How a 12-Ounce Layer of Foam Changed the NFL

But they soon recovered their archetypal large believer. That year, astatine a aesculapian league successful Destin, Flaorida, the Hansons met Jeffrey Guy, a doc for the University of South Carolina diversion department, who aboriginal looked astatine the caps’ investigating information and came distant impressed capable for the Gamecocks shot team—including aboriginal first-overall NFL prime Jadeveon Clowney—to commencement utilizing them successful their 2013 summertime practices. Naturally it wasn’t agelong earlier 1 of South Carolina’s biggest rivals, Clemson, had placed orders too.

“It truly was 1 squad giving it a shot, and it conscionable kept spreading,” Erin says.

“That’s the stupidest happening successful the world,” Lee says of another.

But they soon recovered their archetypal large believer. That year, astatine a aesculapian league successful Destin, Flaorida, the Hansons met Jeffrey Guy, a doc for the University of South Carolina diversion department, who aboriginal looked astatine the caps’ investigating information and came distant impressed capable for the Gamecocks shot team—including aboriginal first-overall NFL prime Jadeveon Clowney—to commencement utilizing them successful their 2013 summertime practices. Naturally it wasn’t agelong earlier 1 of South Carolina’s biggest rivals, Clemson, had placed orders too.

“It truly was 1 squad giving it a shot, and it conscionable kept spreading,” Erin says.

Along the way, the Hansons abandoned the POC Ventures sanction aft receiving a powerfully worded missive from the Swedish cycling and snowfall athletics helmet shaper POC, settling connected Guardian and a halo logo arsenic reflections of their spiritual faith. (They aboriginal switched the latter, too, to an angel’s wing.) Their content successful their concern ngo was soon rewarded successful April 2017, erstwhile the rechristened institution was anointed arsenic a victor of an NFL-sponsored probe contention for protective shot equipment, the HeadHealthTECH challenge, receiving $20,000 to money aboriginal biomechanical investigating for their Guardian Caps.

The Hansons were backmost successful the door.

Technically speaking, Erin and Lee ne'er saw their expansive prize. Rather, the wealth ended up being routed straight to Biokinetics, an Ottawa-based laboratory that partners with the NFL for helmet testing. The results were past analyzed by Biocore, a biomechanical engineering steadfast retired of Charlottesville, Virginia, that besides acts arsenic a league advisor for subordinate equipment, including helmets.

At the time, the lone exemplary of the Guardian Cap was the Guardian XT, a 7-ounce brushed ammunition past already fashionable with a increasing fistful of elite assemblage programs and hundreds of precocious schoolhouse teams nationwide. But the results didn’t measurement up nether laboratory conditions simulating the higher speeds and masses of nonrecreational shot hits. “We didn’t truly find that it had overmuch of an effect connected the NFL interaction environment,” says Ann Bailey Good, a elder technologist astatine Biocore.