Concussions: What can be Done?

I wholeheartedly believe that if a player is head-injured despite no flags, the play should be reviewed by offiicials for egregious helmet-to-helmet contact.  With some standards and examples to guide them.

I offer two cases out of many that some will recall.

1) Torii Hunter Jr nearly decapitated in the center of the End Zone, no flags v Texas last weekend.  He had to exit play go to the hospital.  Possibly changing the outcome of the game as he seems to be one of their best receivers.  Texas should at least lose that player (if the refs feel its ejectable...I was yelling and throwing stuff at the no-call) off their team.

2) Shane Morris drunkenly walking towards the huddle and having to be held up by an OL after being head-smashed by Cockran and the resulting no-call.  No need to broil the surrounding subject matter any more, but my proposed system would call for a review.  Cockran should have been outta there.

NFL I don't have much sympathy.  You go against the highest echelon of strongest fastest most brutal humans in pads and there isn't much to do.  I do support giving players more dough for sacrificing their body but its not like they're in the dark about all of this.  The brain tissue can only take so many crashes against its shell.

Take the helmet away and enforce tackling rules that prohibit head hunting and/or slamming people to the ground if you have their arms wrapped up.....guys will stop using their heads as weapons and hopefully the whiplash issues of slamming your head against the ground would go away too.

Option 1

Option 2

shhhh..... maybe no one will notice

I get it, players want to win. 

But the Broncos were clearly, IMO, head-hunting last night. 

And anyone who is head-hunting has lost the perspective that "this is another human being that I am competing with.  I want each of us to bring his best effort and I want to beat him, but this is a person who deserves the right to not be physically targeted and go forth in life without any long-term negative effects after this game is over." 

We can talk about equipment changes and such.  But the lack of the above, as much as anything else, seems to be a core and root problem in the NFL.

Thankfully, I don't feel this is as much of a problem in the college game (last week's Iowa player not withstanding).  No doubt a partial reason why I enjoy the college game over the NFL game.  In tomorrow's football game, Michigan no doubt wants to defeat UCF decisively.  U-M players, and college players as a whole, also seem to have long-term perspective, as well.  It is honorable, once the clock hits 0:00, to shake your opponent's hand and say "I enjoyed competing with you over the last 3 hours, this was fun, thanks for bringing your best effort, and good luck going forward in your season."

Pad the outside of helmets.

So a nurse pricks herself and gets hepatitis. She was trained in protocol and knows the risks. Still, she had an accident or was careless. This illness can follow her throughout her life. I guess we shouldn't have nurses because they might get sick - or we ban needles.

So a guy in a werehouse picks up a 50lb box and rips up a disk in his back. He was trained on lifting risks and knee bending and when to use assists. With this injury, he has cronic back pain the rest of his life. I guess nobody should lift anything ever because they might get hurt.

So a mom smashes her car into a pole and get a head and neck injury. She was trained to drive a car and is fully aware of the law not to text and drive. She did it anyway - got lazy or forgot. She has headaches and neck trouble for years. I guess we should stop driving cars - too risky, or ban smart phones.

So a football player goes full speed helmet to helmet tackle. He gets a concussion. He was trained not to do that - rather to "heads up" or "roll" tackle. He got lazy or in the heat of the moment forgot. He keeps doing this and later in life has memory issues. I guess we ban football or tackling, too dangerous.

Life is full of risks. You train people the best you can to avoid them. But you cannot prevent every lapse of judgement. 

Maybe we should leave all of this to robots and never get hurt:

If you don't want to try out for the NFL, then don't play college ball.   Earn an academic scholarship instead.  

Make legitimate targeting suspensions truly count. You hit a guy in the helmet with your helmet at high speed, and a panel of officials say "yes that's intentional," you sit out half a season. Do it twice, you lose a full season. Thrice and your career is over.

Wonder if some form of controlled/artificial meningitis (swelling of the protective meninges layers of the brain) could be used to temporarily fill the void between the brain and skull to limit relative movement. 

More realistically, increasing DHA and EPA intake (e.g., brain-armor.com  - a product apparently used by both MSU and Alabama) appears to have some benefits toward reducing traumatic brain injury.

US Patent Publication: 2011/0257267 patent application showing oral administration of fish oil can be used to counter traumatic brain injury (in rats)

Journal of Neurotrauma: Wu et al; DHA counteracting disabilities after TBI (in rats)

But I wonder if the number of plays they are now running is hurting?  It has almost doubled, does that mean twice the number of hits? 

Technology can do a lot.  Shoulder pads that are less "big hunks of plastic" and more squishy.  Helmet technology exists that is way safer but "looks weird" so nobody uses it.  I'm also a proponent of the "get rid of helmets entirely" school of thought, but I recognize that will never happen.  There's no way to make football 100% safe, but there's ways to make it safer without fundamentally changing the mechanics of the game.

The problem is we don't really want to make it better.   We want big crushing hits, we want kickoff returns, we want to see a guy get decapitated.  Watch {insert highlight show of choice} and you'll largely see two things from an NFL game: scoring plays and huge hits.  We want to talk about removing violence from the game and making it safer, but push comes to shove, as consumers, we want the violence.  

Last night was an embarrassment for the NFL.  After talking about concussion testing and on field protocols, what happened during the game, nothing.  Newton didn't know if he was in Denver, Detroit or Dubai after the last hit. Where were the reviewers on the field and in the box?  Typical NFL, all talk and no action.

Then their was the head hunting by Denver, which plays on the edge in terms of head shots and knee targeting.  Newton took at least 3-4 helmet shots, clear launching, only 1 flag which was cancelled out by an intential grounding .  Went after Benjamin's knees a couple times.  Very dirty team.  

# 1. Live with the concussions

# 2. Banish the NFL I don't believe they have a patent on pro football from Sept. to Jan.

Its just that easy you either shut up or put up. Bring back the USFL with concussion rulings with teeth in them to preserve the athletes. OR STFU.........and as always Go Blue!

No I'm not. I quit drinking.... AGAIN.

Besides. I don't even care about my opinions why should you?