Exhibit Guide
Image: Crusader Football players in the locker room, c. 1990s. St. Paul's High School Archive.
Looking at old rugby photos in the corridor of St. Paul's, today's Crusaders might be surprised by how little equipment the players have. Some light padding, a sweater, and...that's about it. Click through the tabs above to see how football equipment has developed over the decades as both knowledge of the human body and access to materials have improved.
Until the mid-1800s, very little was known about how the brain functioned and interacted with the body. Through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, medical experiments and case studies - many too gruesome to be described here - expanded upon our knowledge. Doctors knew that some former boxers became confused and moody, or "punch-drunk," a term describing what we would now call CTE. However, they had a limited understanding of why this happened.
In the late 1960s the field of neuroscience was established, and medical understanding of the brain started growing much more sophisticated. With this burgeoning field came the understanding that we should protect the brains of our athletes through improved helmets.
1800s
The earliest head protection available to footballers were leather head harnesses. Not all players wore them, and those who did were usually trying to prevent "cauliflower ear" rather than brain damage.
Left: University of Michigan sheet music, 1904, Smithsonian National Museum of American History.
Right: Reach brand Football Head Hardness, ca. 1890, Lelands
Early 1900s
These harnesses evolved into hardened leather helmets, typically with cotton padding. In this photograph, St. Paul's players are wearing a style of leather helmet known as the "iron cross." The leather has been painted, presumably in the school colours.
Left: St. Paul's Rugby Team, 1937, St. Paul's High School Archive
Right: Hardened leather football helmet, ca. 1940s, Smithsonian National Museum of American History
1940s-1950s
The earliest plastic helmets were created in 1939 by Riddel, and took off as new types of plastics were being developed and mass-produced after the Second World War. These early models sometimes shattered on impact, so many teams continued using leather helmets well into the 1950s. Once these early design flaws had been corrected, plastic helmets were certainly an improvement upon the old leather models. However, midcentury helmets were fairly minimal and generally didn't protect players' faces. In the above image, we can see that some Crusaders have added either a bar or a small, transparent plastic shield to their helmets as a rudimentary form of face protection.
Left: Crusaders Football Team, 1957, St. Paul's High School Archives
Right: Early plastic helmet, ca. 1949, Smithsonian National Museum of American History
1960s-1970s
In the 1960s, helmets began developing “cages” to protect the player’s face, beginning first with a single bar and then expanding to provide more substantial protection. Only four years after the previous photo, most Crusaders in this image have gone from a single bar to something much closer to a modern cage. A less visible change was the invention of foam, rather than cotton, padding.
Left: Crusaders Football Team, 1961, St. Paul's High School Archives
Right: Washington Redskins Helmet, ca. 1960s, Lelands
1980s-1990s
By the 1980s, football helmets looked much as they do today: substantial, fitted, and with a larger metal (rather than plastic) cage. One-bar masks had largely faded away.
Image: 1982 Crusaders. St. Paul's High School Archives.
2000-Present
It wasn't until the early 2000s that scientists came to truly understand the possible long-term repercussions of sports-related head injuries. As we learn more about how concussions happen, companies continue to work on new designs and methods of energy absorption to figure out how best to protect our players.
Cages have never been standardized in either material or design, as we can see by the variations in the image above. Players continue to choose based on their position and personal preference.
Image: Crusaders star player Alex Taylor runs from three Kelvin Clippers, 2014. St. Paul's High School Archives.
Early 1900s
Early padding, like early helmets, were made largely of leather and either cotton or wool padding. These shoulder pads were usually sewn directly into a player's jersey, though the familiar over-the-head style pads were already in limited use by 1910. While both styles did provide some limited protection, the materials were not ideal - early shoulder pads were absorbent and tended to soak up moisture, becoming smelly and weighing players down.
The St. Paul's players in this photo, from our first team in 1931, are likely wearing light leather padding.
Top: Shoulder pads ca. 1916. Smithsonian Museum of National History.
Bottom: 1931 St. Paul's College Rugby Team. St. Paul's High School Archive.
Mid-1900s
As with helmets, plastic padding became more common in the second half of the 20th century. Shoulder pads also expanded to protect a larger area of players' torsos. We can see in this 1955 team photo that the Crusaders are wearing significantly more padding than their 1930s counterparts.
Top: Spalding Johnny Unitas shoulder pads, ca. 1960s. Pristine Auction.
Bottom: 1955 Crusader Football Team. St. Paul's High School Archive.
Late 20th century
By the 1980s-90s, shoulder pads were huge! In addition to their practical use, oversized shoulder pads were seen as a way of making a player look larger and more intimidating. New synthetic materials made padding more breathable despite its increased bulk.
Left: Oakland Raiders shoulder pads, ca. 1980s. Heritage Auctions.
Right: Crusaders football players in 1983. St. Paul's High School Archive.
Today
In recent years, pads have become slimmed down somewhat to allow players to move more freely. Manufacturers also make shoulder pads in a variety of styles lending themselves best to different positions.
We can see in this championship photo that the 2019 Crusaders' shoulder pads are still bulky, but significantly less boxy.
Left: Modern-day Schutt All Purpose Shoulder Pads. Sports Unlimited.
Right: 2019 Crusaders after winning the Anavets bowl. St. Paul's High School Archive.
The gridiron football is an odd shape. It spirals when thrown, it bounces seemingly at random when it lands - was this all by design, to add interest to the game? Not so much, as it turns out!
1800s
The earliest games of football - well, rugby, really - were played with a round ball. By some accounts, the oval-shaped ball was an accident: early footballs were made from a pig's bladder, covered with leather and laced together. Pig's bladders, of course, are not perfectly round. Moreover, these early footballs were stiff and difficult to blow up, often resulting in games played with lopsided and partially deflated balls which looked more plum-shaped than perfectly round.
Left: 1800s Rugby Ball. Rugby School.
Right: Europeans playing rugby in Calcutta. Illustrated London News, 1875.
Early 1900s
Pig's bladders were replaced with rubber in the early 20th century allowing for a more predictable shape and size, but by then the oval shape had become standard. In the above image, we can see how the fatter oval-shaped balls of this period were more awkward to carry and run with than modern footballs.
Left: First Rugby Cup Ball, 1897. Kirklees Museum and Galleries.
Right: Constantin Henriquez and teammates, ca. 1900. World Rugby Museum.
Through an odd chain of events, however, one might attribute the elongated shape of today's football to American President Theodore Roosevelt. In 1905, at least 18 football players had died in the United States as a result of the game. Roosevelt's own son had been seriously injured while playing football. Concerned, he called several university athletic directors to a meeting at the White House where he asked them to make changes to reduce the sheer brutality of the game. The illustration above of soldiers playing football is surely satirical, but it does demonstrate the violence that people associated with the game.
Image: Winslow Homer, "Holiday in Camp - Soldiers Playing Football." Harper's Weekly, 1865. Via Smithsonian Art Museum.
Mid-1900s
As a result, teams began emphasizing the forward pass. A game that had once been largely about kicking and tackling now became more about running, throwing, and passing - all things that are easier to do with a narrower ball. As the rules of football developed in this direction, the shape of the ball continued to evolve and to become longer and narrower.
The precise shape and size of the football began the process of standardization in the 1930s, after the creation of the NFL. Some leagues toyed with white balls for increased visibility after dark, as we can see in the above image of the 1949 Crusaders; these became obsolete with better lighting.
Left: Football signed by the 1932 University of Michigan football team, including future American president Gerald Ford.
Right: 1949 St. Paul's College Football Team. St. Paul's High School Archive.
Today
Standards of size, shape, and even elements like colour and texture are now strictly observed, to the extent that the alleged deflation of footballs led to a full-blown NFL scandal known as "deflategate" in 2015. Although people often claim that CFL footballs are bigger than their American counterparts, this has not been true since the two leagues adopted the same size standards in 1986. The laces, of course, are no longer necessary, but have remained as a vestige of the earlier pig's bladder balls.
Image: Crusaders game, 2018. St. Paul's High School Archives.