Under the brightest of Friday night lights, a little history was made on December 19 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas. When Cedar Park took on Ennis for the 5A Conference, Division 2 championship, which Ennis won 38-35, it was more than a football game between Austin and Dallas-area schools.
A Pennsylvania-based company known as Unequal touted the matchup as the first time two opposing high schools would meet in a Texas State High School football championship game with supplemental protection — a product Unequal calls Gyro — inside their helmets.
The quarter-inch thick liner, which sells for $60, is made of a military grade composite — strengthened by Kevlar and Accelleron — which absorbs and disperses impact energy away from the head and body in a way that typical padding of equal weight and thickness cannot.
With growing concerns about traumatic head injuries in football, there are already coaches calling for this type of added protection to be mandated at all levels.
“I saw how effective the Kevlar products were for quarterback rib injuries, and running back shoulder injuries,” says former college and NFL coach June Jones, “and that triggered me to see if we could use it in thigh pads. The players were amazed at how good they felt after games. Finally, I wondered, ‘Why don’t we put it in our helmets?’ We did last year at SMU and it made a difference.”
Rob Vito, a Penn State business school professor who is president and founder of Unequal, says his company originally started with military contracts, until one day a United States Marine who was a student at Penn State told Vito, “You made a bullet proof vest that’s lighter, thinner and more flexible, and make soldiers safer. You should be able to dominate sports.”
https://www.si.com/edge/2014/12/22/unequal-gyro-helmet-liner-nfl-ncaaf-football-protection-gear#
