There's a buzz that Nike and Bausch & Lomb are developing sport-tinted contact lenses for sports played at night under artificial lights.

Spira Footwear, a four-year-old company based in El Paso, Texas, makes the world's only shoes with actual springs in the soles. The springs act as shock absorbers, reducing the stress on your feet. Spiras feel so good, they're illegal--at least to some. USA Track & Field, which sanctions some 4,000 road races each year, has banned Spiras for violating Rule 143 (3)(a), which states that "no spring ... may be incorporated in the shoes."

For TG readers, I have a piece at Slate magazine on performance apparel and the war on sweat.

The Nike Maxsight sport-tinted soft contact lenses, hitting the market this month, are designed with special technology that allow athletes and outdoor enthusiasts to see sports action with greater clarity.

I wonder if there's a big market for this outside of athletics. Wearers of eye glasses understand the problem. You either need prescription sunglasses outside or you need those glasses that tint outside but untint when you are inside. The problem is, they don't always fully untint so you end up looking like one of those Eastern European dictators from the 70s. Either way, if you go inside with these contacts on, you have to take them out. And that's not terribly convenient.

In recent years, rodeo competitors have adopted a few items of protective equipment that give them some measure of safety while taking on saddle broncs and 2,000-pound bulls. Andrews said the best overall piece of protection for competitors, introduced about 12 years ago, is the protective vest, which has prevented numerous major and life-threatening injuries. Mouth guards and helmets are also in use as protective gear.

It's not widely adopted by any means, but what rodeo tough guy has the cajones -- or the lack of them -- to wear a helmet in front of his peers? Am I missing something, or is this not completely preposterous?

"When manufacturers come out with a new shoe, technology is where they begin," says Dan Kasen, manager of information services at the National Sporting Goods Association. "It is a critical consideration."

Nike researchers brought in 10 men and 10 women to run barefoot on grass to see exactly how the body reacts without shoes on. They were videotaped with high-speed cameras to capture their movements, they had reflective markers attached to their joints to allow easy calculation of joint angles during their stride, and they even had wafer-thin pressure sensors attached to the bottoms of their feet to measure their impact with the earth.

At the end of the experiment, Nike had the most comprehensive picture of the biomechanics of barefoot running ever developed.

There's tons more interesting stuff in an outstanding piece so, as the kids say, RTWT.

Wigan coach Ian Millward has called for a ban on "razor-blade studs" after young star Harrison Hansen suffered "a great big hole in his leg" during Friday night's convincing win over Salford.

Hansen, a strong contender for the Young Player of the Year award after a fine campaign, was helped from the field in obvious pain during the first half of the clash at the JJB Stadium which Wigan won 40-12.

And Millward revealed after the game that the damage was caused by an opposition boot which sliced into the 19-year-old's leg as he was involved in a tackle.

"Harrison's got a great big hole in his leg," Millward admitted. "It's been caused by those blades players use now on the soles of their boots - they should all be banned.

The Baltimore Orioles have an unlikely secret weapon this season: Brian Roberts' contact lenses.

Roberts has been testing a new type of prescription contacts developed jointly by Nike Inc. and eye-care-products maker Bausch & Lomb Inc. The tinted contacts, which give Roberts a devilish red-eyed appearance, function much like sunglasses by cutting down on glare.

Nike's $20 tinted lenses, which go on sale next month, are the latest entry in the $104.7 billion sporting-goods market. They are targeting athletes in sports such as golf, tennis and soccer who have been reluctant to use sunglasses because of fogging, scratching or the simple annoyance of wearing eyeglasses.

PAUL SOLMAN: Blair also wants students to get some real-world science experience by working with businesses. Three years ago, the New Balance Co. approached Blair to see if his students could design a better running shoe for triathletes. One key issue, how to get your running shoe on fast, after the swim and bike phases of the competition.

EDITH HARMON: The athlete can pre-lace the shoe and then to their liking, and then they can also enter the shoe through the rear portion by pulling this tab up and not having to lace it. That's very, very important.

PAUL SOLMAN: MIT Grad Edith Harmon is an engineer at New Balance, who worked with several of Blair's students to develop the "sling back." New Balance got MIT talent; the students got a real-life science project with real-life economic constraints.

While most boys and men can get by without athletic supporters, a lot more ought to wear cups. Kids these days have helmets for practically everything—I wouldn't be surprised to see my sons wearing them for violin practice. But surprisingly few wear cups for sports, as I make my sons do for Little League and roller hockey. (Note to parents: The narrower ones are less irksome.) They consider cups annoying, and apparently other fellows do, too, which would explain why many eschew them even in situations that would seem to call for Kevlar.

I had heard that NFL players don't wear cups but was still astonished when Joe Skiba, assistant equipment manager of the New York Giants, provided confirmation. "The majority of players feel that less is more, especially padding below the torso," he explained via e-mail. "They feel that it hinders their speed and performance."

Skiba says that many football players now sport a garment called compression shorts. Young amateurs like the shorts, too, even though they cost about twice as much as jocks. According to Bike, which has diversified its athletic undergarment portfolio in these jock-unfriendly times, these stretchy shorts provide support and "steady, uniform pressure" to hold the groin, hamstring, abdomen, and quadriceps muscles in place during "the twisting, stretching and pivoting action of a game or strenuous exercise."

On a completely unrelated note, I always thought Jock Soto was the coolest name for a male ballet dancer -- he was apparently quite the Lothario.

An avid cyclist living in the scorching heat of central Texas, Chuck Hunter staggered into a bike shop in 1997 and says he succumbed to a "cute" saleswoman's pitch. He left wearing a water-filled backpack with a tube extending to his mouth so that he could drink without reaching for a water bottle.

Two years after that first sip, Mr. Hunter quit his job at Lockheed Martin Corp. to join the company that made the backpack-canteen, CamelBak Products LLC. At the time, the small firm had a devoted clientele of mountain bikers and counterculture types; for example, CamelBaks were ubiquitous at Burning Man, a radical art festival held each summer in the Nevada desert.

Mr. Hunter, a former fighter pilot, sensed an emerging market among a different breed of desert dweller: the U.S. soldier. Now CamelBak's senior vice president for government, military and industrial business, he has turned the Petaluma, Calif., company into a global leader in so-called hydration systems, selling several million backpacks to troops in the U.S. and some 50 foreign armies. The Pentagon, which recently placed a $17 million order so that it can issue CamelBaks to all soldiers heading to Iraq and Afghanistan, is the company's biggest customer.

The advanced range of sporting apparel and footwear comes as a result of adidas’ ever-evolving ClimaCool technology that works hard to keep you cool, dry and comfortable during your workout.

I'm pretty skeptical of these sorts of things, and am working on an article on them now.

In case you missed it, Uni Watch is referring to the new batting helmets that were worn during the game. The new lids featured a molded crown, side vents, back vents, and slightly elongated earholes. And for good measure, they slapped the All-Star Game logo on the back (a bit of logo creep that Uni Watch is willing to forgive, since the new helmets, rather surprisingly, didn't feature the MLB logo). Think of it as the baseball version of the Riddell Revolution.

Although a few players stuck with their regular helmets -- sometimes for rather obvious reasons -- Uni Watch estimates that about 85 percent of the players gave the new design a test drive.

Interestingly, there was no advance promotion for the new helmets (not that Uni Watch was aware of, at least), and all the MLB and Rawlings bigwigs were still in transit from Detroit as Uni Watch's deadline arrived, so the full story behind the new design -- including whether it will be used for regular-season games -- will have to wait. But it's worth noting that this type of helmet isn't exactly new: There's an inexpensive Rawlings version that's been floating around the mlb.com site for a while now, and Wilson makes something fairly similar.

I remeber when I was a kid plying football I thought that while they gave great head protection, helmets were extremely cumbersome and limited one's sense of the game dramatically. While everyone is equally disadvantaged -- except the kicker who has a weirdo helmet -- it's always seemed to me football helmets are an area ripe for innovation to make them lighter and less intrusive (more like, say, lacrosse helmets).