In a board meeting for the Denver Broncos Foundation during training camp last August, two of the Broncos’ primary owners threw down the philanthropic gauntlet.
The board had just heard a presentation from the CEO of USA Football, who brought up football helmets as a barrier to entry to the sport, both from a financial and safety perspective.
So the husband-wife tandem of Greg Penner and Carrie Walton Penner threw out a big idea that could impact every single high school football program across Colorado.
“Greg looked at the group and said, ‘What would it take to put every single one of our high school athletes into the best helmet?’” recalled Allie Engelken, the team’s vice president of community impact and the executive director of the foundation. “And then Carrie added on to that, ‘And in the safest helmet, and incorporating technology, and how can we make the game safer beyond just giving a donation?’”
At that moment, the single largest philanthropic investment in Broncos history was born.
On Tuesday, the Broncos announced the All In, All Covered campaign that will donate 15,516 new Riddell Axiom helmets to every program in the state across a four-year span. The donation, which includes a four-year subscription to InSite Analytics for the smart helmets as well as a Riddell Sideline Device, is worth about $12 million.
The helmets are valued at $980 each, according to the 2025 Riddell catalog, and will save high school programs tens of thousands of dollars over the campaign’s four-year implementation. Each program will receive 25% of the donated helmets each year, starting with this season, with the total number of helmets determined by the average roster size of its classification.
Class 5A programs will receive 100 total helmets, while Class 4A teams get 84, 3A 70, 2A 44, 1A 36, 8-man 26 and 6-man 22. The donation comes on the heels of the Broncos funneling roughly $700,000 in financial support to girls flag football, which helped pave the way for its inaugural season as a CHSAA-sanctioned sport in the fall.
“This is a massive burden off coaches’ shoulders in the state of Colorado,” Mead head coach Jason Klatt said. “This burden is two-fold. Monetarily, this helps our program with fundraising efforts and allows us coaches to focus on improving other aspects of the program. … And secondly, it’s about safety — we now have the capabilities of helping keep our players safer while on the field of play.
“This is a big day for Colorado high school football coaches and programs.”
Each helmet is custom fit via a 3-D scan and comes equipped with five sensor points that provide data for coaches to review tackling and blocking techniques. The helmets can be reconditioned to allow multiple players to wear them throughout their lifetimes, typically five to 10 years, depending on maintenance and wear-and-tear.
Schools are responsible for the reconditioning and recertification costs associated with the donated helmets, but that number pales in comparison to what programs typically spend on new, less advanced helmets for each season.
Klatt estimates the helmet donations will save his program around $40,000 over four years. Ponderosa head coach Jaron Cohen said his savings would be around $50,00, and Columbine coach Andy Lowry cited a similar number.
CHSAA commissioner Michael Krueger believes the financial implications will end up helping other sports as well.
“This piece of equipment is one of the more expensive ones that athletic departments face,” Krueger said. “That financial impact is going to go beyond football programs, because where those funds would’ve gone to helmets, now they could be shared across multiple programs in a school.”
Depending on how long each helmet lasts and how many players use each helmet, the Broncos estimate the program will impact between 75,000 to 150,000 players over the next four years. In the past three CHSAA seasons for which data is available, more than 16,000 student-athletes participated in football each fall.
The Axiom is considered a top-of-the-line helmet. It is used in college football and the NFL, where it’s the helmet of choice for many Broncos. Engelken worked with Bobby Mestas, the team’s director of youth and high school football, as well as equipment manager Chris Valenti to research which helmet to select.
“When we got into this, one of the clear directives from ownership was that we wanted to provide the best helmets,” Broncos president Damani Leech said. “That was an important and critical part of this. … Riddell felt like a great match for us that happened pretty naturally in the short period of time we had to pull this all together.”
Community outreach is nothing new for the Broncos, whose signature philanthropy for the last 21 years has been with the Boys & Girls Club. Denver is the only NFL team to fully fund its own Boys & Girls Club, which is located in Montbello.
The Broncos’ on-field product took a step forward with their first playoff appearance in nine years this past season. And Leech noted that ownership’s continued investment in other areas such as philanthropy and facilities, goes hand-in-hand with that success.
“Our primary goal is to be good at football, be good on the field, win championships,” Leech said. “But also, this ownership group wants everyone in the organization to understand that regardless of what your role in the organization is, you play a role in that winning.”
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