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Iím a little out of my league with my fellow guest speakers here. My background is . . . I
played the game; I coached high school football for 7 years and college for 31 years. Now
that makes me old. I was a school board member in my local community for 7 years. I was on
the American Football Coaches Association Board of Trustees for several years. I was
on the rules committee of the NCAA for one and a half terms, and I have learned a lot.
Iíve been exposed to great doctors and trainers in my career here at Michigan. But really,
when it comes down to the real issues of concussion, Iím very uneducated. Iíve learned probably
more since Iíve got out of coaching. Iíve read all the New York Times articles on this
issue, but I guess what I want to do today is give you one perspective from the standpoint
of one coach.
I received an award in my last year of coaching . . . the Bobby Dodd Award. Bobby Dodd was
a great player and football coach and athletic director and Hall of Fame and the whole thing.
He wrote a book, and I was given this book as a gift back in my first year of coaching
in the late 60s. And Bobby Dodd . . . at the end of this book . . . he said the one thing
that we must always keep in mind is that the most important thing in the game is the boy
who plays the game. And you know, that should be our mantra in coaching, because itís more
important than winning and then the money and then the prestige and the fame that comes
with success. And I always tried to keep that in mind from the time that I read it. I had
coaches who were like that. It was a different era.
But I think we all understand thereís a risk in sports, especially in games like football,
lacrosse. Itís there in soccer as well, hockey, and a lot of other sports. And football . . . back
in the early 1900s, Theodore Roosevelt saved the game. There were a lot of deaths in this
game, and there were people who wanted to abolish it. And Roosevelt had a son who played
the game, and he loved the game. And he brought a lot of coaches together and he said, look,
if you donít develop some rules and make this a safer game, then we are going to abolish
it. Of course, that is no different than what we have today, but in my lifetime certainly,
the most serious research that has come forward is this link between concussion and long-term
mental health risk.
This morning in the New York Times, Dr. James Boehnke . . . I may *** his name, but heís
a University of Michigan doctor . . . he said the level of evidence is very, very strong.
(He is) a professor of biostatistics at the University of Michigan and an outside advisor
on the research. He said strokes and head injuries which make alzheimers more likely
also cause brain inflammation. This is a wake-up call, and I applaud the New York Times because
I think as a group of professionals in the coaching profession most of us are not educated
like we need to be. What we need to do is . . . thereís legislation in the national
. . . . in the Senate and the House of Representatives regarding the safety issues. We have the NCAA,
we have all of these state high school athletic associations, the NCAA, the university presidents
whoíve have taken over the leadership of inter-collegiate athletics, the equipment
manufacturers, the officials, the people who make the rules, the media, the parents . . . all
of those people . . . we have to get on the same page. And thatís a major problem, itís
a major challenge, itís a major job.
But in my view, education is the key, and thatís what weíve heard today. How is the
game being taught? How is it being coached? What are the rules? How is it being officiated?
How is it being administered? And so yesterday, the New York Times had an article about John
Madden football in the NFL that was alluded to earlier, and this is really exciting stuff
to me, and I think it probably can be applied to any sport. But in Madden Football, which
is produced by EA Sports, they will no longer show plays where the . . . they will teach
that itís wrong on these video games that all these kids watch . . . itís wrong to
lead with the head. Theyíre going to make that point. They will not display helmet-to-helmet
hits no longer. and thatís been a big part of the attraction in the past.
I can give you an example . . . 1997 we were playing Penn State late in the season, and
the national championship was on the line. I had a player named Adrian Taylor . . . the
game was at Penn State . . . and on the Penn State sideline, Adrian Taylor made the hardest
hit Iíve ever seen on a football field. I mean, you could hear it all over that stadium.
Of course, Adrian Taylor never played another snap in football, because they felt after
his recovery that . . . .he wanted to play . . . but they did not feel the risk was worth
it, and he never played again. But for the entire next week that play was shown on ESPN
it seemed like hundreds of times.
So I think the idea of taking a game and teaching youngsters how to play safe . . . theyíre
not going to show defenseless players. You know the most dangerous play in football is
when a quarterback is looking down the field to throw a pass and he gets hit in the head
from someone he doesnít see. And the NFL has done a great job in making that a fine
and directing themselves to correcting that type of play. Theyíre going to show concussioned
players in this video, but theyíre going to show that they have to be removed and itís
no longer safe for them to return that day. So I think that thereís some tremendous things
being done with this . . . even though itís a business, theyíre trying to make money
. . . but you can expect . . . how many kids today learn the game watching it on video
as opposed to playing it themselves in the park? And what they see influences the way
they play the game.
Cris Collinsworth, who was a former NFL player and now a lead broadcaster, has done an unbelievable
job of pointing out unsafe plays in NFL games, and heís taken a lot of criticism for it.
But I think that weíve got some things in the media and the educational realm thatís
going to have a great impact, but in the chatrooms, this is very unpopular with the changes that
theyíre making in this game. But I think those of us who have been in the game understand
itís a great issue. I think the most important thing as it relates to the game itself is
how long are the games and how long are the seasons.
You know, in the NFL, Dan Rooney whoís the owner . . . heís the ambassador to Ireland
now . . . but he owns the Pittsburgh Steelers, and he is one owner in the NFL who has come
out opposed to lengthening their season to 18 games. Even though for him, as a business
man, 18 games is a lot of money as opposed to 16. But we have the same issue in college
football. When I played, we played a 9 game season. Nine games. And I can remember we
had a great year. We were invited to a bowl game. They asked the players if they wanted
to go, and the team voted no. Itís probably the last . . . I guarantee you itís the last
time a college team did not go to a bowl game because they voted not to. Because there ës
money in those bowl games you know. Then we went to 10 games and then we went to 11 games.
Six or seven years ago, toward the end of my career, there was a proposal for a 12 th
game. I was in an AFCA meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, I think . . . maybe Texas . . . but
at any rate, Miles Brand, the president of the NCAA was there, and someone asked him
about why there was such strong support among the presidents and the athletic directors
for a 12 th game. And he said itís hypocrisy. I mean, anybody in that room was stunned to
hear that. And he went on to say exactly what we knew as coaches . . . it was all about
money.
O f course, they went on and passed that legislation and now we have 12 games, and of course with
a bowl game, we have 13. And in the Big Ten conference this year, weíre going to a playoff
because of the additional . . . because of Nebraska in the conference . So the Big Ten
champion next year will play 14 games. And the thing that a lot of people donít understand
in college football . . . there are more plays in a college game than there are in a professional
game. At one time, we did a study. We found that 12 college games was like playing 15
professional games. Now the NCAA, and I think our commissioners, they have tried to shorten
the games by letting the clock continue to run on out-of-bounds plays and those sorts
of things. But the truth is those are major issues as we go forward in college football.
The other issue of great concern is the equipment issue. In the 1960s . . you know in the 50s,
there were a lot of helmets without any facemasks, and thereís a lot of people who believe today
that the facemask is what has led to taking away the fear of the player getting hit in
the face. If he plays without fear . . . because if you look at the helmets today, they call
what they put across the face a cage. Because really itís like being in a cage. The helmets
have changed significantly. The thing that I think is really a critical issue where we
need to educate parents is that last year, according to the paper in the Times, there
were 100,000 helmets that were over 10 years of age that were being used, and most of those
were by youth football players. So we have to do some things . . . thereís big business
in reconditioning these helmets. So a high school coach will collect all his helmets
at the end of the season, send them out to a company that will repaint them , if they
happen to have things repaired, facemasks, etc. theyíll do all that. And theyíll continue
to use them year after year because the cost of helmets today . . . many of them are $200,
and a lot of these schools, a lot of these youth leagues, canít afford it. We have to
get beyond that in some way.
Iíd just like to end with the idea that to me if youíre a parent or a grandparent or
youíre involved with a youngster thatís getting ready to play the game, the number
one thing you need to do is make sure that he or she has a good physical examination
because there are too many instances in the past where they have not had physicals, and
it has led to major issues. Conditioning is another thing . . . they need to run and condition,
particularly for a sport like football or any sport where theyíre wearing a lot of
equipment. They need to condition themselves before the season starts without the equipment.
You know in the old days, football players would show up the first day of practice, put
all the pads on and go out and play in August, and that is an extremely unhealthy thing.
I think the other thing that is critical in todayís football . . . when I played, a guy
240 pounds was one of the biggest men on the team, and as recently as the 1980s, players
were . . . linemen , the biggest players on the team . . . were 250-260. My last year,
I had a tackle, a great player, named Jake Long who played at 330 pounds. If you look
at what has happened physiologically, players are much bigger, theyíre much stronger, and
theyíre much faster. Thatís why thereís a greater risk at the game. In my judgment,
one of the things that any young athlete needs to do is they need to make sure that thereís
strength training for the neck. Itís something, to me, that it has to be a major point of
emphasis as we go through.
You know, the key for a parent is if you watch enough practice, if you listen to the coaches,
itís pretty easy to figure out whoís really good and who needs to learn some things. And
thatís something, you know, that . . . in a practice . . . what I read recently was
that a majority of concussions occur in practice. Of course in practice, youíve got a limited
number of coaches, and when you have contact drills, itís impossible to see 22 guys. Thatís
why if youíre a parent, and your son is playing youth football or . . . then you need to watch
as many practices as you can and get a feel for how the coaching . . . the approach the
coach is taking, and the kind of drills he ran.
Iíll never forget when I was a freshman in college, weíd go out and one of the first
practices of the year, weíve got the pads on, and the coach lines us up with 15 yards
apart and he says, ìNow I want you to run at each other as fast as you can, and one
guy will be the ball carrier and one guy will be the tackle.î We knew then this guy was
crazy, but we did it. We did it. Thatís what kids do. They do what theyíre coached to
do. When you see things like that, you have to be willing to take your son out of the
drill or make sure the coach understands that you want to know why heís doing that. And
thereís a way to do that . . . but at times . . . when it comes down to the health of
your son or your daughter, thatís a pretty important issue.
And then the thing that I would do, I would always ask that kid, ìDo you like playing?
Do you want to play?î Make sure heís playing because he wants to play, not because you
want him to play. Or he shouldnít feel compelled to play because he feels like his dad or his
mother really wants him to play, because in the end, thatís an issue. And is he ready
to play? You know, you go out to a practice, or you go watch a team practice, how physiologically
does he measure up in stature. You know, thereís things that if youëre paying attention as
a parent, youíre going to know what to do when the time comes.
So I guess weíre going to take some questions here, but I think the biggest thing is . . . from
a coaching perspective . . . you know, the communication that you have with a parent.
I had a lot of parents call me, and 90% of them would say, ìCoach, donít tell Jimmy
Iím calling, no matter what!î But youíve got to feel like, and have the confidence,
that the coach wants to communicate. It may not always be easy, but heís never too busy
to speak with you about question or concerns that you have.