Dan Tilkin and KOIN 6 News Staff – PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — A professor at the University of Alabama Birmingham is on the brink of unveiling a new football helmet, with a completely new design.
"We changed everything," says Professor Dean Sicking.
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He tells KOIN 6 News his helmet is unlike anything being worn on the field today. Sicking says his new testing techniques and design will cut down on concussions. According to Sicking, the current safety standards for helmets are flawed.
"The standards are not designed to prevent and control or limit concussions. The standards were developed to prevent skull fractures. So the standards are doing exactly what they were designed to do, they just don't do much to reduce concussions."
In Sicking's lab, he attempts to simulate the impacts of football players smashing into each other. To do that, they use crash test dummies, wired with detectors to measure G-forces on player. It accounts for variables of speed, angle and weight. He says it's much different than traditional testing, where helmets are dropped onto immovable pads. A researcher turned that kind of testing into a rating system.
"He took a sow's ear and tried to make a silk purse out of it by developing the 5 star system. I'm not here to criticize what he did. It was a yeoman's effort to try to fix a very broken testing procedure, but I think we have the capability and need and obligation to go far beyond the current testing guidelines," says Sicking.
The right guy for the job
Dr. Sicking has a resume full of innovative work. His designs have reshaped guardrails and other roadside barriers throughout the country. After racecar driver Dale Earnhardt died in a crash at the Daytona 500, NASCAR asked the professor to design a safer racetrack. He created a wall that dissipates the deadly forces created by impact.
Much of his work is still secret
Will Sicking's past work be an indicator of the new football helmets? Possibly, but Sicking wouldn't say definitively.
"We changed everything, there's nothing similar to a current helmet in any way shape or form."
Sicking also wouldn't say what the new helmet will look like but he did reveal one clue.
"We're not talking about changing the shell, or changing any of the accouterments of the helmet. We're talking about changing liners."
The professor says his new helmet liner is in the final testing phase. He plans to unveil it early next year and thinks players will be wearing the new design next season.
"We think this helmet will make a significant difference."
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