In the News

The Detroit Lions and Kroger are proud to announce the 2020 Touchdown in Your Town recipients. These six high school football programs from around the state of Michigan were selected based on need, merit, a compelling narrative and projected impact. The 2020 program distributed a total of nearly $211,000 in resources, including Riddell SpeedFlex helmets, chocolate milk grants from the United Dairy Industry of Michigan and funding to support the needs of each school.

The start of the Suntree-Viera Youth Football League season can only mean one thing for Saturdays at Viera Regional Park. Things are about to really start hopping around here.

As the pandemic hit, women’s tackle football competition came to a screeching halt. The tough decisions under consideration by the NCAA and NFL about whether to play football are even more real for the women’s tackle football market, where the teams do not own stadiums and a great majority of revenue is based on events and fan attendance. Women’s sports content receives 3-5% of all sports coverage; traditional tackle football (not in lingerie) is almost a non-existent portion of that minimal representation. The WNFC, with the looming reality, that their 2020 season would be canceled, switched gears, and decided to do something about it.

Hey everyone — it’s Tuesday, and I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe. One of my favorite things about Uni Watch is that rarely does a single day go by when I don’t learn something (usually uni-related!). Paul is obviously a font (or, if you prefer, fount — it seems both are acceptable) of knowledge, and his daily imparts are a welcome diversion from life. And I hope you guys learn something when I write the ledes. But I also gain a ton of knowledge from reading the comments, and you guys are truly amazing in your sharing of various uniform minutia as well. It’s one of the reasons I frequently reach out to the readership to pen a piece here or there — I may know a lot about unis, but many of you do as well (and often things I do not), and there are some of you, Paul first and foremost, who have probably forgotten more about uniforms than I’ll ever know.

Starting a football program from scratch isn't an easy task. It's bound to take commitment and patience to reach a desired level of success.

In North Ridgeville, hundreds of employees inside Riddell are working to make sure athletes are protected while on the football field. The football helmet manufacturer shut down earlier this year for nearly six weeks due to the coronavirus.

Despite being in the middle of the novel coronavirus pandemic, Riddell is hiring upwards of 60 employees at 7501 Performance Lane in North Ridgeville. The company held a job fair July 11 for the community and encouraged applicants from the surrounding areas to fill out applications and to be treated to a lunch with hot dogs and popcorn.

As sports facilities start to reopen after the COVID-19 lockdown — evidenced by NASCAR racing resuming on May 16, 2020 and the announcement that the NBA season will continue on July 31 — it looks like professional sports and likely collegiate games will soon resume to some extent, albeit with social-distancing rules in place and spectatorship not quite what it once was. This prospect is welcome news for holding company BRG Sports, parent company of Riddell, which designs, develops, and markets innovative sports equipment, smart helmet technology, team apparel, and accessories.

New head coach Brandon Lyles is encouraged by the attitudes and work ethic exhibited by the Douglas football players who attended workouts during June, which was Lyles’ first month in charge of his alma mater’s program. “From when we first started it just seems like our numbers have grown,” Lyles said. “Then we kind of had a setback. Some of them had been exposed, or been around somebody [who tested positive for COVID-19], so they’ve been pulled away for 14 days. Trying to get those guys back will be huge.

When Chris Messano lined up as a Northern Michigan University Wildcats wide receiver in the early 2000s, he remembers the then-high tech way the school trained its player. The Division II football program had a coach who was responsible for cutting up VHS tape into offense- and defense-specific film and making copies to share.