Sports & Society Reading Group: Whose Helmet?: Reconceptualizing American Football’s Iconic Equipment

The football helmet is an icon. It’s the symbolic focal point, the identifying object, for millions of fans. But it’s also a flawed object, one often considered insufficient to protect the players it’s supposed to shield from harm. In that sense, the football helmet is also a symbol of everything that threatens to destroy the game itself.

In this meeting, Noah Cohan will share his research on the dissonance between how fans and players understand the football helmet. Unlike most other sports equipment–like the baseball glove or bicycle helmet–which is used by casual players and pros alike, the helmet is a distinguishing marker of organized football. Tossing a football in the yard and playing touch football in the park with friends are non-contact iterations of the game and thus do not require a plastic safety helmet. In almost all cases, at the point at which the sport is performed by men and boys for a public audience–whether in high school, college, or the pros–the tackle version of the game is played and the helmet is used.  This makes the helmet ubiquitous to audiences but not something most Americans have actually worn in playing the sport.

Cohan's findings built on a series of qualitative interviews conducted with two groups: helmet aficionados and former players (with varying levels of experience, from high school to the NFL). While players come to their particular views on football’s head gear from a perspective of utility, protection, and sometimes intimidation, helmet collectors–though many are also former players themselves–do so in a distinctive manner. The latter group’s obsession exemplifies the way in which masculinity and materiality have become intertwined in the game of football, such that the helmet functions as an intricately decorated avatar of manliness that allows for a stylized conception of self.

If you're interested in joining us, e-mail co-organizer Noah Cohan.