How Gear Changed the Game

Just when sales of Riddell's innovative plastic football helmet were about to skyrocket in 1941, America entered the war. Variations of Riddell's helmet would be heading into combat as well. This episode explores the role of the football helmet in the victory of the US and their allies in World War 2. After the war, a handful of teams would start using this new, hard, plastic helmet. The advantage it gave would be felt almost immediately. This innovative helmet would give rise to new dynasties and would enable a new exercise that takes the football world by storm: the Oklahoma Drill. 
 
First we learn how paratrooper officers and even General George Patton saw potential in the football helmet. The patents of the Riddell company would be utilized for the war effort by outfitting various types of helmets. 
 
The rationing of WWII meant that the materials used to make plastic football helmets would not be available to the public. Meaning only one football team had access to plastic football helmets, West Point's Army Cadets football team. 
 
After the war, the football helmet ends up being acquired by football teams like Notre Dame, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Kentucky Wildcats, Army, Navy, and only a couple others. This enabled coaches like Frank Leahy, Jim Tatum, Bud Wilkinson, and Bear Bryant to employ strategies that push the physical limits of their players. 

The end of the leatherhead era. A new type of plastic leads to a new type of helmet and a new brand of football. This episode explores the beginnings of the plastic helmet, and how this harder helmet enables the emergence of a newer, harder brand of playing football. At the end of the 1930s, Chicago is a city of innovation. The Riddell company explores using a plastic called tenite to create helmets with superior protection. The football coach of the University of Chicago, Clark Shaughnessy, starts working with Chicago Bears owner/coach George Halas. Together they create all sorts of new things for the game of football still being used to this day and that got a little help from the plastic helmet. Their biggest key to success was their modernization of the T-Formation. Plus, we talk about the first official team to all wear plastic helmets and how it helped them have an unprecedentedly successful season in spite of their own coach saying it would be a bad year. Plastic helmets and the T-formation changed football forever, and this episode explores how it all began, and how it all got connected in the first place. 

Exploring how the role of the football helmet in the evolution of football. Starting with the context of needing helmets in the first place. The humble beginnings of football and how rule changes, a flying wedge, and the threat of "instant insanity" brought about the first models football head protection. 
 
It's sports history, stats, and sporting equipment knowledge all wrapped into one!

Introducing a sports docuseries exploring the role equipment plays in the change, evolution, and outcomes of the sports we love. This episode details what the series will be covering and expands on the concept of "How Gear Changed the Game". It's sports history, stats, science, technology, and fun all wrapped into one. Also in this episode, a primer that serves as the thesis for what the entire series is based upon. How every aspect of a sport plays off one another as the game evolves from one generation to the next, and the significant role gear innovation plays in that evolution.