that hold the helmet in place on the head during play.  The chin strap also protects the chin from injury.
  
  
  
• Face Mask - There are a number of different styles of face mask, but the primary function is to protect the face and mouth from injury during play.  They typically consist of a series of bars.
  
  
  
• Eye Shields and Visors - A completely optional, but legal, part of the helmet.  This is a clear shield that goes over the eyes, protecting them from injury.  Most players steer away from these piece of equipment unless they have already sustained eye injuries.  While they can come in a multitude of colors, the visor must be clear per the rules of the game.

There are several different types of face masks used in football helmets.  Most are made of some style of carbon steel that is then coated with a softer substance.  The styles that are allowed to be used in games include styles that protect areas of the mouth only, styles that protect the jaw, and styles that protect the nose and eyes, in addition to several different combinations of these protected areas.

There are also two major types of padding that are used in modern football helmets, air pads and foam pads.  By far, the air pads tend to absorb shocks better and are capable of taking and recovering from shocks more quickly, helping the player's head to stay safer.  The foams pads can still absorb a certain amount of shock, but the air pads do offer more protection.

Vintage football helmet offered little protection from head injuries during a game.	The modern-day football helmet protects the face and is made of hard plastic, as opposed to leather.