Before we took concussions seriously — which, come to think of it, wasn't so long ago — a college football player didn't get up after a tackle. From the pressbox that afternoon, it looked as if he were out cold. A few uncomfortable minutes passed before the player got up and, with assistance from medical personnel, left the game for good.
Before going any further, it should be noted here that the victim was having a bad day even before his exit, which might have explained the smile from the athletic trainer.
"He was never unconscious," the AT told me. "He just wanted out of the game."
Now, the point isn't that athletes might fake injuries or athletic trainers were tough audiences back in the day. The moral was that if there's any question at all, you should simply play it safe.
College football has come a long way since in the treatment and diagnosis of concussions, but not as far as we might like to think.
Maybe you've been keeping up with the case of Sam Ehlinger, Texas' tough freshman quarterback. He's officially under concussion protocol, a designation that comes at least a week late, judging by my Twitter feed.
Critics included Chris Nowinski, founder of Boston University's Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy Center, who said Ehlinger appeared to demonstrate classic concussion symptoms late in Texas' loss to Oklahoma that required more time and observation than a simple sideline diagnosis.
Now that a concussion has been confirmed, the question becomes when he actually sustained it. Was it against the Sooners, when he remained motionless on the sideline for 30 seconds, only to return to play? Or did it come last week against Oklahoma State, when his head hit the turf late in an overtime loss?
Or was it both?
Tom Herman, who has come under heavy criticism, has maintained all along that he simply followed the advice of Texas' medical personnel. Once Ehlinger was cleared in the Cotton Bowl, he went back in the game. If that was, indeed, the case, Herman seems above blame. What we've asked all along is that coaches stay out of medical decisions. Athletic trainers don't call plays; coaches shouldn't practice medicine. We remember what happened to Mike Leach when he inserted himself in the middle of Adam James' concussion treatment.
So if we're going to put these matters in the hands of qualified medical pros, it seems a little disingenuous to say that Herman should have doubted their diagnosis.
Maybe the problem here isn't coaches or doctors but the NCAA system itself. If an NFL player is suspected of a concussion, he's removed from the field and taken to the locker room for further evaluation. The simple act of leaving the arena provides additional separation of time and distance, not to mention the advantages of a locker room over a sideline, which hardly passes for an examination room. College athletes deserve no less consideration.
Of course, nothing is foolproof. A brain injury isn't as obvious as a broken leg. Sometimes the symptoms don't show up for 48 hours. Sometimes the technology isn't what it seems. Texas, Stanford and Iowa State reportedly use a device called Eye-Sync, which claims it can render an immediate concussion diagnosis. Last month, the FDA ruled otherwise, ordering the company to halt its marketing claims.
Frankly, I wish it were as easy as slapping a pair of virtual-reality goggles on a patient. Let me tell you another story.
Twenty years ago, I sat in the kitchen of a Round Rock couple who'd lost their 19-year-old son in a Golden Gloves boxing match. Nobody could tell them why he'd died. The Bexar County medical examiner told me it was something called second-impact syndrome, a rare case where victims, usually in their late teens, die from two or more concussions sustained in a short period of time.
What made Dylan Baker's death so stupefying was that no one knew he was in any trouble at all, right up to the moment he crumpled to the mat, the first Texas amateur boxer to die in the ring.
The thing is, he wasn't really even a boxer. Just his fourth fight. A bookish cross-country runner at Southwestern University, boxing on a lark.
Every so often, I think of Dylan and his parents and the old trainer who took a player off the field even though he thought he was faking. I think about the fact that the player wasn't very good, and whether his potential impact on a game, if he'd been better, would have altered anyone's actions. I hope not. I'd prefer to think that anytime an athlete's safety comes under question, in the absence of certain proof, we'd simply err on the side of caution. Because when it's all said and done, we can live with that.
