Photos courtesy of SAFR Sports
John Zeglinski is co-founder, president and CEO of SAFR Sports, a company dedicated to making the game of football safer by reducing the impact of helmet hits using helmet covers. Zeglinski is joined by co-founder Carlos Bradley, a fellow former Wake Forest University football player and current chairman of the board at SAFR Sports.
“When two hard shells hit, the energy goes to your brain,” Zeglinski says. “We don’t prevent concussions, we reduce force. We capture the energy before it gets to that hard shell of the helmet, and we use a spring mechanism that attaches to the helmet so it moves on contact and dissipates the force.”
According to Zeglinski, that design reduced concussive hits by 72% and sub-concussive hits by 47% in a lab environment. “We had accelerometer testing from Penn State, and biomechanical testing at Virginia Tech,” he says. “The next thing we needed was field testing or clinical testing.”
In coordination with Atrium Health Care, SAFR Sports outfitted five schools in a major metropolitan area of North Carolina full-time last season. “The schools that wore our product reduced their concussions by 48%,” Zelinski says. SAFR Sports helmet covers are game-day-ready and fully customizable with team colors, so the teams still looked the part.
For Bradley, safety is the most important part. “We know football is a dangerous sport. No product is going to totally stop concussions, but we want to make the game we love safer,” he says. “The problem in getting the product and information about concussions out there is that players have a gladiator mentality. ‘I can beat it.’ ‘I’m strong and I don’t want to wear anything.’ But we can make the game safer even when they don’t want to be safer, and we can reduce the risk of concussions and sub-concussive blows. If we can help you right now as a young 25-year-old player, then you’ll have your sense about you still at 35.”
Bradley also oversees the non-profit wing of SAFR Sports, the International Student-Athlete Academy.
“I donated to a local school in the area where I live,” Bradley says. “You can donate through ISAA, get a tax write-off and serve a local youth group, high school or college.”
Zeglinski agrees. “We want everybody to wear our product,” he says, “not just the people who can afford it.”
Those who donate through ISAA are known as Heroes. Zeglinski and Bradley explain that Heroes can be anyone — from parents to school alumni — who want to donate SAFR Sports helmet covers to a team that otherwise couldn’t afford them.
As a result of safety innovations, the co-founders hope football participation will increase at all levels of the sport. Both believe teamwork, leadership and other life lessons learned in football are irreplaceable, but a few roadblocks remains.
And SAFR Sports is not the only helmet cover company in the field. Guardian’s product made its first appearances in NFL games last season, and a practice model is in play at the high school level. Despite the shared goal of reducing concussive and sub-concussive blows, both companies are nonetheless facing headwinds from helmet manufacturers.
Zeglinski acknowledges that manufacturers are becoming more accepting of the idea that add-ons make the game safer, but there is still a long way to go. “Manufacturers’ revenue stream is not just selling helmets, it is also reconditioning helmets,” he says. “That isn’t just changing the inside, it is also painting the helmet. With our product, people save on painting the helmet, so we’re directly hitting the manufacturers’ bottom line.”
Despite these challenges, a safer future for the sport of football is here.
