Scorecard

Zebras are your neighbors. Be gentle with them.

SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE

Sooner or later something will have to be done about football helmets, and if Dr. Don Cooper, team physician at Oklahoma State, has his way, it will be sooner. Helmets and shoulder pads are supposed to be protective armor for players, but Cooper argues persuasively that they have become offensive weapons and that they cause far too many injuries. For example, he says the rib injury the Pittsburgh Steelers' Franco Harris suffered against Baltimore—which kept him out of the AFC championship game with Oakland—was caused by the impact of a rock-hard helmet.

Cooper even suggests that the future of football is threatened by injuries caused by hard helmets. He cites a $4.5-million dollar judgment (now under appeal) against a football-helmet manufacturer in a suit brought in Florida and says two other sporting goods manufacturers have stopped making helmets because of lawsuits. He believes other manufacturers may follow the same route. "Without helmets," he says, "we'll have no football."

Cooper wants soft outer-shell helmets made mandatory; he also favors soft outer-shell shoulder pads. "We have soft thigh and hip pads, and there's no reason why we can't have soft helmets and shoulder pads, too." He says the chief opponents of soft helmets and pads are coaches. "Coaches think they need to hear the sound of hard helmets hitting together to make it sound like football," he says. "If they want to arm the players, they might as well issue helmets like the Germans wore in World War I, with spikes on them."

Cooper notes that some people say the soft helmets tend to stick and therefore cause neck injuries. "That's not true," Cooper says, "but even if it were, all that the manufacturers would have to do is coat the soft shell with Teflon, and it would slide just like hard helmets do."