“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
– Cesare Pavisi

You’ll see the above quote hanging on the walls of a number of memory care facilities, as the long and struggle-filled days end up wearing down both patient and provider. It’s a good reminder to those giving care that you’re still trying to create those moments of happiness and peace in the midst of someone losing everything, even eventually themselves. Spending that time helps you realize how precious that squishy grey cargo is. How much of what’s between your ears makes you… you. You see that your mind and your memory are some of the most precious somethings you’ll ever have. Something worth protecting.

Internalizing that idea has made pro football such a difficult watch over the last decade or so, as the real data behind what players had been doing to themselves started to come into focus. The blasting hits and stumbling outcomes you used to cheer for took on a very different light. Now every time you see a player get their “bell rung”, you wonder how many more of those they can withstand before they truly aren’t the same person any more.

Stories like those of Junior Seau, Mike Webster, Dave Duerson, and dozens more started to shine a light on the years of damage the sports had been wreaking, not only on professional players, but on all the kids who had spent years learning the sport. Once science starting to see just how widespread the issue could be, the wave of knowledge and public opinion overwhelmed everyone surrounding it into action. While the league took it’s time acknowledging the depth and severity of the problem, they finally came around to protecting their greatest asset. Once that ball started rolling, things have gotten a lot more proactive in the last few years.

Leading that charge with a new initiative, Colorado’s own Denver Broncos saw an opportunity to spread that love a little further, spearheading an idea that is quickly reverberating around the league. Last week, the Broncos announced a commitment to donating over 15,000 state-of-the-art helmets to every 5A and 6A high school player in the state of Colorado. The scale and scope of the idea is daunting, let alone the resources marshaled to actually bring it to fruition. But in partnership with Riddell, CHSAA, Children’s Hospital, and several others, the Walton Penner family has led an audacious notion into reality.

Over the next four years, each and every Colorado high school player will receive Riddell’s Axiom helmet, which not only utilizes a 3-D scan of each kid’s head, but also comes with tech inside the helmet to measure impacts and report them. Sideline systems and data tools will actually tell coaches about the severity and issues in how their players are playing for their own safety. In addition, all the schools participating will be subscribed to systems the Broncos are paying for to educate those coaching staffs on ways to better minimize these injuries.

And while Riddell is surely cutting the Broncos organization a better deal than one-off pricing, the $1,000 dollar price tag an Axiom helmet goes for to Joe Public shows you just how serious a financial commitment Denver’s pro football club has made to the youth of their home state. While it is admittedly an exceptional PR move, the depth and breadth the organization has gone to bring this to fruition show just how much this means to them from the top down, and as not some easy stunt. Every once in a while, a good deed is actually a great one, and deserves all the warm fuzzies it’s getting. The team’s All In, All Covered initiative has deserved even more spotlight than it has already received.

The stats for a parent with a kid who wants to play football are daunting. Only eight out of every 10,000 kids who play high school football make it to the pros, with many not even getting to play the game in college. While there is a ton of value in learning teamwork and shared goals, that can be achieved in dozens of other ways in high school, including sports that don’t require helmets and pads. Over 4 million kids of that age suffer sports injuries so meaningful as to need a hospital visit every year, and football (and soccer) are sports at the top of that list of data. You can understand the reticence of parents to send their kid into a sport they might not get the same kid back out of.

Football is still America’s most popular sport, and one that deserves to keep that positive revenue going as it finds ways to better protect its players. Some rather exceptional folks even recognize the value in protecting the players who might just eventually make to the pros someday (and even all the kids who won’t). While no one is saying the All In, All Covered initiative will wholly eliminate head injuries from Colorado High School football, it should damned sure lessen them. It will make those who are joyously bound and determined to get out there and do it a little bit safer. Maybe a lot safer.

It only makes sense that if these kids are going out there to make those moments to remember, we give them every opportunity to make sure they can actually do so. Kudos, Denver Broncos. A memorable move.