What Was San Diego Chargers’ Kris Dielman Doing on an Airplane in the First Place?

The National Football League is “investigating” the incident involving Kris Dielman, the San Diego Chargers’ offensive guard. Super. In New Jersey last Sunday, Dielman played through a mid-game concussion that was obvious to the television audience but somehow missed by the team’s trainers and doctors. He then suffered a violent seizure flying back to San Diego on the team plane Sunday night.

But the NFL can’t investigate itself on the question of whether the NFL even gives a damn. For all its outrageousness, the fact that Dielman continued on the field is just another manifestation of the ultra-competitiveness of pro football. They can all say they’ll take measures to ensure that it doesn’t happen again, but inevitably it will.

That Dielman was on a cross-country flight hours later, however, is something else entirely. Even I know that you don’t get on an airplane in the immediate aftermath of a head injury, and I have none of the medical degrees amassed by such NFL experts as Ira “Dr. No” Casson and Joe “Sports Brain Guard” Maroon.

Does the NFL care even a little bit about the health of its players? Does anyone else care that the NFL doesn’t care?

Where are the new NFL “concussion policy co-chairs,” Drs. Richard Ellenbogen and Hunt Batjer, on all this? Are they bound and determined to end up with reputations as sterling as those of Casson and Maroon?

Irv Muchnick