The end of the leatherhead era. A new type of plastic leads to a new type of helmet and a new brand of football. This episode explores the beginnings of the plastic helmet, and how this harder helmet enables the emergence of a newer, harder brand of playing football. At the end of the 1930s, Chicago is a city of innovation. The Riddell company explores using a plastic called tenite to create helmets with superior protection. The football coach of the University of Chicago, Clark Shaughnessy, starts working with Chicago Bears owner/coach George Halas. Together they create all sorts of new things for the game of football still being used to this day and that got a little help from the plastic helmet. Their biggest key to success was their modernization of the T-Formation. Plus, we talk about the first official team to all wear plastic helmets and how it helped them have an unprecedentedly successful season in spite of their own coach saying it would be a bad year. Plastic helmets and the T-formation changed football forever, and this episode explores how it all began, and how it all got connected in the first place.
