Working for a very good cause
Milwaukee-area men trying to make NFL safer
Russ Rymut had just five minutes to make his pitch, so he solemnly pointed out that a handful of college and high school football players died on the field a few years ago from entirely preventable conditions: Heat stroke, dehydration and water-toxicity from overhydration. And then he turned to the power point presentation with his invention that he thinks could help.
He had the attention of Jeff Miller, the NFL Executive Vice President of Health and Safety Initiatives, and the rest of the audience at the 1st and Future event in Atlanta over Super Bowl weekend.
It was an intriguing moment highlighted by the fact that these were two men from the Milwaukee area, who are banking on technological advances to
make the NFL, and all other sports, safer.
Rymut is a Hartland-based developer who created B60 with his company, Nobo. The monitoring device measures hydration levels, and while it could be used to improve an athlete’s performance, it was highlighted at the NFL’s event, 1st and Future, for its potential to prevent heat stroke tragedies.
Miller, a 1988 graduate of Nicolet High School, has been with the NFL for nine years, the last four of them as safety director.
Since Rymut’s B60 was profiled at JSOnline.com nearly three years ago, Nobo has been a part of two startup accelerator programs, gener8tor's gBeta in Milwaukee and Health Wildcatters in Dallas, two companies that try to solve problems in healthcare.
After analyzing more than 100 applicants, the NFL selected Rymut as one of five finalists and flew him to Atlanta for the 1st and Future competition, where he matched up with other inventors in the Innovations to Advance Athlete Health and Safety Competition category.
Rymut’s NOBO product didn’t win – the $50,000 prize went to TopSpin's training device for strengthening the neck to help reduce concussion risk – but Miller was impressed, especially after his experience of working with the Korey Stringer Institute.
“I think there’s a market for it,” said Miller. “The scientific expertise that Russ and his team bring to it are substantial and impressive. And I hope that by inviting them to the 1st and Future event, it will raise their profile in the venture capital community and they’ll get increased investments in the product
Judges, from left to right: Shawn Springs, CEO, Windpact; Allison Sabia, general manager, Digital, Arrow Electronics; Victor Gao, chief marketing officer, Arrow Electronics; Sarath Degala, vice president, BIP Capital; Leigh Ann Curl, head orthopedic surgeon, Baltimore Ravens; Geoff Collins, coach, Georgia Tech, listen to Russ Rymut pitch his hydration sensor at 1st and Future. 1ST AND FUTURE, NFL
development path. There’s a lot of reason to be optimistic about their product.”
The NFL created 1st and Future in 2016, around the same time as Commissioner Roger Goodell launched Play Smart. Play Safe.
Miller was plucked from Washington D.C., where he had been the NFL’s state and federal legislative and regulatory initiatives expert, to oversee the player health and safety programs.
If you’ve never heard of 1st and Future, it’s an open invitation to entrepreneurs and inventors to present their technology and products to advance safety and performance.
Nobo had good competition among the finalists at the Ferst Center for the Arts on the campus of Georgia Tech.
❚ Solius uses nano-spectrums of light to stimulate the production of hormones and peptides to combat vitamin D deficiency and reduce injuries and speed recovery.
❚ TackleBar is worn around the core of a player as a way to teach better tackling techniques and fundamentals.
❚ TendoNova’s Ocelot is a hand-held device that provides real-time feedback during treatment for chronic tendon pain treatment.
The judges – with technology, academic, coaching and medical backgrounds – picked TopSpin as the winner for its high-tech training football helmet.
“I know it was a competition but I think everyone genuinely wanted the other companies to succeed,” said Rymut.
Miller has reason to be optimistic. He said the NFL has already funded about 30 companies with safety-measure improvement products, but concussions are a big focus. NFL players suffered 214 concussions during the 2018 preseason and regular season, down from 281 in 2017, a decrease of 24 percent.
Miller said he hoped that better practice habits under NFL rules and advancements in helmets have hopefully started a downward trend.
“About one third of the league has moved to better performing helmets in one year and we believe there’s a saving there in head injury,” said Miller.
Miller grew up in Bayside, in a family where his grandfather founded Spic and Span and his father ran it (it was just sold last year). Spic and Span used to launder the Milwaukee Brewers uniforms, so Miller remembers going into the office on a Saturday and seeing the uniform of Robin Yount or Cecil Cooper.
He excelled at tennis at Nicolet and went on to play at Penn before studying law at the University of Chicago.
Miller worked for former senator Herb Kohl as his chief counsel on the senate judiciary committee and then as his staff director. He still considers Kohl a good friend and mentor. Miller’s NFL role has even brought him back to Wisconsin, in the NFL’s partnership with GE Healthcare.
Under Miller's guidance, the NFL is interested in working with companies that use new materials and different designs in football helmets to mitigate the force of this collision sport. There’s even a plan to look at helmets that are position specific.
“We’ve analyzed so many concussions on the field over the last three years,” said Miller. “And we’ve been able to replicate, in a laboratory, the velocities and the locations, the magnitudes, of the hits.
“There’s a lot more to do. The vast majority of people that work on these issues – both at the football level and other levels of the sport, experts in science and medicine and technology and engineering – are all trying to do the right thing. And that makes me incredibly optimistic for what the world will look like five years from now, for football.”