It wasn’t the 230-pound defensive end dropping his shoulder into Tim Tebow’s chest that caused the concussion, at least not directly. It was a knee; the knee of one of Tebow’s teammates, in fact.
When the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback for the University of Florida was tackled in a game on Sept. 26, his head snapped back as he hit the ground, smacking against a fellow Gator. After lying motionless for several minutes, he was taken by ambulance to a hospital.
Tebow’s injury is just one in a flurry of football-related concussion reports lately. A few weeks ago, three NFL players agreed to donate their brains to a concussion study and another NFL player came out in support of concussion-related research; last week a new study suggested a correlation between the heavy hits football players often endure and dementia.
But what impact, if any, will all this news have on the sport? Perhaps not much. Tebow is a 22-year-old who likely will go on to a long career in the pros. Yet his head coach, Urban Meyer, has not ruled him out for this Saturday’s game—where of course he’ll be hit again. Unlike many other sports, football is all about tackles; you can’t do much to avoid contact, especially as a quarterback.
The Dana Guide to Brain Health states that the “long-term outcome is excellent” for someone who suffers a concussion. But that is assuming the affected individual gets ample time to recover. Two weeks is simply not enough, in my opinion (Florida did not have a game last week). Tebow is more susceptible to get another, potentially more serious concussion if he takes the field before he is ready; according to the Dana Guide, “it has been estimated that after one brain injury, the risk of a second injury is three times greater, and that after a second injury, the risk of a third is eight times greater.” This should not be a “game-time decision,” as Meyer has said it will be; the decision is putting a single game ahead of Tebow’s long-term health.
Some good could have come out of Tebow’s injury, given his popularity and status. If Meyer, the Florida medical staff and Tebow himself had spoken out against injury, and said he would abstain from all football-related activities for at least a couple of weeks, it might have set a precedent for others to follow.
Instead, Tebow, known for being a great role model, is now inadvertently sending the wrong message. The game-time decision may be to sit Tebow, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s been practicing all week.
Furthermore, though the stakes are pretty high—Saturday’s opponent is rival powerhouse Louisiana State—they pale in comparison to the millions of dollars at stake in the professional leagues. If still-developing college players aren’t treated properly in amateur competitions, how can we expect professionals, whose huge contracts are contingent upon them performing, to be properly taken care of?
—Andrew Kahn
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