Riddell offering equipment grants to football teams

Participants can apply to show they are dedicated to making safety a top priority and Riddell then provides safer football technology to players and coaches. As part of the program, Riddell is pledging a total of $100,000 of products to the teams that best articulate how an equipment grant strengthens their ability to implement a safer, smarter game on and off the field.

Last year’s (2015) program received roughly 700 applicants. Out of these Riddell awarded seven teams their newest and most technologically advanced gear.

In 2016, as Riddell approached the second year of the Smarter Football program, Riddell wanted to ramp up their online user experience. Riddell also wanted to integrate social media into the user experience and have a WordPress CMS that allowed for easy content management and user-submission retrieval. The entire program hinged on the success of the landing page; it had to function flawlessly.

DCKAP, a trusted partner of Riddell, worked on the development of Smarter Football website including its responsive design.

“We hit our rigid go live date without any hiccups,” said Dan Schuessler, Digital Project Manager of Riddell, “thanks to DCKAP’s team members being skilled developers and readily available during the entire project.”

The Smarter Football program doesn’t just provide technology but also helps youth football coaches focus on teaching the safest techniques.  All the most advanced monitoring systems and headgear will not help – if heads up tackling isn’t ingrained at a young age.

“We are excited to be working with Riddell on the Smarter Football campaign for the second consecutive year,” said Karthik Chidambaram, CEO of DCKAP. “Learnings and feedback from the inaugural campaign helped the team enhance the user experience on the Smarter Football site. DCKAP thanks Riddell for their tremendous support and commitment.”

Applications are now available for the Smarter Football grants. Riddell welcomes players, coaches, and parents to apply online before the July 31 deadline.