If the House Judiciary Committee can humble the National Football League into taking concussions more seriously, then it should reconvene to admonish the National Collegiate Athletic Association. A month after being compared by committee members to Big Tobacco for downplaying the possible lifelong effects of concussions, the NFL has reportedly decided to require teams to consult independent neurologists in evaluating brain-injured players.
As much as players are “shaken up,’’ the NFL should go even further to require that neurologists be on the field at every game. The NCAA should do the same. Yet it currently has no protocol whatsoever to govern brain injuries. The reason, as University of Georgia sports medicine director Ron Courson told The New York Times, is “differences in budgets and resources.’’ A brain is too terrible a thing to waste on that excuse. With Division I players in particular colliding with nearly the same violence as those in the NFL, the NCAA must also have neurologists on the sidelines. If a school cannot afford one, it should not be playing football at all.
