Are you ready for some (safer) football?

Football is back!

(American football, that is. What most of the world calls football — what Americans call soccer — never really leaves, so it never has to come back.)

Two American entrepreneurs have come up with a plastic-based safety improvement for American football helmets. As a Cleveland Browns fan, reading and writing about this development will take my mind off the fact that my team is expected to do well this year for the first time in many years.

(The Browns haven't made the playoffs since 2002 and haven't won a playoff game since 1994. This year, with several good players on the roster, expectations are high. Previously, expectations for the Browns were nonexistent.)

(It's a lot to handle, even parenthetically. So let's look at that safety improvement.)

A recent news release from Ohio's Cedarville University — where one of the partners, Rich Williams, graduated in 2011 — said: "Big hits are a facet of football, but two dreamers tinkering in a garage are on the verge of making a game-changing impact on one of America's favorite sports."

Williams and Justin Summerville have devised a plastic-filled clip that attaches securely to the helmet, while allowing a slight amount of give on impact. Inside the clip is a small cube of Sorbothane-brand polyurethane made by Sorbothane Inc. of Kent, Ohio. According to the news release, the material absorbs the G-forces from helmet collisions and allows the facemask to reset to its normal position.

High school and youth football teams in Ohio, Michigan, Florida and North Dakota have purchased the clips, which sell for $29.99 per pair, for their helmets. Collegiate teams from the University of Minnesota, the University of Toledo, Texas A&M and Wayne State University have also tested the clips on their helmets.

Williams and Summerville have raised $700,000 in capital to develop and market their product. They've also secured three patents and manufactured more than 2,000 clips to date. Beyond football, the clip has potential applications in other sports that use helmets, including hockey. The inventors have been in touch with the National Hockey League.

To take the sales and acquisition of their impact-absorbing clip to the next level, Williams and Summerville will be part of the inaugural Entrepreneurship Accelerator program at Cedarville University, a Baptist institution with more than 4,000 students in Cedarville, Ohio. The program seeks to connect business start-ups with expertise and funding sources.

The Entrepreneurship Accelerator program is being directed by Dick Blanc, a former managing partner at Accenure LLP.

"We want startup companies like SAFE Clip to benefit from our seasoned Entrepreneurs-in-Residence with deep experience in angel investing, venture capital, serial entrepreneurship and venture law," Blanc said in the release.

If the Browns start to win, I might need to start wearing a helmet myself while watching games, in case I pass out from excitement and hit my head on an end table. Hopefully, that helmet will have a plastic-filled SAFE Clip, so I can make it through the whole season intact.