Championship Atheletes Concussions Would You Do It Again

During a calendar week in which NASCAR icon Dale Earnhardt Jr. said he had driven in at least v races with a concussion and NFL super-rookie Robert Griffin Three was downplaying his concussion despite suffering retention loss subsequently existence knocked from a game with a vicious striking to the caput, sports fans were once more wondering if their favorite athletes — not to mention their sons and daughters — were so intent on being "tough guys" that they were risking encephalon harm.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell took an opportunity Wednesday to take the issue directly to where many believe it is needed most: kids.

After watching a group of youth football players in northern Virginia go through condom tackling drills, Goodell preached the message that good health takes precedence over existence a tough guy.

"You'll really take fun playing this game if you do it safely," Goodell said at Centreville High Schoolhouse, surrounded past pee-wee players from the Southwestern Youth Clan Wildcats. "You've got to make sure that if you're injured and don't experience right, if something hurts, your head or your talocrural joint or anything else, you've got to brand certain y'all tell your coaches and your parents. Make sure they sympathise what happened to you. It's not about football. In that location's aught wrong with raising your hand and saying, 'I don't experience expert.'"

Bravo, says old UCLA linebacker Patrick Larimore, who was the Bruins' leading tackler terminal flavour but retired in fall camp of what would have been his senior yr because of multiple concussions.

"You've got to go this bulletin to kids," Larimore tells USA TODAY Sports. "They demand to know when they enter the sport how serious caput injuries are. They need to know well-nigh Junior Seau, guys who are killing themselves."

Larimore, disagreeing with some trainers and researchers who say athletes are condign more candid well-nigh their injuries, says the civilization in high-stakes college football hasn't changed that much.

"At the finish of the day, you're just trying to go to the side by side level, man," he says. "This is a business concern. A chore. Y'all're trying to go hired, homo. Trying to make a team whatsoever way you can. You're not going to tell everyone virtually information technology."

Changing tough guys

Y'all soldier on. You shake it off. Yous just had your bell rung, and you lot get dorsum in in that location.

That'southward the mentality that doctors, trainers and even coaches accept been trying in recent years to change, given the studies and evidence showing the link between multiple concussions and severe brain impairment — and, of form, the pile of lawsuits by onetime NFL players accusing the league of negligently withholding medical information virtually brain injuries.

But the tough guys are wont to keep trying to be tough guys.

That'southward essentially why Earnhardt, NASCAR's well-nigh popular driver, was still racing last weekend despite suffering from headaches later a crash during an Aug. 29 tire test in Kansas. Earnhardt was involved in the wild multi-car pileup Sunday at Talladega. He was diagnosed with a concussion Wednesday and is existence held out of the side by side two races.

"The wreck at Kansas was really severe and it surprised me how tough it was to get past that," Earnhardt said Thursday . "I call back everything almost that accident and everything afterward that accident, just you know your body and how your mind works, and I knew something was just not quite right. I decided to merely attempt to push through and work through it."

Another NASCAR veteran driver, Jeff Burton, sees Earnhardt's situation as a shift in tough-guy driving mentality. "X years agone, we ain't having this chat," he tells USA TODAY Sports, "considering yous just went on. Information technology's easy to say you'll do the correct thing. It'south some other affair to actually exercise it. When you've worked your whole life to be in this position, to give your seat up is very, very difficult, especially when you can hide information technology."

Jeff Gordon, one of NASCAR'southward greatest champions, leaves trivial dubiety he would ignore cautions regarding a head injury if something large were at stake.

"If I have a shot at the championship and there's two races to go and my head is pain and I merely came through a wreck and I'thousand feeling signs of it but I'k notwithstanding leading the points or I'm second in the points, I'1000 not going to say anything," Gordon says. " That's the competitor in me and probably many other guys and that's to a error. That's not the way it should be. It is something that most of united states, I think, would do. ."

That has to exist troubling to NASCAR officials, given the danger that a driver competing while suffering concussion symptoms presents to the rest of the field.

"We are hyper-vigilant, and NASCAR is hyper-vigilant almost diagnosis, education, prevention, treatment from A to Z in terms of this problem," says NASCAR neurological consultant Vinay Deschmuk. To get back on the track, Earnhardt will need to be cleared by a NASCAR-approved neurosurgeon.

Deprival, in the past, was a constant companion to those in loftier-risk sports. Just rub some dirt on it, athletes were told, or told themselves. Is that what Griffin, the Washington Redskins quarterback, was doing when he shrugged off his concussion this calendar week, suggesting it wasn't that serious an injury?

"I still refuse to say I had a concussion. I had temporary retentiveness loss," Griffin said Wednesday.

Griffin wanted to return to Dominicus's game against the Atlanta Falcons but was prevented from doing then by NFL rules that exercise not allow a player who has left a game with a concussion to return.

"I had great residual," said Griffin, who adept Thursday simply has not been cleared to play Sunday. "I could remember everything. I pretty much put myself through that concussion test and I knew that I was OK."

Of class, league officials practise not permit players to give themselves concussion tests, and even Griffin's instance tin can be seen as progress.

"Believe me, just iii years agone I bet RGIII is right back in that game," says quondam safety John Lynch, who was a TV analyst for the Falcons-Redskins game. "It'due south embedded in our culture people. People respect it when guys exercise play through things. That'south why it'southward a big, big dilemna."

Not to mention the confusion that can arise over who is or is not concussed.

Detroit Lions receiver Calvin Johnson admitted Thursday that he suffered a concussion — however returned to the game — when he took a helmet-to-helmet hitting from Minnesota linebacker Chad Greenway on Sept. thirty.

" He knocked me good," Johnson said. "You could tell. It was obvious."

Johnson went through a serial of tests on the sideline and returned. Lions passenger vehicle Jim Schwartz said Thursday there was zero wrong with the concussion examination that allowed Johnson to re-enter the game.

"Our evaluation was that he was not concussed," Schwartz said. "He was thoroughly checked. We're very strong in our evaluation."

Johnson hinted in a radio interview earlier Thursday at his desire to keep playing through a concussion when he said: "Information technology's a part of football. You get concussed, y'all've got to keep on playing."

NFL Players Association medical managing director Thom Mayer is keeping an eye on all this and talks about a potential culture modify in the NFL as "a moving target. I recollect it'southward changing, and I think it continues to evolve."

He says his part is to "picket the watchers" — that is, the trainers and medical staff who treat players.

He says this is the feedback he gets from players: "You've got to protect united states of america from ourselves."

Monitoring kids

Stefan Duma, department head of biomedical engineering at Virginia Tech, constitute in a written report last fall that some of the hits captivated by youth football players equate to those seen in major college football.

Duma, who has been using a sensor system placed in the helmets of Virginia Tech football game players for the past decade, used the same system on vii- and viii-year-old tackle football players in Virginia. The sensors record G-force — the gravitational force associated with the acceleration of an object relative to a gratuitous-fall.

According to Duma, the typical hit for Virginia Tech players is well-nigh xx Gs, and any hit in a higher place 98 Gs is cause to check the player for a concussion. Among the youth players he monitored last autumn, the strongest hit was measured at 100 Gs, with six measuring 80 Gs or college.

A month later on Duma'south study results were made public, Pop Warner football instituted national changes in its practice guidelines, decreasing contact drills.

At all levels, however, athletes continue to be willing to sacrifice their ain wellbeing.

"Athletes will not study stuff, because they don't want to be taken out," says Jim Thornton, president of the National Athletic Trainers Clan. "Unfortunately, sometimes the best thing for them is that they be taken out. If not, permanent and serious harm can be washed to the brain, and we've seen that in some pro athletes that have tried to hide it then they can keep to brand their paycheck."

Or, in Larimore's case, keep their starting job, and keep alive a dream of playing in the NFL.

"At that level, all yous think near is how I tin get improve today at football," he says. "Yous don't think nearly, 'Oh, I had a concussion.' There's only not enough time. You're not concerned. You're going to practise whatever information technology takes to play."

Larimore was somewhen convinced by his parents and UCLA coaches, including former NFL linebacker Jeff Ulbrich, to think well-nigh his long-term futurity , and he left the game behind. He's not holding his breath waiting for those in his position to follow his path.

Contributing: Nate Ryan and Dustin Long in Agree, N.C.; Gary Mihoces in Clifton, Va.; Robert Klemko in Ashburn, Va.; Mike Garafolo in Santa Clara, Calif.; Jarrett Bell, Jim Corbett

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Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2012/10/11/concussions-dale-earnhardt-jr-robert-griffin-iii/1628197/