NFHS Rules Changes

[ajmc]

I totally agree that the final determination about concern will rest largely on what the rule revision actually says, however I simply don't agree that the news release actually says anything to be really concerned about. I am not suggesting anyone dismiss concerns, but I don't think exaggerating them serves any useful purpose either.

Today's language in NF:3-5-10 of, "an apparently injured player is discovered by the official" seems to limit any responsibility an official might have to the extent the official must discover something, and it must be apparent to him that whatever he discovered suggests a possible injury.

The NFHS Press Release states, "Now, officials are charged with removing any player who shows signs, symptoms or behaviors consistent with a concussion, such as loss of consciousness, headache, dizziness, confusion or balance problems, and shall not return to play until cleared by an appropriate health-care professional." It seems the quantifying requirement would be that any athlete in question has "to show signs" of the symptoms or behaviors that suggest the possibility of concussion, and when any of these signs is recognized, refer the player to the team's, "appropriate health care professional".

I suspect the news release may well be somewhat more ambiguous than the actual rule will turn out to be, but I see nothing in the tone of this revision that comes anyway near anticipating field officials diagnose a concussion, or would be responsible for signs that were not obvious and recognizable.

Requesting that we look for specific signs, (that I submit most, if not all, officials have been looking for for generations) and specifying those signs to look for, doesn't seem to add to the level of liability we currently have to hold player safety as a paramount responsibility, it merely focuses attention to this particular circumstance, which "Points of Emphasis" do every year with a variety of issues.

As the incident in Texas (The collision between an official and a coach, where the coach was seriously injured and despite the coach accepting responsibility for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, causing the collision, the covering official was sued by an Insurance Company over Woekmens Compensation payments to the Coach, who was unable to continue working as a result of his injuries) should warn us all, we have little or no control over who may choose to sue us about anything we do, aside from doing our very best to do our job as properly as possible.