Football Musings: Safer Football Helmets, Other Michigan Sports Notes

If you follow this blog, you know I have a big concern for concussions, whether it's Troy Aikman, Sam McGuffie, or your son playing high school football, I don't believe there is enough information on the effects of concussions.

With that said, I am happy to report that Michigan Tech has done some pretty interesting research on football helmets and a way to make them safer. Here are some interesting excerpts from an article on the research that they are doing:

Now a team of inventive engineering students from Michigan Technological University has designed a new and promising protective layer for sports and motorcycle helmets. They used the human head itself as a model for a building a helmet lining that mimics the body’s own tricks for deflecting blows to the head. For example, the scalp—designed for redirecting oblique impacts, the skull—for absorbing normal impacts and the cerebral spinal fluid—for dampening the final impact on the brain.
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In their prototype, they simulate the skull with a light composite sandwich shell, the scalp with thin elastic discs and the spinal fluid with a soft padding system. The protective layer can be inserted into a helmet in addition to the regular helmet liner. It protects the head inside the helmet against both oblique and normal impacts.

“Normal helmets are designed for direct, straight-on impact,” explains Wayne Bell, a graduate student at Michigan Tech and helmet team member. “They aren’t designed to protect against rotational acceleration, even though “normal” impacts in football often involve rotation.”
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Michigan Tech’s Technology and Economic Development Office is working with the students to patent and license the new helmet technology. They hope to license their invention to a commercial sports equipment manufacturer, paving the way for a full-fledged athletic equipment research center at Michigan Tech.

In other sports notes:

• International Bowl - Who thought that Toronto in December was a good idea anyway?
  

• Mgoblog rips Rosenberg after these comments in a recent article from SI.com: REFUSE TO LOSE. It sounds like such a simple, inspirational phrase for a team -- and it can be. But it also describes the man. He's a scrapper, and will weigh all of his options besides losing.
  
  Calipari has done the most remarkable coaching job of this season, and nobody is close. Think about it: He convinced John Wall, Xavier Henry and DeMarcus Cousins to come to Memphis, inserted clauses into their letters of intent so they could go somewhere else if Calipari left, convinced Memphis to keep its Notice of Allegations from the NCAA quiet for three months, took the Kentucky job before anybody knew about that notice, then convinced Wall and Cousins to join him in Lexington. That is refusing to lose. This guy is un-believable. He has riped and caused an NCAA investigation at Michigan because of similar things. This guy must have a huge mouth, to be able to talk so easily out of both sides.
  

• Michigan Basketball Recruiting is looking good for Al Horford's brother - Jon Horford a 6'9," 185 pound forward. He was in Ann Arbor recently and talked to the Michigan coaches. It seems Michigan's remaining targets for next year include No. 1 Trey Ziegler, No. 2A Jon Horford and No. 2B Isaiah Sykes.