INSIDE THE STRIPES

It has been more than a year since the NFHS, in an effort to quash rolling starts, mandated a new starting sequence be followed when assuming the offensive starting position.  More than a year seems like more than enough time for wrestlers, coaches, and officials to have adjusted to the change.

It took all of 30 seconds on YouTube to find the following video (45 second mark):

While this particular video was posted last year, I still see wrestlers doing this every week.

The offensive wrestler in the video sets his knee and foot, places his head on his opponent’s back, reaches around his opponent’s belly and attempts to place his hand over his opponent’s navel, places the near hand on his opponent’s elbow, becomes stationary, and waits for the whistle.  Instead of waiting for the whistle, he should have been receiving his first caution.

The starting sequence found in 5-20-5 NOTE can be summed up as follows: knees, navel, head, elbow, pause, whistle.

1. set the knee(s) and feet;
2. place the palm of one hand on the opponent’s navel;
3. place the head on or above the mid-line of the opponent’s back;
4. place the palm of the other hand on or over the back of the opponent’s near elbow;
5. both wrestlers shall become stationary; and
6. the referee shall pause momentarily before starting wrestling.

I know that we all make decisions every match about what to caution and what to correct on restarts.  After all, we could be there all night. In the aforementioned video without looking too closely, there could have been at least three cautions on the first restart. While I’m not advocating nitpicking, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that we all know the rule.

Unfortunately, that’s not been my experience.

All concussions are serious injuries.

If you have not yet had the chance, you should check out the following article in GQ magazine (October 2009):  Game Brain.  It is a thought provoking piece written by Jeanne Marie Laskas that takes a look at chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in primarily ex-NFL players. The article begins with the following excerpt:

Let’s say you run a multibillion-dollar football league. And let’s say the scientific community—starting with one young pathologist in Pittsburgh and growing into a chorus of neuroscientists across the country—comes to you and says concussions are making your players crazy, crazy enough to kill themselves, and here, in these slices of brain tissue, is the proof. Do you join these scientists and try to solve the problem, or do you use your power to discredit them?

Former Pittsburgh Steelers great Mike Webster died at the age of fifty and ended up on the slab of a young Nigerian born forensic pathologist/neuropathologist named Bennet Omalu.  Dr. Omalu became obsessed with how this Pittsburgh hero went from a larger than life athlete to a man whose very sanity was questioned.  Omalu theorized dementia pugilistica and set out to prove his findings. He began to run special tests which resulted in microscopic analysis of  Mike Webster’s brain tissue.  Dr. Omalu began processing slide of brain tissue after slide of brain tissue; so many, in fact, that he had to start paying for the tests out of his own pocket.

The breakthrough came when he got a set of slides back and found large accumulations of tau proteins all over the place. The tau proteins were responsible for killing brain cells in the regions of the brain responsible for mood, emotions, and executive functioning.   Dr. Omalu published his findings thinking that the doctors of the NFL would look at this scientific evidence that repeated blows to the head (like those sustained in a football game) could cause severe brain damage.  What happened turned out to be very different.  The NFL set out to discredit the young scientist and his findings.

While the NFL was attempting to discredit Dr. Omalu and his findings, ex-NFL players kept ending up on Dr. Omalu’s slab.  Ex-players with advanced CTE:

• Former Pittsburgh Steelers guard Terry Long dead at 45 after drinking antifreeze.
• Former Philadelphia Eagles safety Andre Waters dead at 44 after shooting himself in the mouth.
• Former Pittsburgh Steelers offensive linemen Justin Strzelczyk dead at 36 after crashing his car into a tanker carrying corrosive acid during a police chase.
• Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers offensive linemen Tom McHale dead at 45 after a lethal combination of oxycodone and cocaine.
• Former Miami Dolphins cornerback Gerald Small found dead at 52.
• Former San Diego Charger center Curtis Whitley found dead at 39.

At the time the article went to press Dr. Omalu had found 17 confirmed cases of dead ex-players with advanced CTE. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not limited to professional athletes.  I was rather shocked to find the following comments in a follow up Q & A Jeanne Marie Laskas had with Julian Bailes – chairman of the department of neurosurgery at the West Virginia University School of Medicine:

Q. We’re not just talking about NFL players. The congressional hearings are possibly looking into the effects of head trauma on college and high school players, too.

Shockingly, we have found this even at the high school level. Bennet Omalu has examined the brains of three high school players who died as a result of injuries they sustained from playing football. In the brain of one of the players, he found incipient CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Q. CTE in a high school football player—the same sort of brain damage that led to the downfall of Mike Webster, Terry Long, Andre Waters, and so many others?

Right. In a high school player. It gets back to the point you made in the GQ article: What is the NFL’s responsibility for the greater good? The greater good, meaning all the young men and women who desire to participate in football and other contact sports, the ones who aspire at a young age to emulate the NFL and their players and are fueled by their advertising and the incessant bombardment of our society. What is their responsibility to the greater good? I don’t know. They’re going to have to answer that.

Repetitive brain injuries are no laughing matter. They are simply a matter of life and death. Football is an extremely violent game. We can try to minimize risk by enforcing rules that prohibit the most violent types of contact (e.g. illegal helmet contact). Sadly, we simply cannot prevent all traumatic brain injuries. However, it is incumbent on players, coaches, officials, and administrators to know the signs of concussion and be vigilant about checking players for signs of loss of consciousness.  Fortunately, the NFHS gives us guidance in things to look for when making the determination of whether or not a player has lost consciousness.

3.5.10 SITUATION D:

What guidelines should the officials follow in determining if a player is apparently unconscious?

RULING: Some obvious guides would be that the player is unable to receive information and/or unable to respond to questions or the player’s responses are inappropriate. The observation of the player will normally be made by more than one official, and in some cases may involve the entire crew. If the officials determine a player appears to be unconscious, he must leave and may not return to the game without the written authorization of a physician (MD/DO).

Additional common symptoms include:

• Unusually long headaches
• Memory impairment
• Difficulty concentrating
• Ringing in the ears
• Persistent neck pain
• Fatigue, lack of motivation, reduced energy
• Light/noise sensitivity
• Disruption of normal sleep schedule
• Nausea/vomiting
• Vision problems

The vast majority of coaches properly place the safety and welfare of their players ahead of winning a contest.  They also recognize the dangers that traumatic brain injuries pose to their scholar athletes.  I have, however, personally observed what I would assume to be temporary lapses in judgment by coaches in the heat of the moment.  These coaches have attempted to send in players that had gone out earlier in the game after displaying signs of loss of consciousness.

In such cases we, as officials, are the last line of defense. Don’t let a coach’s momentary lapse in judgment jeopardize the future of their scholastic athlete. Call an officials time out and invoke 3-5-10 d.

In the video clip below, we have a legal forward pass that ends up simultaneously possessed by airborne offensive and defensive players. The defensive player in joint possession of the ball appears to return to the field of play in his own end zone prior to the offensive player. The ruling on the field by the side judge was touchdown.

Is this play a touchdown or an interception? Did the crew get it right?

The correct answer, of course, is… it depends.

This play highlights one of the areas where the NFHS (high school) and NCAA (college) rule sets differ.

Under NFHS rules, “a forward pass, legal or illegal, is complete and may be advanced when caught by any player A or B. If a forward pass is caught simultaneously by two opponents, the ball becomes dead and belongs to the passing team. (7-5-4)”. Since possession of a live ball in the opponents end zone is always a touchdown (8-2-1), this play would result in a touchdown under Federation rules.

Under NCAA rules, the legal forward pass is considered completed or intercepted by the player who first returns to the ground in bounds when joint possession is established with both players in the air (AR 7-3-6 II). In this case since the defensive player returned to the ground on the field of play first, the play would result in an interception. Since the ball became dead in possession of a player behind the goal line and the offense was responsible for the ball being there (8-6-1 [a]), the play results in a touchback under NCAA rules.

This is a high school game played under NFHS rules between the Blackhawk Cougars and Montour Spartans in Pennsylvania.

The side judge was in perfect position and ruled correctly, touchdown!