For over 50 years the NCAA, the National High School Federation, and FIBA, the international governing body of basketball, have required backboard safety padding to protect players from injury.
It’s hard to imagine a time before there was a durable, bolt-on, school color option for backboard padding. For those of you old enough to remember, think back to about 1990 when Bison first introduced DuraSkin™ padding to the market.
Prior to DuraSkin™ all backboard padding was extruded, gray, open cell foam not unlike what you might purchase at Home Depot to keep pipes from freezing or sweating. This foam was glued to the frame of the backboard with contact adhesive. While it was the only option available, the foam tore easily when players touched it, dried, got brittle, shrunk, and cracked. When the adhesive failed, gray duct tape was used to repair the padding and to hold it on, but this reduced the intended safety features.
One Bison competitor, in a commendable effort to improve the product, glued the same foam to a steel track with the same adhesive and the track was then mounted to p the backboard. This did nothing to improve the adherence, the safety, or the durability, 4 and in fact made it harder to install. Ultimately, they added a nylon sleeve over the glued assembly to hold it together and referred to this new backboard padding with the fabric covering as the “Sock”.
Bison knew there had to be a better way and had access to a local manufacturer who molded safety equipment for the recreational and industrial vehicle market using a process called Reactionary Injection Molding (RIM for short). RIM molding is used in the automotive, furniture, and other industries to mold armrests and other components that have a tough outer “skin”, and a soft and pliable inner core. Bison thought this would be the perfect material for a new backboard padding design.
Bison first introduced DuraSkin™ at the December 1990 High School Athletic Director show in Dallas, and while not yet in production the prototypes got rave reviews from A.D.’s who had to constantly replace torn, ineffective padding. While early prototypes were designed to attach to the backboard with hook and loop fasteners, this was changed to a bolt-on design before it went into full production. Bison first shipped gray DuraSkin™, the only color allowed by governing bodies, in mid-1991 in time for the 1991-1992 basketball season. While more expensive than the traditional padding, it carried a 5-year warranty against tearing, cracking, or detaching from the backboard. Given its durability, this warranty was extended to 10-years in 2009. DuraSkin™ was an instant hit, and in the first few years, Bison sold DuraSkin™ to most of its competitors who sold it as their “premium” backboard padding option. To date, Bison alone has sold in excess of 200,000 pairs of DuraSkin™.
After lobbying the NCAA and NF rules committee, both changed rules to allow padding in school colors, and in late 1991 Bison introduced 11 colors of DuraSkin™, and the rest is history. Today DuraSkin™ is available in 17 popular school colors.
Molded school color backboard padding is now sold by all major domestic and international basketball equipment suppliers and glue-on padding is an ancient memory. While Bison did not patent DuraSkin™, and it is manufactured and sold by many under a wide variety of names, Bison is proud to have been the original DuraSkin™ padding innovator and proud of our contribution to the safety of players who, no matter their height, often play above the rim.