(Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

BY NATHAN BYRNE

ANCHOR CHRISTY LEWIS

Going retro is nothing new. Football teams and their fans regularly don those throwback football jerseys.

So, could leather helmets be the next to make a comeback?

If they do, one study suggests they’d be just as effective as modern helmets at protecting kids from concussions. Monica Robins, senior health correspondent at WKYC in Cleveland, says simulated collisions show a surprisingly level playing field between the two sets of headgear whose technology is split by a century. (Video source: Wheaton Archives)

“Those high-tech helmets are great for preventing skull fractures, but by rate of preventing concussion injuries in football, they’re not so great at preventing the more common injury.”

Lead researcher, Adam Bartsch, says helmet technology hasn’t advanced much in preventing concussions.

“That’s concerning for a long-term what we call an impact dosage accumulation. So, many, many years of hits over a career, season, might cause long-term damage.” (Video source: WKYC)

U.S. News and World Report cites the Cleveland Clinic study, which was published this week in the Journal of Neurosurgery-Spine. They say:

“Head and neck injuries among football players declined significantly after helmet standards and rule changes were introduced in the 1970s and 1980s, but concussion rates have continued to rise. Up to 40 percent of football players suffer a concussion each year, and more than half of them go unreported.”

Forbes contributor Bob Cook offers a more tongue-in-cheek analysis--starting with the headline:

“Your football-playing kids may as well be wearing leather helmets.”

“Basically, the researchers are saying what everyone else is saying about football helmets -- that they can prevent your skull from cracking, but they don’t do much to absorb the constant pounding that builds up and appears magically as a concussion the first time someone blacks out.”

No one’s calling for a return to leather helmets, but researchers hope their work helps helmet-makers improve their product.