This reminds me of getting issued my helmet in HS. I remember our equipment manager, at the time, was an older guy. This was before you had air pressure helmets or anything like that. You could snape out your check pads in the helmet and replace them with thicker or thinner ones, like that, but that was abut it. You could pick which mask you wanted, sort of. If you were a Back, WR or QB, you could pick a face mask between a couple but if you were a lineman or LB, you got issued what you got issued and that was pretty much it.
Anyway, he gave me my helmet, told me to put it on, he grabbed my face mask, yanked it forward, back and then changed out a pad or two and had me do the same thing all over again. head slapped my mask on each side, did the same to the back of my helmet, asked me if I could feel that and sent me on my way. In those days, it was a big deal if you got a padded chin strap but don't ask for one unless you were a QB so we would cut up Terry Cloth and glue it into the chin strap. Smelled like crap but we thought we were pretty cool.
My how things have changed.
:laugh2: