The National Football League is giving lip service to the notion that it is taking concussions seriously, but head injuries are still falling through the cracks. Take the case of San Diego’s Kris Dielman.
On Oct. 23 Dielman was hurt when there was “about 12 minutes left in the game” against the New York Jets, The New York Times reported.
It was obvious that he had sustained a head injury. He was having problems maintaining his balance while out on the gridiron. Yet he was not immediately pulled out of the game. He finished playing it, and was not assessed for a concussion until afterward.
Guess what? Dielman had a seizure on the flight back to California from New York.
In light of what happened to Dielman, the NFL last week put out a directive advising game officials to carefully look for symptoms of concussions in pro players, according to The Times.
An NFL spokesman told The Times, “Our game officials will receive concussion-awareness training and will reman alert to possible concussions during games.”
Isn’t “concussion-awareness” what the NFL and newspapers across the country have been talking about for at least the past two years?
Who dropped the ball here? Who failed Dielman?
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