Thad Ide, Riddell’s senior vice president of research and product development, joins Yahoo Finance to discuss the helmet maker's first new helmet in roughly seven years.

Video Transcript

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ADAM SHAPIRO: Football's come a long way since the days when players wore leather caps. Today it's all about protecting the players from concussion and one of the ways you do that is with new football helmets. Riddell is introducing the first new football helmet in about seven years. To talk about this, we invite into the stream Thad Ide, Riddell's senior vice president of research and product development, as well as our sports reporter and producer Josh Schafer. And Thad, it's good to have you here. This helmet that you all are bringing to market, I imagine it will bring some relief to a lot of parents who have high school students who like to play football. But this is a big issue when we talk about concussion. How does this helmet make a difference?

THAD IDE: Well, it's great to be here and thank you for having me. It really is exciting. It's an exciting time to be part of Riddell and part of football because we really do think we're on the verge of kind of the next big thing in football head protection. There's just a lot going on with this new Axiom football helmet.

JOSH SCHAFER: Yeah, and Thad, one of the big things that sticks out with it is kind of the visor that's included in it and the face mask and how the top of the face mask isn't there and the visor is sort of in the helmet. Can you explain what that does for protection? How that might enhance protection? And then I was also curious, with the protection side of it, if the visor is off, does that kind of make the protection a little bit less than it would be if the visor's on?

THAD IDE: Well, I'll take the second part of your question first. The answer to that is, no. The helmet is fully certified both with and without the visor. The visor is there for eye protection. You know, the change in the face guard, the addition of the visor, the changes that you see in the shell, with the addition of flex panels in the shell, are all about adding selective engineered flex points into the football helmet system to improve impact response and we think, then, better protect the young athletes.

JOSH SCHAFER: And there's a cool piece of technology with this, too, right? Where in the fitting system, I think it's about 280 points of the head can be scanned by an iPhone or any kind of smartphone, so people can scan it and then you get a Tru-Fit technology that gets the right fit for the helmet. How does that technology work? And is that the kind of technology that we could see somewhere beyond helmets? Is that something we could use to, I don't know, fit a suit or something? Is that futuristic technology that we might see in other spaces, too?

THAD IDE: Well, you might see it in other spaces, like you said, in fitting clothing or footwear. Those sorts of things. But there really is just so much new going on from the technology standpoint and in the new Axiom helmet. As you mentioned, it starts with scanning the athlete's head so you have an exact map of the surface of their head. From that, Riddell has a proprietary fitting algorithm that we put that data through to assemble the helmet that best fits the size and shape of their head, you know, filling the whole space inside of the helmet shell with energy managing material. We find that gives the best impact response and provides the best protection to any particular athlete.

EMILY MCCORMICK: Thad, this is Emily here. What's the experience like for athletes switching from existing helmets to this new product? Are there big differences in how this fits or feels that takes an adjustment period?

THAD IDE: Well, it may feel a little bit different just because the fit will be perfect to the player's head right out of the box. Prior helmets have had fitting devices like air fit systems or soft fitting foams or shims, sometimes, that are used to fine tune the fit of the helmet. And in this particular case, it's going to come out of the box with your name on the back of it, built for that player, and it should fit them perfectly every time right out of the box.

JOSH SCHAFER: And Thad, I wanted to ask you kind of a broader question about helmet safety and player safety regarding John Madden, who passed away last week. He was a big name, obviously, in the NFL for coaching and broadcasting. He was also a pretty big advocate for player safety after he was done coaching. I don't know if you guys ever got a chance to talk to him at Riddell about any of his player safety opinions, but just how do you think things have sort of changed because of people like John Madden over the last 10, 15 years? And how has the discussion evolved and what sort of role do you think he maybe played in that?

THAD IDE: Well, I think things have changed significantly with the way that football was played, you know, 20 years ago, 25 years ago, compared to how it's played now. The types of rules, the types of medical services that have been put into place. The equipment, of course, has changed and improved significantly in the past 20 years and will continue to. You know, there are smart technologies.

The Axiom helmet will come standard with InSite, which is an impact-sensing technology that Riddell developed and started to market a few years ago, but now it's going to come standard in the helmet. It'll allow coaches to use data, to use analytics to better protect their players, to reduce head impact exposure, keep their players healthier, and, ultimately, improve the performance of their programs.

JOSH SCHAFER: How do you think that technology is really going to change the game moving forward, maybe in the next-- as Axiom becomes more popular, maybe in the next five, 10 years? Do you think coaches are going to start pulling players from games if they're hitting with their head and are going to use that data to kind of, I don't know, change the game a little bit in that way?

THAD IDE: Oh, I think, you know, absolutely. I mean, the game is now based in large ways on data and analytics. And if you can gain a competitive advantage, say, by understanding the head impact load that your players are undergoing, to help keep them healthier, to understand what sort of drills you might want to run at what time during practice or when during the week, all of those things can play into building a better program and a more successful program.

ADAM SHAPIRO: Thad, I realize it's a different sport, but it sure sounds a little bit like moneyball. It's so cool. Thad Ide, Riddell's senior VP of research and product development, thank you very much. Congratulations on the helmet. Josh, good to see you.