Minnesota Injury report for Purdue game:

GopherLady

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Minnesota head coach Jerry Kill has announced the following players will not play Saturday at Purdue, due to injury:

Brendan Beal - knee
Josh Campion - head
Jimmy Gjere - head
Harold Legania - foot
Zach Mottla - head
Leston Simpson - head
Troy Stoudermire - arm
 

Are concussions getting worse and more common every year? And they seem to be taking longer and longer to recover. I just hope that the increase recovery time will prove dividends when these kids are 70 years old.
 

It's too bad about Beal, I was looking forward to seeing him play a lot this year.
 

Concussions are getting more frequent. Probably due to a lot more caution taken with head injuries.

When I played and coached, which were both years ago. we fitted helmets tight. Very tight. No slop and the ear lobes took at beating in the process of removing the helmet. I can remember the days of NCOSA certification or something like that and can remember throwing all of the non-certified helmets in the dumpster that were in service for many years. Yet it was very, very rare to have a player complain of headaches or other concussion symptoms.

Now I see players flip their lid off with ease. And seldom is there a game that I watch where I see a player or two loose their helmet.

Can anyone tune me in to how they fit helmets in todays world?
 

Concussions are getting more frequent. Probably due to a lot more caution taken with head injuries.

When I played and coached, which were both years ago. we fitted helmets tight. Very tight. No slop and the ear lobes took at beating in the process of removing the helmet. I can remember the days of NCOSA certification or something like that and can remember throwing all of the non-certified helmets in the dumpster that were in service for many years. Yet it was very, very rare to have a player complain of headaches or other concussion symptoms.

Now I see players flip their lid off with ease. And seldom is there a game that I watch where I see a player or two loose their helmet.

Can anyone tune me in to how they fit helmets in todays world?

When I was playing, until 2003, the helmets were still tight. I remember feeling like my ears were being torn off when ever I took my helmet off. The only headaches I received were from the tightness of my helmet. Not sure if this is what goes on now or at all schools, but when we had equipment hand out, the coaches would check the tightness of the helmet. If it was to loose, obviously we had to get a tighter one. Until my senior year, we had a coaching change and he left it up to the players to pick out all of their equipment and never checked the fit of any of them. We didn't have any issues with concussions, but we did have players getting over sized pads because other players (linemen) were taking the smaller pads leaving skilled players with over sized equipment.
 


Can't help you out. I played in 9th grade with a leather helmet. Amazingly I survived without any concussions.
 

This was a solid piece by Frontline. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/football-high/

"At least 60,000 concussions occur every year on high school football fields. But now there's a new piece of the story: Researchers' neurological tests are showing that young players who never reported symptoms of a concussion, but had taken sub-concussive hits, have suffered significant damage to their memories. As the season wore on, these players performed increasingly worse on cognitive tests."

"Professor Tom Talavage, an expert in functional neuroimaging and co-director of Purdue University's MRI facility, conducted a study [PDF] on the cognitive impairment of high school football players. He tells FRONTLINE:By the end of the season we found that in 50 percent of the players [who] were brought in not concussed, we were detecting changes, either in their computer-based testing and/or in their functional MRI data, showing that something had changed in the way their brain was performing a particular set of simple tasks."

Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/front...ention-players-parents-coaches/#ixzz1a3VpsNhv
 

In IT for the ∫e ͯ;442916 said:
When I was playing, until 2003, the helmets were still tight. I remember feeling like my ears were being torn off when ever I took my helmet off. The only headaches I received were from the tightness of my helmet. Not sure if this is what goes on now or at all schools, but when we had equipment hand out, the coaches would check the tightness of the helmet. If it was to loose, obviously we had to get a tighter one. Until my senior year, we had a coaching change and he left it up to the players to pick out all of their equipment and never checked the fit of any of them. We didn't have any issues with concussions, but we did have players getting over sized pads because other players (linemen) were taking the smaller pads leaving skilled players with over sized equipment.

It was the same for me as well. It amazes me when I see helmets just flying off guys' heads all the time. I think my helmet would have stayed on 95% of the time even if I wasn't wearing a chin strap.
 

Regarding concussions:

My understanding is that the most probable cause of epilepsy is thought to be scar tissue on the brain. I also recall Kill stating (I think it was on BTN's Welcome to My Office show) that he thinks his recurring seizures might be the result of a concussion (or more than one) that he suffered as a college player. If all this is the case, Kill might be more inclined to hold someone out, and hold them out longer, if they had a concussion.
 



It was the same for me as well. It amazes me when I see helmets just flying off guys' heads all the time. I think my helmet would have stayed on 95% of the time even if I wasn't wearing a chin strap.

I remember one game we played, probably the biggest/hardest hit I've seen while playing. Our running back was hit so hard both of the jaw pads that snap in below the ear hole flew out of his helmet and 2 of the 4 chin strap buttons popped off, but the helmet never came off.
 

Concussions are being monitored much more closely now than in the past, at least at the high school level. Players take a test on the computer to establish a baseline and whenever they get a head injury they have to re-take the test and they must score at a certain level before they can return to the field. In the past players would get dinged and would return to the field before thy probably should have.
 

I played 1998-2001 in HS, very old school coaches, heavy hitting in practice, hard conditioning, etc
I'm pretty sure i personally had 2-3 concussions that were minorish, but nonetheless affected me for awhile. We called it getting your bell rung.
It's obviously become a point of emphasis, I knew guys who got several bad ones during the season and came back soon without any obvious problems.

I think it's just become a more cautionary part of the game now. I'd bet alot of guys with them could play effectively, but their just more careful.

IMO it's become a new fad of concern, it used to be spearing and neck injuries.
I really do believe it will fade as a major point of emphasis as doctors learn to treat and prevent them more effectively.
 

When I was a kid I came down on a kickoff, full go flip on the reciever, I saw stars. The defensive plays were called in with hand signals, and I relayed them to the defense in the huddle. the first play I called with an offensive play from the year before when I was the quarterback. Everybody looked at me strange, and I called it again. The other linebacker pushed me aside and called the correct scheme. That whole series I couldn't get the play called right, nobody said anything though, a few chuckles, and the other linebacker called the plays. By the next series I was okay.

Stars and confusion happened a few times in High School. You just tried to survive the next couple of plays and get your head straight. I never really remember persistant head aches from them though in the week following, I assume they couldn't have been that bad.
 



I seems there are more and more helmets flying off in the middle of games. Someone's going to get killed out there continuing the play after his helmet flew off. I keep seeing players who don't have their chin strap fully snapped in place - there will be two snaps on each side, and he only has one on each side snapped.

The problem with better protective equipment is that the more you improve it, the more reckless people get with it. We've seen the attempts to stop helmet to helmet hits, but it has only been partially successful. In the old leather helmet days, players were less likely to be wreckless with their heads.

There also has been a change in attitude toward concussions. It used to be that people thought "It's just a concussion, no big deal."
 

I have never had it tested out, but I would bet the migraines I get now are due to the concussions I had playing football.

I had the misfortune of tackling one guy by hitting his knee square with my helmet. The impact left me in la la land. It cracked/split my helmet in half, but it was still mostly hanging on my head. He went on to play for the Giants for a few years.

This is Gjere’s second one in a short time, isn’t it? I sure hope he is all right…
 




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