Senator Udall Finally Raises a Peep About Concussions

I’ve been after three federal legislators, including Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, for making a little bit of noise about football helmets earlier this year and then disappearing. My point is twofold: that the concussion issue needs persistence and follow-through, and that the helmet-safety question itself is a cheap and easy, and thus weak, point of entry into the issue.

Today Udall provided a statement to CNN as part of a series on high school sports injuries. See “Tackle the concussion epidemic,” http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/05/opinion/udall-football-concussions.

It’s hard to tell if there’s much new here. Udall seems to have expanded some of his rhetoric to fold the flavor of the season, “concussion consciousness,” under his proposed Children’s Sports Athletic Equipment Safety Act. Hunky-dory. Udall doesn’t mention last week’s announcement by his New Jersey colleagues, Senator Robert Menendez and Representative Bill Pascrell, who have enlisted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to draft national school sports concussion guidelines — potentially a much more significant step. Udall’s avoidance of it is a clue that he might not have a holistic vision of the problem and, in the tried-and-true way of quarterbacks of political footballs, is merely marking “his” turf.

If the senator’s communications director, Marissa Padilla, wants to help us interpret all this more, she knows how to reach me. Udall’s office has maintained a perfect record of not even acknowledging receipt of a single message from your humble blogger since January. I may have to go undercover and pose as an Arizona Cardinals fan angry over the local television blackout of a game that didn’t sell out in advance.

Irv Muchnick