Our National Sports Concussion Policy, by Default, Is an Affirmative Action Plan for ‘Professional Brain Trauma Experts’

Chris Mortensen of ESPN reports that the National Football League will employ independent athletic trainers to spot concussions from the press box level and alert the folks at field level. Nice step, comments Mike Florio of NBC Sports’ Pro Football Talk, but they need independent neurologists on the sidelines.

Excuse me while I refrain from doing handsprings. Professional football players are pros and they have a union. A lousy and corrupt union, maybe, but the jockocrats can do whatever they’ll do. For all I care, they can assign certified morticians to every game.

The point is that “concussion awareness” steps, such as this latest one, are not reproducible at the feeder levels of American football mania: public high schools and pee-wee leagues. Most of the participants there shouldn’t be playing Russian roulette with lifelong mental disability in the first place. And those worthies don’t have the dough for independent trainers and independent neurologists. Most of them don’t even have press box levels. Only the morticians, plus the lawsuits flowing therefrom.

We need a national sports concussion policy. Until we get one, we’ll have an affirmative action program for the billable professionals, both the earnest and the cynical, of Concussion Inc.

Irv Muchnick

Look for our upcoming ebook UPMC: Concussion Scandal Ground Zero. Complete info on the Concussion Inc. ebook shorts series is here.