Jeff Skeen has persuaded the powers that be to allow his company's protective headgear to be used during soccer games.
But his struggle with FIFA, the U.S. Soccer Federation, the NCAA and the National Federation of High Schools might seem like that of a team facing a penalty shot without a goalie compared with the task of getting scientists to accept his headgear.
FOR THE RECORD - In an article on soccer protective headgear in yesterday's editions, the Major Indoor Soccer League team that Carlos Farias plays for was reported incorrectly. Farias is a member of the Baltimore Blast.
Skeen is president of Full90 Sports Inc., a San Diego-based company that has developed a protective device designed to reduce the impact from head-to-head, head-to-ground and head-to-elbow type collisions by as much as 50 percent.
Right now, the Full90 - named for the 90-minute length of soccer games - is sold in retail stores in the San Diego area and on the Internet, but its visibility, and availability, should rise after the Women's World Cup, which begins Saturday.
Skeen, who said he expects about a dozen players - some of whom he has paid - to wear the headgear in the World Cup, said it is difficult to gain the soccer authorities' approval.
"They were against any form of head protection ... for soccer because they believed that the sight of a player wearing any form of head protection would infer to the average viewer that the sport was dangerous, which could frighten soccer moms from signing their kids up to play soccer," Skeen said.
Although he has gotten the soccer hierarchy on board, Skeen faces skepticism among concussion experts such as P. David Halstead of the University of Tennessee.
"It probably takes the sting out of the ball when you head it" and protects against minor impacts, said Halstead, director of the university's Sports Biomechanics Impact Research Laboratory. "But on the [impacts] that I believe cause the head injuries that are problematic in soccer, you might as well not have the thing on your head."
Halstead took issue with an assertion in a white paper on reducing head injuries, posted on Full90's Web site, that says, "It is undeniable that incidental head impacts resulting in injury occur in the competitive game of soccer. Now there is a proven product designed to reduce the risk of those head injuries without changing the game."
The paper cites studies done by the North Dakota State University Impact Biomechanics Laboratory in Fargo, N.D., which tested head-to-ball impacts, and Dynamic Research Inc. in Torrance, Calif., which tested head-to-head and similar collisions.
"It doesn't really tell me what `incidental contact' is," Halstead said of the report, which was written by the company using studies it paid for from the two biomechanics laboratories. "Let me tell you, that's a euphemism for `when you hit head-to-head, but not that hard.' "
By contrast, he said he is concerned with "accidental, very high-level collisions between heads and heads, and heads and knees, and heads and grounds, and heads and goalposts."
In his view, a device would require about an inch of "energy attenuating material" to significantly buffer head impacts.
In addition, he pointed out that one cause of brain injury - body movement that jostles the brain inside the skull - doesn't even involve a collision.
Skeen agreed "incidental head impact" may not have been ideal wording and might need to be changed, but said the company had sought "a common term used in soccer."
"By no means do we want to imply that we can prevent all foreseeable head injuries." But, he said, "You can't tell me that the people we watch all day long jumping up and heading a soccer ball and hitting heads, that this won't help them."
The Full90, which looks like the offspring of a wrestler's headgear and a headband, is made of high-density polyethylene foam. It is three-eighths of an inch thick and weighs 1.5 ounces, less than a baseball cap (2.6 ounces).
The headgear was developed by Skeen's company in 2002 after one of his daughter's teammates suffered a concussion in a high school soccer game.
Afterward, Skeen said, he and his partner in a helmet business decided to create something intended to prevent concussions in soccer. They each put up $3 million and began to develop the Full90. In the past month, Skeen said, they have raised $3 million more from investors.
He said his company has sold "just shy" of 60,000 Full90s - at $24.99 and $29.99 retail.
He pays a few professionals, including U.S. women's team member Joy Fawcett and Carlos Farias of the Major Indoor Soccer League's San Diego Sockers, to promote the Full90. Skeen declined to disclose their fees.
He also has a $10,000 deal with Anson Dorrance, who has won 17 national titles in 25 years as coach of the University of North Carolina women's team.
Dorrance said his fee goes into an endowment for the UNC program. He also said none of his players has yet worn a Full90 in a game because it takes awhile for the foam to mold to a good fit on the head.
Dorrance said the Full90 helps women overcome fears of heading the ball: "I'm convinced when they wear this product it protects them to an extent and makes heading less of an issue. So I'm supporting it for that reason."
But that reason could also be a problem, said Dr. Andrew Tucker, director of primary care sports medicine for the University of Maryland Medical Center. Players wearing headgear may play more boldly - the so-called "Superman Syndrome."
"I think it's a valid point," said Tucker, the Ravens' team physician, who speculated that "for individual players, it may change the way they go about the game."
Countered Skeen, who said he has suffered 11 concussions, including one from playing soccer: "That is exactly the same argument that the ski areas had against ski helmets ... that bicycle manufacturers had against bicycle helmets, that hockey had against hockey helmets."
