--- title: Wearing a Weapon: The Football Helmet's Dangerous Evolution | TIME description: The history of how helmets arrived on the football field canonical: https://time.com/video/ArcR8sPL/ og:title: Wearing a Weapon: The Football Helmet's Dangerous Evolution og:description: The history of how helmets arrived on the football field og:url: https://time.com/video/ArcR8sPL/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ArcR8sPL/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Wearing a Weapon: The Football Helmet's Dangerous Evolution twitter:description: The history of how helmets arrived on the football field twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ArcR8sPL/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # Wearing a Weapon: The Football Helmet's Dangerous Evolution > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Wearing a Weapon: The Football Helmet's Dangerous Evolution [Watch (HLS stream): Wearing a Weapon: The Football Helmet's Dangerous Evolution](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ArcR8sPL.m3u8) (2:19)  _Published 2015-01-28. The history of how helmets arrived on the football field_ --- Jul 27, 2023 5:49 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Cookie Ball Football Helmets](/video/3UHizlfU/) ### Cookie Ball Football Helmets [Researchers: Microwave Helmet Senses Strokes](/video/6HI0fFWI/) ### Researchers: Microwave Helmet Senses Strokes [A Skeleton Athlete's Skull-Faced Helmet](/video/wFR0v8LM/) ### A Skeleton Athlete's Skull-Faced Helmet --- ## Transcript [ MUSIC ] We're in the midst of this concussion epidemic. How did we get here? [ MUSIC ] We have to look at the history of the helmet itself. Helmets, you know, if we think of the first helmet, you think of the leather head, or a helmet that doesn't have the facemask. And when Teddy Roosevelt was President ,. There was a year where 18 men died playing football. And the reason why they died is skull fractures. And so Teddy Roosevelt, who loved football, he said this is not gonna be good. So he got together all the teams that were around then, you know, Yale, Harvard, Rutgers. He said look, guys. We have to put some rules in place. And they put it together an institute to just kinda makes the game a little bit more safe. A couple years later they instituted the helmet, but it didn't have face mask. Now when we were studying football's history we saw that we got to this concussion epidemic around the 1950s. Because there's this gentlemen Otto Graham who was a quarterback, he had a huge gash on his face and his coach said look, were, I'm gonna lose this guy unless I protect his face. So his coach was Paul Brown and he made this. This plastic face mask when we put it on, onto the helmet. And soon, the face mask became a standard issue. Now, that doesn't seem like a big deal, it's a safety feature. But, it actually made the game more dangerous. And how did it do that? Well, it changed our behavior. Before, we used to tackle with our shoulders, we were afraid to break our noses and our jaws because we didn't have a face mask. Mask. But when the face mask was instituted. Well, then the helmet actually became weaponized. And we started tackling with our heads. So the helmet was never designed to mitigate concussions. It was designed to stop skull fractures. You can think of it as bubble wrap for the head. If you think of your head as an egg, your brain is the yolk. Your skull is the shell. The helmet is sort of bubble wrap on top of that. Prevents the shell from breaking, but it doesn't do anything to stop your yolk, or your brain from sloshing around. And that's what gives rise to a concussion. So, a lot of people say the concussion epidemic started in the 90s but we would say. That, that trend started in the 50s when the face mask was instituted. [ MUSIC ] ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Wearing a Weapon: The Football Helmet's Dangerous Evolution","description":"The history of how helmets arrived on the football field","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/ArcR8sPL/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-01-28T20:10:52.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ArcR8sPL.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/ArcR8sPL/","duration":"PT2M19S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/ArcR8sPL/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```