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Updated: Mar 17, 2026

Modified Drop Tower Impact Tests for American Football Helmets
Published on: February 19, 2017
Do Mouth-Formed Mouth Guards Meet the NCAA Rules?
Abstract:
In brief: The arch lengths of the maxillary casts of 413 university football players were measured and compared with the arch lengths of 12 types of mouth-formed mouth guards to determine how closely each type of mouth guard conformed to NCM rules. The study found that, for a significant number of university football players, currently available mouth-formed mouth guards are not large enough to meet the NCAA rules and that a population of black athletes has a significantly larger mean arch length than a population of racially mixed athletes. The largest mouth-formed mouth guard met the NCAA rule for only 5.5% of football players of a predominantly black team.
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