Riding a horse on vacation in Mexico.
I bet that's a great way to start lots of stories.....I was riding a horse on vacation in Mexico this time when......
Look - the kid got his bell rung. Can we stop manufacturing problems among the die hards for this program that haunt this place? The school has a track record of demonstrating thorough, latest best medical practices, and not only that - conservative - management and recommendations for players that have sustained a concussion. That he was concussed to some extent is not really argueable. The kid lost control of his muscles when he got hit. It wasn't a fumblerooski problem like we had last year from ball handlers. He got it in the head, and the hit to the head, separated him from his aibility to grip the football.
If there are questions about what the actual protocol is that we use, (and I still actually have these questions, actually, because I don't know how a player could be told not to play again at this school, and then go and play at another) only explanation is that we we are very conservative in our protocol and management - then those questions should be asked by the appropriate people - to the appropriate people. Otherwise it's a non-issue. IF he's clear, and he goes through the proper risk/benefit discussions with proper authorities and agrees to play - so be it. If he's not clear to play - by the protocol, then he doesn't play - and it seems that if he's told he can't play again - ever - and he still wants to play - there is precedent for him to go elsewhere and do it.
The problem with brain injury - is that nobody understands the damn thing. You ever want to make a medical doctor look at you funny, ask them what a thought is. I did it not too long ago. I got the response, "So you're that guy, there's one in every room." Seems to happen a lot to me. I went through a whole bunch of review and training for all kinds stuff within the past year now - all kinds of subjects, one of them was a triage process and basic emergency medical stuff that I'm sur eothers around here are familiar with.
You get your brain rattled in your head, and you got a couple things you need to check for. Once the basic serious stuff is cleared, no blood or clear fluid coming out of the holes, and stuff like that, vision, hearing, etc - you're left with a window of time to make sure you're not bleeding inside your skull - because if the things happen that indicated that was happening, slowly - you need a doctor real quick, and once that window of time is passed- the major medical stuff is all over, and it's all basically thought, memory, consciousness stuff that everybody and their mother has a set of questions and scoring system for, and that nobody in the medical field understands anyway.
Most of the time in the scenarios I'm thinkin gof right now, people are happy to have a headcache and some cobwebs, if that's what they got, instead of missing body parts. Not minimizing brain injury in any way - just writing my opinions and observations. From my understanding of it all, when it comes to the barin, t's not the single injury that's the big problem - it's repeat injuries over time - and there is no set standard as towhat's ok and what's not.
Playing football comes with risks - I'm confident that a good decision will be made by all involved. Stop making problems when none exist.