Concussions and Repercussions

SOUTH BEND, Ind -- The first and last plays of last Saturday's Washington-Notre Dame contest had something more in common than being the bookends of one of the most entertaining games waged in South Bend in years.

Each play featured a jarring hit that left one player with a concussion ... and those two concussions were only half the total the game rendered on its participants.

In all, four players -- Notre Dame special teams players Anthony McDonald and David Posluszny and Washington wideout D'Andre Goodwin and strong safety Nate Williams -- suffered concussions in the 37-30 overtime thriller.

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow may be the poster boy of concussions this season, but the disturbing truth is that he is far from alone. And that it takes a player of his magnitude being carted off the field in a daze to shed light on this darker side of the sport.

"What a bizarre coincidence," says Jeanne-Marie Laskas, whose story about the perils of repeated concussions in NFL players appears in the October issue of GQ magazine. "The hit on Tebow reaffirms what we said in the article. The danger appears long before players make it to the NFL."

The GQ piece by Laskas, an English professor at the University of Pittsburgh, reads in part like a cloak-and-dagger suspense novel. Back in 2002, Bennett Omalu, a mild-mannered, Nigerian-born pathologist, performs an autopsy on former Pittsburgh Steeler center Mike Webster. Omalu's curiosity leads him to spend up to $100,000 of his own money examining slides of the brains of both Webster and another former Steeler, Terry Long, both of whom suffered severe dementia before their deaths at the age of 50 and 45, respectively (Webster died of a heart attack while Long killed himself by drinking anti-freeze).

What Omalu finds is an inordinately high build-up of tau proteins, which are commonly found in Alzheimer's sufferers. Except that he discovers more tau proteins, and this is confirmed by an Alzheimer's specialist, Dr. Peter Davies, who serves as a consultant to the NFL, than seen in the most advanced cases of the disease.

Being a scientist, Omalu seeks more data. He examines the brains of other deceased ex-NFL players who exhibited signs of dementia or suicidal tendencies before their untimely deaths: Justin Strzelczyk, Andre Waters, Tom McHale, etc. All show the same evidence of excessive tau proteins. Omalu even coins a name for this "disease": Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, or CTE.

Omalu's findings are published in the peer-review journal Neurosurgery. The NFL's response? Three scientists on the league's payroll demand that the article be retracted because of its "serious flaws."

It's a fascinating piece and Omalu is a courageous voice in the wilderness. But the NFL has a Players' Association that hopefully serves the best interests of its members.

What does the NCAA have? The most popular parlor-game of the past 10 days among college football pundits is whether Tim Tebow will play when top-ranked Florida visits No. 4 LSU in its most difficult game of the season.

Granted, the University of Florida seems to have put that decision in the hands of team doctors, but Tebow's case is easily the most highly publicized perhaps in the history of college football. What about everyone else who just do not happen to be the most visible player in their sport, the one some have suggested is "the greatest college football player of all time?"

Last Saturday in South Bend, four players suffered concussions. Williams took a knee to the helmet in the third quarter, while Posluszny was injured on a kickoff. The hit on Goodwin, in which he received twin blows from Notre Dame safeties Kyle McCarthy and Harrison Smith a fraction of a second apart, was legal but gruesome. McCarthy launched himself into Goodwin's left side as the pass arrived, sending his momentum into Smith, who struck him at full speed, their helmets colliding. The ball, as well as Goodwin's helmet, went flying, as McCarthy and Smith understandably celebrated the hit that sealed the Irish victory.



In the aftermath, Goodwin lay in a daze on the turf for at least a minute or two while Washington trainers and teammates surrounded him. NBC's focus, however, was on the Irish victory. Watch past the 1:12 mark of the video, as announcers Tom Hammond and Pat Haden, oblivious to the fact that a player has been seriously injured, discuss "what a game" it was as two replays of the concussive hit are shown.

That oversight is not necessarily the fault of Hammond and Haden, by the way. A more alert producer would have recognized that Goodwin's condition was a priority. That, at the least, it deserved attention.

And yet the blow Goodwin suffered was not the most unsettling. Watch this clip of the opening kickoff and keep your eyes on the upper right portion of the screen. Anthony McDonald, a sophomore on the Irish kickoff unit, fails to see a Husky player approach from the outside and deliver a hit with his helmet into McDonald's facemask. McDonald falls backward in the background; you can see him stumble drunkenly-like to regain his balance. McDonald, as Notre Dame head coach Charlie Weis noted on Sunday, is actually running in the opposite direction of the play. After the whistle McDonald, clearly in a fog, begins to jog over to the Washington sideline.

Weis, who has been a football coach at all three levels for nearly three decades, described the moment.

"I'm yelling for a trainer," Weis said Sunday. "I'm not even watching the kickoff now because I see him dazed and confused. I'm almost wanting to go out on the field myself because I'm yelling for the trainers, because you knew this is a guy who was knocked down on his feet at the time. He starts that way, then he starts running to their bench. I'm just yelling for the trainers to get over to him."

Collisions, and hence concussions, are inevitable in football -- at every level. "The helmet protects your skull," says Laskas, "but the incredible G-forces of the collisions do not protect the brain, which floats inside your skull, from banging against it. And in fact the helmet acts as a weapon."

None of this is news, and Laskas is the first to point out that "the incredible part of my story is that there is nothing new inside of it. No new studies."

What has changed, over the past two decades or so, is the size and speed of the young men who play college football. In 1985, a 300-pounder on an NFL roster was akin to having a 7-4 guy on an NBA roster. Today? Only one of the 10 offensive linemen on Notre Dame's two-deep chart weighs fewer than 300 pounds.

"If I'm a parent of a college football player at that level," says Laskas, "my first question is, 'Who's taking care of my kid?' "

To the degree that anyone knows, major college programs are acting responsibly in terms of treating concussions. Notre Dame, for example, issues its players a baseline cognitive test so that a player who suffered a concussion can be tested against that. Both McDonald and Posluszny were tested this week. At U-Dub the same holds true and it appears that neither Goodwin nor Williams will play on Saturday.

Yet, because of student-privacy laws, coaches are under no requirement to report player injuries or the severity of such. For example, quarterback Jimmy Clausen walks around in a boot each day and we are told it is only turf toe, but who outside of the Notre Dame program really knows for sure? Would a coach ever be so desperate as to play someone who hasn't adequately recovered from a concussion?

"The thing about concussions," says Laskas, "is that we just don't know the long-term effects. Not every NFL player who ever suffered a concussion went down the path that Webster and Long did. What is important is to make these kids aware of the potential danger they put themselves in. Things such as torn ACLs or even spinal-cord injuries, kids know about that. But do they realize that all those hits to the head could potentially drive them crazy?"

On Sept. 12, SMU cornerback Derrius Bell suffered a concussion in a game at UAB. Bell was sidelined for three weeks and returned for last Saturday's game with TCU. On his first play of the game, Bell hit Horned Frogs wideout Ryan Christian after a reception, forcing a fumble. Both Bell and Christian suffered concussions on the play. On Monday, with Bell still dizzy, SMU announced that he was done for the season.

"I'm afraid that's the best thing for him," coach June Jones told the Dallas Morning News. "Probably not the best for us, but it's in his best interest."

Said Bell, "I don't want to keep getting knocked out."