NCAA's role in concussion-gate

it seriously was not that bad of an incident.  Seriously, by any objective standard it has been very seriously overblown.  William Gholston was unconscious on the ground for a full minute 2 years ago against OSU and played the rest of the game and nothing was done.  Not to say that should have happened but what transpired here was not of the jaw dropping variety.

So they'll put people with fancy cameras in a booth to review rulings on the field, but nobody thought about putting a medical person in a booth with fancy cameras to look for concussions / serious injuries?

I think there's a real problem with the nature of the game when the attitude of coaches is what Hoke said/almost said about if you're not playing injured you're not playing hard enough.

NCAA Bylaws require all schools to have a Concussion Policy.  That policy must "ensure" that student-athletes are removed from game/practice if they exhibit the "signs, symptoms or behaviors" of a concussion.  It must ensure that if this happens, they are not returned to the game/practice until after receiving evaluation from the medical staff.  It must ensure that if the medical staff diagnoses a possible concussion, the player is not returned to the game/practice that day, and may not play/practice until he has been cleared by a doctor.

So it's in the Bylaws, which makes it completely enforcable by the NCAA.  They have never done anything like this, but just this summer they had to pay out $75M to settle a concussion lawsuit that alleged they didn't do enough to ensure that players with concussions are protected.

So we have a rule to enforce, and a motive for the NCAA to enforce it.

Who knows what will actually happen.  After all, Michigan must have a concussion policy, the only problem is that it didn't "ensure" that Shane Morris was removed from the game appropriately.  We will see, I guess.

has way too much on its plate to deal with individual player injury situations.  The enforcement and eligibility offices alone are enormous.

The NCAA can only provide guidelines on player safety, and accepts on a certain level of trust they are followed.

Two interesting rumblings I've started to see on social media in the last 24 hours (and, of course, mostly from two utterly predictable fanbases): 1 - the whole rest of the nation can be outraged over this, but ANY Michigan fan who is angry is expediently using it to get rid of Brady Hoke for his team's poor performance and doesn't actually care about Shane Morris. We're apparently unique among sports fans in wanting our incompetent coach fired. We also don't give a damn about our players' safety, because we're just generally horrible people. 2 - the NCAA needs to get involved and sanctions need to be a possibility.

So, Michigan fans angry over this just want Hoke gone, while OSU and MSU fans angry over this and calling for the NCAA to investigate have NO underlying motives. LOL