Hoge, USA Football take concussions head on

Dallas Jackson, Rivals High Senior Analyst

Merril Hoge, shown here with the Pittsburgh Steelers, has become an active voice in the prevention of concussions.

During his eight-year NFL career, Merril Hoge piled up more than 5,000 from scrimmage and scored more than 30 touchdowns.

He was also diagnosed with four concussions and suffered what he said was more head trauma than he cared to guess at.

Hoge nearly lost his life – let alone the football career that was cut short.

Now, the 45-year-old football analyst has teamed with USA Football and Dr. Stanley Herring to spread the message of proper instruction and treatment to combat concussions suffered by America’s youth athletes.

“It’s time to end the witch-hunt,” Hoge said. “Head trauma and concussions need to be taken very seriously. They need to be in the forefront of the discussion among young people and the people who are training and coaching them.”

Hoge said things such as eliminating the three-point stance, which was recently proposed by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and strongly opposed by high school coaches, taking the helmets off players and changing the amount of equipment used are all reactionary to the problem, not solutions.

“Those answers are just made out of ignorance,” Hoge said. “None of them do anything to get the correct message out.”

That’s a message he and USA Football hopes to spread.

“The youth need proper training, proper instruction, and proper treatment,” he said. “The last of those three is the most important.”

Eliminating concussions altogether would be an ideal, yet unrealistic solution.

“The problem with concussions isn’t that they happen,” Hoge said. “It’s that the players return too soon from it.”

Herring, who is the medical director of the Spine Center and Harborview Medical Center in the state of Washington and a clinical professor at the University of Washington, says that the message is clear.

“Youth football participation today is higher than ever,” he said via press release. “Player health – particularly in the matters of concussions – is rightfully commanding attention.”

The attention and message, Hoge said, needs to be clear.

“The message needs to be consistent,” he said. “The brain is the most vital organ in your body. It regulates everything your body does. If it doesn’t work, you’re dead.”

Hoge says the message to coaches is two fold: check your ego at the door and act as though you are the parent, not the coach.

“Remind yourself you don’t know everything,” Hoge said. “They need to know what they are dealing with.”

Part of the message is taking the USA Football training course.

Hoge has put together an 11-minute video instruction on concussion care which can be seen as part of the USA Football coaching training sessions. The course was designed in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and is available online.

“No game, not even the Super Bowl, would be worth having one of your players’ lives cut short,” Hoge said. “I don’t think any coach could argue that.”

Hoge said his former coach, Chuck Noll, taught him many valuable lessons that he wants to pass on.

“Playing the game correctly and safer will make the game more enjoyable,” Hoge recalled of Noll. “Players need to be instructed to be in the proper place on the field, how to defend themselves, and how to play.”

Things like tackling behind your pads and seeing what you hit were repeated messages from Hoge. The bigger role a coach can play is in taking the mindset of a parent.

The bigger role a coach can play is in taking the mindset of a parent.

“If a coach can check his ego and desire to win at the door, that is a big step,” Hoge said. “A coach wouldn’t send his own kid back out there if he wasn’t medically cleared and that mentality needs to reach to all the kids on the team.”

While the battle against concussions needs to be a strong message from the top, it is also on the players themselves to take proper precaution.

Athletes, according to Hoge, need to broaden their scope when dealing with head trauma.

“This isn’t a knee,” he said. “You can get a new knee. You can’t get a new brain.”

Understanding that each player feels a sense of responsibility to his team, Hoge said that players can take a lesson from the pros when it comes to concussion treatment.

“Ben (Roethlisberger) and Kurt (Warner) both had to take time away this year,” he said. “Some people really grilled them for that, but they at least understood the bigger picture.”

A picture that gets clearer after seven consecutive symptom-free days.

“That is the magic number,” Hoge said. “If on the sixth day you get a headache, start the clock over.”

The cumulative effect of concussions is one of the largest problems in the battle against long-term brain damage, but the proper medical clearance could all but eliminate the potential problem.

“The greatest chance for long-term damage happens when a player gets another concussion before they are symptom-free from a previous concussion,” Hoge said.

And while the social conscious is not one that is quickly turned, Hoge knows this is an uphill battle but one that can be won. He even took to drawing a comparison to other safety measures that took time for the country to embrace.

“I look at this like the seatbelt law,” Hoge said. “When that law passed, my dad couldn’t understand it. He hated it. Now I can’t get in a car without putting one on.

“Hopefully, with this generation taking the issue seriously, the kids coming up now will understand the effects and realize how serious it really is. When they are coaches they will take it seriously and the problem can be eliminated.”