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" For the past couple of years it&amp;#039;s been hard to ignore: Football hurts football players. And not in the sore-knee, it&amp;#039;ll-take-a-little-longer-to-get-out-of-the-lounger-when-I&amp;#039;m-retired kind of way. More in the way of Jermichael Finley, who had one hit end his 2013 season\u2014and almost his ability to walk. Or worse, in the way of Junior Seau, whose chronic brain damage is widely suspected to have led to his suicide in 2012.   (Photo by Plamen Petkov) But there is hope. Last year was already big for the NFL in terms of safety. The league put independent neurologists on sidelines, banned high-risk tackles, and pledged more than $765 million to help retired players and fund medical exams and research. Helmet manufacturers are making improvements too, thanks in large part to Dr. Stefan Duma, head of Biomedical Engineering at Virginia Tech. Duma and his team developed a five-star rating system that subjects helmets to 120 various impacts, simulating the types of hits a player might take during a game. In 2011, when the first ratings were released, only one helmet received five stars. This year nine did. Here are four of the most promising helmets being used in the NFL and college this fall.    RAWLINGS NRG Tachyon It doesn&amp;#039;t matter how well a helmet is made if it doesn&amp;#039;t fit right. To achieve a custom fit in the past, many helmets had inflatable bladders built into the padding. But as you pumped them up, their flat surfaces became round, reducing the contact between the player and the padding, increasing pressure on a smaller portion of the skull. The Tachyon fixes that problem by reversing the direction of the bladder bulges\u2014against the helmet, not the skull..    SCHUTT Vengeance VTD It may be illegal to lead with the crown of your helmet, but the crown still takes a majority of hits. Knowing this, Schutt rethought the padding pattern on its helmets, adding a double layer of cushioning to the crown and reducing it in areas where it isn&amp;#039;t as crucial. The result is a helmet that weighs less yet still provides superior protection where it matters most.    XENITH Epic Along with resizing and repositioning pads to better mimic the shape of the skull, Xenith uses a system of air-filled shock absorbers that provide variable resistance based on the intensity of impact. Between the shock absorbers and the player&amp;#039;s head is a material called Poron XRD. It&amp;#039;s soft to the touch but hardens on impact, thanks to molecules that lock into place when subjected to force. Which means padding that used to be simply for comfort now provides protection too.    RIDDELL SpeedFlex The SpeedFlex is the first helmet not to have a fixed outer shell. Instead, a cantilever on the crown bends like a hinge upon impact (the face mask is similarly flexible), lengthening the duration of hits and lowering acceleration\u2014effectively dispersing energy through out the helmet instead of transferring it directly to a player&amp;#039;s head.    A Doctor On Your Head Last year Reebok released the CheckLight, a skullcap with built-in sensors that detect and report the severity of impacts. When a player takes a big hit, the CheckLight display that hangs out from under his helmet flashes yellow or red, depending on intensity. If it&amp;#039;s red, a coach knows to have the player checked out. If it&amp;#039;s yellow, well, he can probably walk it off. Until the sport can actually stop concussions, at least this way teams will have a better idea of when they happen. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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