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(And no, I haven't heard that he's fired, but if he gets fired, it will have to be today, before the clock strikes midnight.)
Much is made of Leach's physical punishment of a player with a concussion. You can argue that the conditions were or weren't harsh; it wasn't a hot closet, it was an air conditioned shed, it wasn't in the dark, it had a light. But no one is questioning the fact that Adam James had a concussion. (He may or may not have had one at the time he was punished; it seems he refused to go to the doctor to see about it, as instructed by Leach.) And more importantly, no one is questioning what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for someone who has a concussion, as opposed to cruelty toward someone with a broken leg, or torn groin muscle, or an ingrown toenail.
When I read every word of Malcolm Gladwell's groundbreaking article on concussions in football, it profoundly affected me. Unlike a broken arm, or an eye gouging, concussions are less objectively observable. The doctors on the board can clarify here, but after the initial period of dizziness and disorientation passes, the full effects of the concussions may not be known until much later in life, even as much as 30 years later. Currently, neuropathologists are just starting to understand syndromes like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.), which is a progressive neurological disorder found in people who have suffered some kind of brain trauma. C.T.E. appears later in life as well, because it takes a long time for the initial trauma to give rise to nerve-cell breakdown and death.
What scientists are beginning to find is that CTE can result from a long career in college or the pros, or just a college career, or a high school career.
So it looks like the research is beginning to suggest that men can suffer brain damage from a long, or brief career in football. And the damage may take years to manifest itself. And the damage is caused not only in games, it happens multiple times in practice. It is common. And doctors are starting to discover that concussions need not be caused by the hit at the moment; they can be the result of cumulative sub-concussive blows over the past few days, or months. Hit enough times at the sub-concussive level, a player can suffer a concussion with a much gentler blow than he has experienced over the past few practices. One college player under observation, rigged up with a helmet device that measures the force of blows showed that on the first day of practice, he was hit in the head 31 times, 4 times substantially, but 27 times at a lower level, inflicting no immediate damage, but cumulatively adding up to danger.
So if it is common for football team members to experience 30 blows to the head during practice, how is Coach Leach supposed to determine what constitutes a dangerous blow from one that the player shakes off? How does he know when someone is milking it? When everyone gets hit in the head daily, the player who complains about it is seen as a milquetoast. We sit on our soft couches, never having experienced a bellringer, and we criticize Leach for not immediately sending the James kid to the hospital. We dont live in his world, where if he did that there would be no one to practice.
More looming, and certainly more important than Leach and his job, is if we are going to hold coaches responsible for guarding against further injury to a concussed player, isn't the next step that we should hold coaches (and schools, and referees, and team physicians) responsible for the concussion itself? Once litigation hits the issue, is there any way to stop football from becoming an obsolete sport?
Much is made of Leach's physical punishment of a player with a concussion. You can argue that the conditions were or weren't harsh; it wasn't a hot closet, it was an air conditioned shed, it wasn't in the dark, it had a light. But no one is questioning the fact that Adam James had a concussion. (He may or may not have had one at the time he was punished; it seems he refused to go to the doctor to see about it, as instructed by Leach.) And more importantly, no one is questioning what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment for someone who has a concussion, as opposed to cruelty toward someone with a broken leg, or torn groin muscle, or an ingrown toenail.
When I read every word of Malcolm Gladwell's groundbreaking article on concussions in football, it profoundly affected me. Unlike a broken arm, or an eye gouging, concussions are less objectively observable. The doctors on the board can clarify here, but after the initial period of dizziness and disorientation passes, the full effects of the concussions may not be known until much later in life, even as much as 30 years later. Currently, neuropathologists are just starting to understand syndromes like chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.), which is a progressive neurological disorder found in people who have suffered some kind of brain trauma. C.T.E. appears later in life as well, because it takes a long time for the initial trauma to give rise to nerve-cell breakdown and death.
What scientists are beginning to find is that CTE can result from a long career in college or the pros, or just a college career, or a high school career.
McKee pulled out a large photographic blowup of a brain-tissue sample. “This is a kid. I’m not allowed to talk about how he died. He was a good student. This is his brain. He’s eighteen years old. He played football. He’d been playing football for a couple of years.” She pointed to a series of dark spots on the image, where the stain had marked the presence of something abnormal. “He’s got all this tau. This is frontal and this is insular. Very close to insular. Those same vulnerable regions.” This was a teen-ager, and already his brain showed the kind of decay that is usually associated with old age. “This is completely inappropriate,” she said. “You don’t see tau like this in an eighteen-year-old. You don’t see tau like this in a fifty-year-old.”
So if it is common for football team members to experience 30 blows to the head during practice, how is Coach Leach supposed to determine what constitutes a dangerous blow from one that the player shakes off? How does he know when someone is milking it? When everyone gets hit in the head daily, the player who complains about it is seen as a milquetoast. We sit on our soft couches, never having experienced a bellringer, and we criticize Leach for not immediately sending the James kid to the hospital. We dont live in his world, where if he did that there would be no one to practice.
More looming, and certainly more important than Leach and his job, is if we are going to hold coaches responsible for guarding against further injury to a concussed player, isn't the next step that we should hold coaches (and schools, and referees, and team physicians) responsible for the concussion itself? Once litigation hits the issue, is there any way to stop football from becoming an obsolete sport?
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