Players’ Safety Costly Aspect for Programs : High schools: When the country’s leading football helmet maker said its products had a 10-year life span, schools faced major bills to buy news ones.

Principal John Myers was reviewing Ocean View High School’s operating budget last spring when football Coach Howard Isom came into his office.

“We’ve got a problem,” Isom said. “We need to buy football helmets.”

Ocean View was among thousands of schools in the United States thrown for a loss after Riddell, the leading manufacturer of football helmets, announced last year that its used and unused helmets had a life span of 10 years.

Riddell added that it wouldn’t be held liable for any injuries to players wearing its helmets that had been used longer than that.

Ocean View had replaced only a handful of helmets in the past 10 years. Although buying 30 new helmets would add $3,000 to the budget, Myers didn’t hesitate to give his approval.

“I didn’t want to take a chance,” he said. “I didn’t want to put a kid on the field without protection.”

Riddell, one of three helmet manufacturing companies in the United States, based its findings on wear and tear tests performed on older helmets by General Electric and Borg-Warner.

The studies indicated that the helmets’ use and reconditioning affected their life span. The study further revealed that the helmets’ stability can be questionable as early as six years.

The helmet shell starts to deteriorate at seven years, with a significant loss of protection at 10 years. Riddell helmets have a five-year warranty.

Riddell announced its testing and research last fall, and local distributors had warned most schools as early as three years ago that some of their older helmets might not be safe.

As a result, Orange County schools began replacing older helmets, said Bob Brown, whose Anaheim athletic equipment warehouse distributes and repairs them.

“We warned everyone that this was going to come about,” Brown said. “Riddell sent a letter to all the distributors about its standards, and that it was testing the helmets.”

Still, schools nationwide were unprepared to replace their helmets.

The Milwaukee school system, for example, had to spend more than $44,000 to replace helmets for its high schools. Fairfax County, Va., school administrators plan to spend $180,000 replacing helmets in the next three years.

“Schools shouldn’t be getting caught with their pants down, but some are,” said Don Gleisner, president of All American, which makes the Maxpro brand helmet. “Riddell really put schools around the country behind the eight ball.”

Bill Arnett, national sales manager for Riddell, said there are about 250,000 to 300,000 helmets older than 10 years in use nationwide. He said the testing showed that the players needed better protection than the 10-year-old helmets could offer.

Arnett said the announcement “caught a lot of school systems by surprise.”

“But it also surprised us that there were still so many old helmets in use,” he said. “Some of the schools that didn’t replace the helmets on a timely basis got caught in a financial bind.”

Ocean View was one such school. Myers estimates he’ll have to replace about 30 helmets a year for the next two years to keep up with Riddell’s policy.

“I didn’t like all this coming at once,” Myers said. “We’re probably going to have to buy more, but it’s something we have to do. We’ll just work it into our budget.”

Brown said he supplies every county high school with at least a few Riddell helmets, while other schools, such as El Toro, use the brand exclusively.

“Virtually all the schools here (Orange County) had been using some helmets that are 10 years old (or older),” Brown said. “They had to replace them.”

But this isn’t the first time schools nationwide have replaced large quantities of helmets.

In 1973, the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment developed a test standard for football helmets that was adopted by the state athletic associations and the helmet manufacturers. All helmets must meet committee’s standards, yet there are no guidelines specifying length of time for use of a helmet.

Most schools replaced their old helmets in 1973 or 1974 with new ones that met the national committee’s standards. Schools used those helmets for the next 10 or 11 years, relying on maintenance and reconditioning instead of replacing them.

But some schools saw a need for new helmets before Riddell’s policy was announced.

When John Johansen became El Toro’s athletic director four years ago, he began ordering 40 new helmets a year.

“I knew we had a helmet problem when I came here,” he said. “We had a lot of old helmets. We bought a whole bunch of them in (1973) when the standards came out, then we bought just enough to get by for the next 10 years or so.”

El Toro paid $4,000 for the 40 helmets it ordered each year. Johansen sought help from the school district to pay for future orders.

Last spring, the Saddleback School District--which includes El Toro, Laguna Hills and Mission Viejo high schools--began helping the schools pay for helmets.

“The letter the Riddell company sent out about the (10-year-old) helmets really helped me convince the school district that we needed help,” Johansen said.

The Garden Grove Unified School District started helping its seven high schools buy helmets three years ago, said Jim Griffis, director of administrative services.

The district is buying helmets for Garden Grove, Bolsa Grande, La Quinta, Los Amigos, Pacifica, Rancho Alamitos and Santiago.

“We foresaw the problem coming,” Griffis said. “It has been a big problem with all the schools, especially with the new policy.

“We started attacking what we thought was a serious problem. We set up a 10-year cycle that will assure every school that their helmets will be replaced before they’re 10 years old.”

Keeping players safe and costs down, hasn’t been easy. Brea-Olinda buys about 10 new helmets annually to spread out costs, said Athletic Director Steve Hiskey.

“We do it just to keep our head above water as far as the budget,” Hiskey said. “But with 10 helmets at $100 each, it could be someone’s athletic budget for a whole year.

“Then you look at the other side, it’s not a pretty sight if someone gets hurt. The way lawyers are today, if a kid gets hurt wearing a helmet that’s five years old, you won’t have a leg to stand on legally.”

The schools and helmet companies are aware of the risk of possible lawsuits when a football player is injured.

Yet the number of serious injuries and deaths on the football field have decreased in the last 20 years.

Since 1931, when statistics were first compiled, there has been at least one high school football fatality in the United States every year. Twenty-two years ago, 26 players died.

In 1987, there were seven deaths and 12 “catastrophic” injuries, which include serious head, neck and spinal column injuries.

The most recent football fatality in Orange County was in 1980, when Junha Cho, a 15-year-old player at Cerro Villa Junior High in Villa Park, died of head injuries sustained in a game.

“The number of fatalities (nationally) has leveled off,” said Dick Schindler, an assistant director in charge of football for the National Federation of State High School Assns. “It’s been in the four to six range the last few years.”

Four Louisiana high school players suffered severe spinal cord injuries during the 1989 football season. The state had reported only three in the preceding 10 years, according a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

The problem, the health agency suggested, could be the use of heavy helmets as weapons in tackling an opponent. All four of the injured Louisiana boys were defensive players, and the injuries left each player quadriplegic.

In two previous studies of spinal football injuries, more than half “were attributed to use of the top of the helmet as the initial point of contact,” the agency said. “At greatest risk . . . are players who tackle by flexing their necks and using the tops of their helmets to strike opponents.”

Schindler attributes the decrease in injuries to rule changes that outlaw dangerous contact such as spearing, and to improvements in safety equipment, such as shoulder pads and helmets.

“It all goes back to the early 1970s, with the rules that got rid of spearing and face blocking,” he said. “That has all been in place for 15 years. And at that time, they also made improvements in the helmet itself.”

Schindler recalled the 1950s and ‘60s, when the football helmet went through a metamorphosis.

“They made the outer shell harder,” Schindler said. “They added a face mask, then a better face mask. Then came the mouth piece and all of a sudden it seemed like the head was the best-protected part of the player.”

Riddell’s Arnett said his company is undergoing a similar situation with its helmet.

“The athlete must be protected,” he said. “Kids are much stronger and bigger than they were 18 years ago. The average weight of a football player in 1980 was 190 pounds; now it’s 230. In 1980, their average height was 5 feet 11, now it’s 6-3. We have to keep pace with the athletes.”