Football Archaeology

Share this post

Today's Tidbit... Feeling Heavy Headed

www.footballarchaeology.com

Discover more from Football Archaeology

Digging into gridiron history to examine how football's evolution shapes today's game.
Over 1,000 subscribers
Continue reading
Sign in
Tidbits

Today's Tidbit... Feeling Heavy Headed

Timothy P. Brown
Jan 4, 2023
1
Share this post

Today's Tidbit... Feeling Heavy Headed

www.footballarchaeology.com
Share

The advisability of wearing plastic helmets with face masks is not discussed much anymore, but it was a big topic from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. During that time, football players transitioned from suffering facial and dental to neck injuries, mainly because tacklers and blockers in more protective gear were coached to spear or stick their helmets into opposing players' sternums or ribs.

The number of neck injuries soon led to changes in tackling and blocking techniques, but not before trainers and other coaches developed methods for strengthening neck muscles.

Everyone who played in the era spent time performing isometric exercises pressing the side of their helmet against a teammate's knee, hoping to attain the thickest neck in the history of the human race. Others hung weights from canvas straps and performed neck lifts in at least four directions.

However, these seemingly well-considered exercises do not approach the silliness of the weighted helmet, first shown to the world at Oregon State before the 1968 season. Devised by assistant trainer Eddie Ferrell, the weighted helmet was a standard helmet with a hole drilled into the top, from which a one-inch post projected from the helmet.

('Gridders Work With New Helmets,' Corvallis Gazette-Times, July 31, 1968.)

The one-inch post fit most weights used in those pre-Olympic bar days, so placing a few five-pound weights atop your helmet before doing whatever exercises they performed were simple. Unfortunately, the available information does not tell us if players ran around the field heavy-headed or if they did controlled movements. Either way, they must have recognized they looked pretty silly.

('Weight For Football,' Cumberland News (MD), March 13, 1975.)

Subscribe for free and never miss a story. Regular readers, please consider a paid subscription or make a small donation by buying me a coffee.

Buy Me A Coffee

My Books on Amazon

1
Share this post

Today's Tidbit... Feeling Heavy Headed

www.footballarchaeology.com
Share
Previous
Next
Comments
Top
New
Community

No posts

Ready for more?

© 2023 Timothy P. Brown
Privacy ∙ Terms ∙ Collection notice
Start WritingGet the app
Substack is the home for great writing