Let's Talk About Air

So here we go again…

                  The fiasco that is the air-pressure scandal involving the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots just keeps getting wackier. Between Tom Brady appealing his suspension and bringing in a lawyer to his team, in Jeffrey Kessler, who loves nothing more than feeding Roger Goodell his lunch, to Patriots’ owner Robert Kraft taking (yet another) one for the proverbial NFL team of owners. I’ll explain more on these both, below. Understand that I do not speak on this as a Patriots fan, but merely a sports fan.

 I do feel the need to explain why I refuse to use the “word which shall not be spoken”. I have a lot of pet peeves (there’s actually a quite exhaustive list), one of which is adding “gate” to any perceived or actual scandal. Now, since the Watergate break-in, the grand-daddy of all modern scandals, occurred in 1972, and our news cycles have gotten shorter and shorter with the public internet going live in the 90s, this has become an almost Pavlovian response to any scandal. Monica-gate, Spy-Gate, Gamer-Gate, Doritos-Gate (I did not make that one up, click here). My big issue with this is an etymological one. Realize that any language, but the English language in particular, is a living, growing entity. As an example, and much to my despair, the word “literally” no longer means literally. It has evolved to include the hyperbolic use of the word as well. For instance, saying “My head literally exploded when I saw Malcolm Butler’s interception to seal the Super Bowl” is perfectly acceptable. I do not like this. Language is an important tool and one which should be used accurately describe an occurrence or event. There is nothing wrong with changing the way a language works, but my problem with that particular example is that there is already a word we have which describes this. That word is “figuratively”. There was no reason to change the meaning of literally other than laziness. Enough of that diatribe, back to the task at hand, people adding the suffix

“–gate” to a scandal. Is there a perception that the Watergate break-in, at The Watergate Hotel, had anything to do with water? Admittedly, there is a river which runs through Washington DC. Maybe that is the origin? Not so much. Once more for effect: it is called the Watergate Scandal, because the break-in occurred at The Watergate Hotel! Glad we got that out of the way.

To clarify my point about the Patriots and this most current scandal. The belief that they are the only team in the NFL which stretches the rulebook or looks for a competitive advantage is naïve thinking, at best. Our friends over at yourteamcheats.com have laid out a wonderful view of the nefarious acts of all NFL teams. I know what you are thinking…”But, Helmet Nation Blog Guy, just because everyone else does it does not make it okay.” That is true. However, in my view, the crime is not the big issue. The crime, as I see it, was perpetrated by the NFL. Their complete lack of concern with air pressure in footballs or the treatment of the same footballs during games cannot then be used to completely vilify an entire organization and one of the league’s most successful players. Do any of you know the story of Phar Lap? He was an Australian racehorse in the early 20^th century. Phar Lap was so successful that the horse racing powers-that-be in Australia, at the time, handicapped the horse repeatedly until he was carrying more than twice the weight of any other horse. Phar Lap continued to wipe the floor with any and all competition. It got to the point where the owners of the greatest Australian racehorse of all-time could no longer race in Australia. It would have killed him. Now, ironically, he came to the United States to race and died shortly after his first race under dubious circumstances. I’m not saying that the NFL is trying to kill Tom Brady. That is not my intention at all. I am merely pointing out the fact that success breeds jealousy. The NFL has built its current iteration on parity, and a team which has won 4 of the 6 Super Bowls that it has reached and has completely dominated both their division and conference over the last 15 years, destroys any semblance of said parity. Therefore, in the NFL’s mind, they must be stopped. Sally Jenkins, at the Washington Post, and Tom Curran, at CSNNE, have both written exemplary articles about this subject and they both handle it much better than I just did.

One note about the team penalties and my problem with Bob Kraft not continuing to fight for vindication. How many of you reading this understand what the actual crime was that occurred during the opening game of the 2007 season? The Patriots were caught videotaping and stealing signals from the Jets? The Pats were the only team filming opponents’ signals? Bill Belichick was only able to maintain his success by relying on the coaching genius of Eric Mangini? For a quick synopsis: the NFL sent out a memo in September of 2006, stating that teams could no longer videotape opposing teams from any location that was accessible, during the game, by team staff. So there you have it. They videotaped (LEGAL) from the wrong location (ILLEGAL). Taping was legal, just not from that location. So this all came down, the Patriots were the worst cheaters in the history of Sports according to most non-Patriots fans, and a record fine was levied. Bob Kraft, for the good of the league, paid the fine and accepted the punishment. The Patriots paid the fine for something the entire league was doing and took a huge PR hit in the process.

That brings us back around to air pressure. Bob Kraft just agreed to pay the fine for something that every QB in the league does. Not illegally deflating or inflating footballs, but for determining what the qualities will be for that player’s particular work instrument. Aaron Rodgers likes his footballs over-inflated. He said as much. This was such a huge concern that Walt Anderson didn’t even record the air pressure from the before the game, or even which gauge was used. This problem is not a problem and the NFL has stepped on their own toes…again.

- HN

HelmetNation Blogging Rebooted

It's a Start 

  Hello Everyone, 

                So I haven’t been very good at keeping up with this blog. One of my New Year’s resolutions was to be better about that. That being said…May is as good a time as any to start keeping a resolution from January. I want to give you an idea of what will be coming up in this space and what you will be able to expect. This is something that I am going to try and be better about, keeping this to at least one new post per week. Sometimes there will be more, if I have something to say, but I will make sure that we have new content each and every week.  

                I am a football fan, first and foremost. That is the reason that I started this company and one of the things that takes up the most time in my life. Second only to my family, my love of football can be said to define me. I played, I coach, I watch, I study. I am in the camp which believes that football is a microcosm of life itself. We strive to move forward, sometimes things don’t go our way, and sometimes they do. Through it all, if everything goes according to plan, the game (and life) becomes a thing of beauty. That might be overly simplified, but it helps me. Football gets into your soul and can affect every aspect of your life. That is not to say that it needs to take over. There are life lessons which may be gleaned to help in the other facets of your life, but it doesn't need to be everything. And to be completely honest, I should more categorize myself as a sports fan. From the time I was a little kid, if it was a sport I wanted something to do with it. I have played most of the main world sports at some level of competition or another. That includes hockey, baseball, rugby, soccer, lacrosse, cricket, rowing, etc. I will watch almost anything that is on and I can see the skill and effort impacting the athletes.  

We will spend time talking about random musings, things going on in the world that are sports related...or not. This may work itself into something else as we go. It's going to be an adventure, at the very least. Fair warning, I'm going to ramble a bit. I'm new to the whole writing thing, so I will be working on that skill as we go. The important things are that I get across my love of sports and that you are mildly entertained.  If we can accomplish that, then I am going to consider this a win.

Because this is set up for a business, we will also talk about what is going on in the world of Helmet Nation.  We will go over big happenings on the site and maybe share some recent successes that we, as a company, have had.  We will also be featuring new products and hopefully showing you an interesting way to reward and celebrate your family, your business or to show your devotion to your team.

I look forward to starting this journey with all of you and seeing this grow into something that is easier for me to do on a regular basis. - HN

Friday Morning Football: Football Variations - CFL

There are a number of people out there who only follow one kind of football. There are people who only watch the NFL or who only watch NCAA football. Then, even further, many of those fans don't even think that the Canadian version of football or the Arena version are real football.

Me? Well, I love it all. I am a fan of all versions of football and I love to play, coach, watch, keep up with, and collect stuff from all football leagues. So, I thought I might spend the next few blogs discussing what I like about each of the different levels and variations of football. I am doing this in no particular order so I am going to start with our neighbors to the North; the Canadian Football League (CFL). (www.cfl.ca)

In the CFL there are a number of obvious differences. Let's start with the field. It is 110 yards in length with the 55 yard line being midfield. The field is 65 yards in width and the end zones are 20 yards deep. In addition, the field goal posts are at the front of the end zone. In other words, it is a much larger field than a standard 11-man football field.

The larger size of the field is taken advantage of in Canadian football because they play with 12 players on the field for each team. Both the American and Canadian versions of the game require the same number of players at the line of scrimmage at the snap, so in the Canadian version the 12th player is a skill player on offense and a secondary/safety type player on defense.

The scoring in Canadian football is also different and while I am not going to go into all the ways you can score, I will mention that touchdowns are still 6pts with a PAT it becomes 7. However, in Canadian football you can still score a single point on certain types of plays and the kicking game is far more involved in the scoring and the game in general. One other thing is that in the Canadian game you have 3 downs to advance 10 yards while in the American game it is 4 downs.

The history of how the Canadian game developed and the changes made in the American game derived from a home and home set of games between McGill University and Harvard in 1874 is fascinating. Each version of the game was significantly impacted by this interesting 2 game series where it was decided to play half of each game with the other teams rules.

There are many other subtle and not so subtle differences between the games, but I enjoy the larger field and more players on the field. You would think that with the larger field and more space to work with Canadian games would be overly high scoring, however, the lack of a 4th down is definitely an equalizer in that regard. You can catch CFL football on tv on occasion here in the US. When I was in college, I played at the University of Puget Sound and we played a Canadian college in Simon Fraser University which was in British Columbia. The fascinating thing is that Simon Fraser would play 11-man American football against us (and a few other US universities) and the next week play 12-man Canadian football against other Canadian universities the next week. There is so much more that could be discussed about Canadian football but I simply don't have the time. If you haven't ever watched a game, I suggest you check it out, eh. You can see their website here: www.cfl.ca

Friday Morning Football: Tradition vs Change in College Football

There is a huge discussion that constantly rages through football and makes for some great water cooler debate. It is the idea of Tradition vs Change. While Tradition vs Change is a debate in many areas of the game, for the sake of this blog, I am going to direct the majority of my comments towards uniforms and helmets. There is a significant segment of football fans, coaches, etc who prefer the simpler uniforms of tradition laden schools such as Alabama, Penn State, Michigan, Nebraska, and USC for example. Often the demographic for those with this preference is 40's and older males who grew up watching those uniforms when only a handful of college football games were on each Saturday.



Then, there is the younger generation who has seen the coverage of football grow to epic proportions and like how daring Oregon has been and enjoys seeing Arizona State or Oklahoma State or the mighty Wyoming Cowboys in a different colored/design helmet depending on the weekend.


For me, I fall in between both groups. As an unabashed Nebraska fan, I love the traditional look of the simple N on the white helmet. One thing to keep in mind is that even this traditional helmet has gone through a number of look changes. At one point the Cornhuskers wore red helmet shells. On the white helmets they started with player numbers, moved to an offset NU on the helmet before finally just going with the N. The facemasks went from gray to red. So even traditional looks have had small changes over time.

I prefer my Huskers stay with the traditional white helmet, red facemask, red stripe and red N for 10 or so of their 12 games each season. However, for the other 1 or 2 games each year, I have no issues with them sporting an alternate look. And as for that alternate look, go as crazy as you want to! Put them in black helmets or red helmets with alternate logos. One helmet design recently had the helmet look like corn! I say, if you are going to go alternate, go big or don't go at all.

Unlike some who have hated how Oregon changes it's look more often than a chameleon, I have been okay with it. Some uniforms are going to suck when you do that. But some are going to be awesome! It is the risk you take. As for Oregon, it feels as if their tradition is actually just to change. If they stopped and wore just one home uniform combo and one away uniform combo at this point, we would have a lot less to talk about at the water cooler!

In a later blog, I will discuss the helmet and uniforms of the NFL. But for now, where you stand in the debate? Who is your school and what do you think of their uniforms and what they have done with it over the years?

Friday Morning Football: The Calm before the Storm

I have been fortunate enough to have been either a player or coach for over 20 years. To this day one of my favorite parts of being involved in the game is pregame. That last hour or so before kickoff. As a player, you are dealing with those butterflies; trying to focus and work yourself into a frenzy so that when you hit the field you are in that zone where you aren't having to think but rather just hitting and playing. A players pregame ritual is sacred and very individual. Some guys prefer it quiet and just spend time visualizing themselves making great plays. Many players prefer to have their headphones in listening to music that gets them going. In my day that included a lot of AC/DC or Guns N Roses. Again, what you listen to is a very personal choice. One of my favorites lately is 'Til I Collapse by Eminem. Even as a coach, I have my own pregame ritual. I try to eat the same meal, wear certain things, do certain responsibilities in a certain order because the fact of the matter is, it all matters. If a player or coach feels more confident because he does things a certain way or wears certain things, then they will most likely play or coach more confidently.

Then it is time to get out for warm-ups. Each team has their own methods for warm-ups. The idea is to get the body warmed up and ready to go along with giving the team time to focus on details and build their intensity. To me, these are the moments. Out on the field on a Friday Night under the lights there is nothing better. You can feel the electricity in the air. The energy carried by each player and coach and the restraint and focus to maintain that energy to the point you get to unleash it on the opponent.

For us, where I coach, we come out to do warm-ups and then go back into the lockerroom for one last review of details and then comes the pregame speech. Our head coach might be the best I have ever heard during a pregame speech. It has been more than once where I have left the lockerroom fired up enough to run through a wall myself after one of his speeches.

Then, with all that energy and intensity, just about every team enters the stadium (mostly at home games) with a last ritual. At Clemson, they enter through the crowd and touch a rock; at Nebraska they have the Tunnel Walk which very much involves the crowd; at Notre Dame they tap a sign that says, "Play Like a Champion Today". (Despite the fact I hate Notre Dame football, I love that sign) At the high school where I coach, we tap a sign above the door that says, "48 minutes to play, a lifetime to remember".


And then its on.


 

Friday Morning Football: A New Beginning

It has been quite a while since I have posted on my blog. I always had this vision of the blog here at HelmetNation being a cutting edge commentary on football and in particular football helmets as well as a place we showed the helmets we have made for youth leagues, high schools, colleges, businesses, semi-pro and arena/indoor teams. However, the thought that occurred to me this week as I was walking is that perhaps all I really need to do is post my thoughts on the game I love. So, that is what I intend to do.

I am not sure what it was that caused me to first love football. It certainly wasn't something I observed as I was the oldest child and my father isn't even remotely athletic or really interested in athletics. I suppose as a child I might have just loved how "cool" the players looked in their uniforms. But I know what it is about this game that I love now. To me all sports or athletic contests are commendable and anytime someone has a passion for anything from cycling to ice skating I think it is great. However, I feel no other sport challenges the athlete like football. All of the values of hard work, overcoming adversity, perseverance, mental toughness, compassion, teamwork, selflessness, and just about any other superlative you can come up with is taught in football when it is taught right.

"It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great."

- Tom Hanks, A League of Their Own

While the quote was used in a movie about women's baseball, that sums up football in three short sentences. The game isn't for everyone and there are certainly risks. But it is the "hard" in football that makes it the greatest game.

I have been fortunate to have been involved in football as either a player or a coach for most of my life. I don't have much natural athletic ability so I have always felt I was a better coach than I was a player. But either way, I love the game. So, it is here where I will explore both the positive and negative as I discuss the game.

Fantasy Football mini-helmets 2

We are continuing to take a look at the Fantasy football helmets that were ordered over the summer. The two we have here were also ordered by Charlie in Georgia. I really liked the uniqueness of these two helmets and they were a lot of fun to do.

The first team we have here is called Roid Rage. We did these on a Dallas blue Schutt DNA shell with a navy blue facemask. We have a very muscular football player toting a football and a needle. We did Carolina Panther style tapered stripes. They were a light blue outlined in gray.





The next helmet we did was a team called Mindcryme. We did the helmet on a silver Schutt DNA shell with a black facemask; however, it is shown here on an older Bike mini-helmet shell with black facemask. There were three black 1/4" stripes on this helmet.





Again, we had a lot of fun doing these helmets and if you would like your Fantasy football team helmet made or if you have other football or baseball mini-helmet needs, please give us a call at (800) 576-9706! HelmetNation: When ordinary won't do!

Fantasy Football mini-helmets

As I have mentioned before, we get a lot of requests for fantasy football mini-helmets. Unfortunately, because we are producing only one helmet, it can be a bit expensive. However, for those souls who truly want to see their team's helmet, we really enjoy making their helmets. Fantasy helmets are often creative and a lot of fun. At HelmetNation, we have had two repeat fantasy football customers. We are going to take a look at some of the helmets we have done for these two customers in the next several posts.

Our first customer is Charlie who is from Georgia. Charlie is part of a strong Fantasy Football league and himself and the other members of his league have ordered their helmets. We have done a total of 8 different Fantasy helmets for Charlie.

Here we see two of the helmets we did for Charlie this summer. This team is called the Abyss Stars. We used a white Schutt DNA mini-helmet shell and gray facemask. The stripe has stars in it and the side logo is a slightly modified pentagon with stars above it.





The second team we did at this point was called the Aslans. Of course, some of you may remember that name from the popular books and movie called, "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" in which one of the characters is a Lion called Aslans. Again, we used a Schutt DNA shell, this time in columbia blue. The facemask was gray. There are 2 navy 1/4" stripes separated by a half inch.





If you want to get your Fantasy football team made into a mini-helmet, please contact us at (800) 576-9706.

Wedding Helmets

Some of the coolest helmets we worked on last year ended up being the first helmets of 2010. I was commissioned by a customer to do helmets to commemorate his wedding which he then gave to his groomsman. We worked together on the design. We started with a maroon Schutt DNA shell and a black facemask. The right side logo on the helmets were a black/gray/white penguin with a top hat logo he found and liked. The left side logo was the bride and grooms stylized cursive name in black with a white outline. Each helmet had a 1/2" black stripe flanked by a 1/4" white stripe with a little space letting the maroon show through between the stripes. The front bumper had each groomsman's cursive last name in black text on a white background. The rear bumper was the date of their wedding in black cursive text on a white background. These were really a lot of fun to do!





Congrats to the happy couple! We were proud to be a small part of your big day!

Wisconsin Fantasy Football League Helmets

We often get inquiries about doing Fantasy football helmets. However, usually, the inquiries are about doing one helmet for a guy's individual team that he has in a league every year. We really enjoy doing those helmets. However, this request was for a league logo helmet. We did these for the Wisconsin Fantasy Football League based in Fond du lac, WI. This was a fun helmet to put together. It was loosely based on the Miami Dolphins helmet. We used a white Schutt DNA shell with an orange facemask. The helmet features their league logo, which is a cow on a lime green cutout of the state of Wisconsin and the stylized letters WFFL over the top. They had three 1/2" stripes that were lime green - orange - lime green with a small white space in between the stripes. The front bumper was WFFL in orange text on a white background. They did not have a rear bumper.




If you run or are part of a Fantasy Football league, we would love to help you do your helmets. If you have a Fantasy Football team and want to get your teams helmet done, give us a call @ 800-576-9706. If you call now we can get them done in plenty of time to have for your Fantasy draft!