What Happened to Football’s Most Iconic Look?

the tint advisor the pacifier mouth guard rocking the worst chin strap in the history of mankind that offers no protection to follow a tradition these are just a few of the many accessories that have made it onto the football scene but the most iconic accessory to ever grace the gridiron without a doubt is the neck pad there have been many forms of neck pads that have graced football fields everywhere over the last 60 years all striking the same look of badassery and intimidation unless of course you're steve grogan now you tell me would you want to meet this guy coming off the edge have fun trying to make a tackle when a dude literally nicknamed anvil head is coming to crush you at full speed there were always significant players across the nfl and college alike who possessed some form of neck pad in one shape or another and football kids all across america grew up attempting to emulate the look however despite the significant impact that this piece of equipment had on the game of football it is becoming more and more rare to see they have become so unpopular that by 2014 mcdavid the distributor of cowboy callers discontinued the product so what happened how did football's once greatest accessory become obsolete now before looking into all that this video is sponsored by geek seeky is a company that i've been working with for a long time and they gather tickets from all across the web and put them into one area making buying simple they have everything from football baseball basketball concerts festivals or more and with so many amazing concerts and festivals happening right now you're not going to want to miss out i'm talking tyler the creator motley crew kendrick lamar rage against the machine and so much more sigi rates every ticket from 0 to 10 to make sure that you're getting a good deal with green meaning good and red meaning bad and for first time buyers use code kto at checkout for 20 off your first purchase make sure to click the link in the description to download the app the first evidence of neck pads that i could find came in the form of the foam neck roll in 1960. the raiders seemed like the first nfl team to embrace this piece of equipment which was most famously worn by jim otto he later covered in his autobiography why he wore the neck roll saying that he suffered from a chronic neck injury throughout his whole playing career and he began using the neck roll to provide some cushion for when his head would go backwards the same kind of thing happened a few years later with chief's middle linebacker willie lanier after suffering a serious head injury that resulted in near death lanier put an emphasis on changing his tackling technique while also having the athletic trainers fasten him an extra pad on his helmet as well as a neck roll he supposedly never had another concussion the rest of his career from there the nfl would slowly see a rise in foam neck rolls throughout the 70s and 80s made famous by intimidators such as jack lambert eric dickerson howie long and bo jackson steve grogan's neck roll was absolutely ridiculous that thing was thick and then by the late 80s another way of wearing the neck pad appeared to the raider 47-yard line leaving bodies in his way [Applause] christian okoye a 260 pound running back was the first to popularize this new look taking the uniform and placing it over the pad creating this iconic style many of the younger guys who had been rocking the previous neckroll look to this point followed suit and we saw this become a popular style over time then roughly around the same time period the cowboy collar was invented by oklahoma state's doctor fair it was supposedly superior and safer than the original neck roll the cowboy collar was first worn by cowboys fullback daryl johnston who had previously worn a neck roll and this is how the piece of equipment got its name after this invention the classic foam pad started fading out and the cowboy collar became the most popular neck pad of the next generation now even though the cowboy caller did take over the most epic of all neck pads comes from this next guy he is uh he's paying his dude [Music] mitchell bryce tells garrett just down it man and soyanovic i think he's got a cramp in his leg did he get hit well you better look around that's that's a bad shot there yeah that's how you get a cramp in your leg yeah that's wrapping your body alex gordon is the guy who hit him at first glance it looked like uh like a perfectly legal block and now you've got some of the dolphins cox and turner and cox that is cincinnati that dolphins player in the middle right there is brian cox he was a rookie at the time coming out of florida where he had sported a neck pad that got the nickname the lazy boy and over the course of his nfl career cox would sport multiple different neck pads often color coordinating them with whatever team he was on that scene where he went over to the bengals sideline to defend his teammate was epic because he was wearing the most ridiculously large neck pad way bigger than any that i've seen it looks like a flotation device and then he was joined by his neck pad army this image right here has to be peak neck pad era i don't know if you could find another photo like this overall brian cox in my opinion is the king of neck pads but despite how popular this piece of equipment had become it began to slowly fade away to the point where distributors were discontinuing their products and you rarely see players sporting them today this happened because of three reasons reason number one in 2003 a study published in the national library of medicine examined the effectiveness of three different types of neck rolls the cowboy collar the a-force neck collar and the classic foam neck roll through a multitude of different tests the research concluded that quote they've never been shown to be effective in a lab they seem to be able to control the head at least a little bit but no one has been able to show that on the football field ironically leighton banderash a current example of a player who's wearing a neck collar underwent neck surgery in 2019 the research at least shows that the cowboy caller may be able to reduce some neck injuries but its restrictions lead us to reason number two the game and equipment have changed when neck pads entered football the game was heavily based on the run the equipment players used was big and bulky and players were taught to use their head when tackling or attempting to run over a tackler so it made sense that team doctors and coaches would suggest a piece of equipment to protect a player's neck as much as they thought was possible but over time equipment has gotten smaller lighter and better fitting allowing players better mobility the neck pad ultimately hinders a player's full range of movement it had become a liability over any potential benefit this also includes the fact that the way tackling has been taught has changed to be safer and lastly reason number three neck pads are a fad howie long was revered by a previous generation of football fans being one of the most iconic players who sported a neck roll but his own son kyle had this to say quote it looks stupid i don't know what the purpose of it was kyle also went on to say this quote a lot of guys wanted to appear bigger nowadays people want to be compact faster different than how it started neck pads became fashion wear and a staple of a certain era of football of course like any time period these things have evolved and the image of today's nfl is different now neck pads still do exist but most players would admit that they are wearing them for the look more than anything even when you read reviews of neck pads online you will often see that the first pro that they list is based on the physical appearance that it gives the player all in all even though we rarely see this piece of equipment in today's game it's still cool when you do see it hopefully there will continue to be players who wear it to give us those nostalgic blasts from the past i mean at the end of the day when you were on the goal line and just need one yard to go who better to give it to than a fullback with a neck pad straight ahead second third effort touchdown up that's pretty awesome that's old-fashioned football right there folks [Music] you

Channel: KTO

Views: 936,921

Keywords: what happened, to, footballs, most, iconic, look, nfl, neckpads, neckrolls, cowboy collar, football collar, shoulder pads, shoulder rolls, old school football, bryan cox, howie long

Id: tG6yZgRZgXg

Length: 9min 52sec (592 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 30 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/ThermoNuclearPizza]

So as a current player, I can tell you that big pads are not just uncomfortable and shitty to wear, but dangerous.

I’m on the DL and when I was shopping the dude straight up wouldn’t sell me smaller pads because “it’d be on him” if I got hurt.

Well fast forward 6 months, and I’m trying to rip past an OL. He pushed on the bottom of my elbow and it went over my head. In small pads where I have full range, nothing would’ve happened. But since I was wearing those big, idiot, fuck-clobbering pads my arm didn’t lever at my shoulder, it levered against the pad, tearing it out of the socket and turning my bicep tendon into string cheese.

I think the guy at the shop was right. It was “on him”.

[u/FranklynTheTanklyn]

From a player who started playing when really big shoulderpads and necks rolls were in and ended when the small shoulderpad revolution happened… small shoulderpads were so much more comfortable and gave you so much range of motion.

[u/costopule]

Great video. I think the deep dive on neck rolls is cool. As always with KTO, the best part is when the end music starts to play. So cold it gives me chills.

[u/b4n_]

This guy sounds like the burger king foot lettuce guy

[u/[deleted]]

Weight.

Neck rolls and those kind of blow up neck thingees and elbow pads and hip pads all went away because players feel that they weigh too much and make them slower.

Same reason why jerseys are pretty much like basketball jerseys now, but also so opposing players can grab onto them easily.

[u/TimBrowneye81]

The Raiders uniforms haven't changed, so nothing happened to it