An excerpt from the New Yorker -
CAN TECHNOLOGY MAKE FOOTBALL SAFER?
A high school in Fort Lauderdale is using everything from state-of-the-art helmets to robots to prevent head injuries.
By Nicholas Schmidle
But Kivon went to St. Thomas primarily to play football. The school has produced more pro players than any other high school in the country. By the time Kivon enrolled, the St. Thomas Aquinas Raiders had won eight state championships and two national titles. Moreover, the school had embarked on a potentially radical experiment. The head football coach, Roger Harriott, had been instituting changes to make the game safer. He limited practices to ninety minutes, and got the school to acquire a pair of motorized human-size robots, wrapped in foam, which players could tackle, saving their teammates from unnecessary hits. Harriott hoped to put St. Thomas at the vanguard of football safety while remaining champions.
“Football is just a vehicle to make these kids better young men,” Harriott said. One day this fall, he told his team, “Ultimately, it’s for you to become a champion in life—a champion husband, a champion father, community leader, colleague.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/09/can-technology-make-football-safer
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