Responsibility for recognizing concussions

By Bruce Maurer on 13 September 2013

I don’t know whether you’re hearing this from other crew chiefs/officials but it’s frequently being said.

At all of our varsity games this year at least one coach or team trainer has stated they don’t want any of the officials making a determination of whether one of their players has signs and/or symptoms of a concussion and should be done for the day.

They’ve stated they would like for us to stop the game and not to conduct any evaluation at all of the player and let their trained medical personnel handle the situation due to the strict restrictions of the Ohio return to play law.

How should crews be handling this when coaches make this request/demand?

I would indicate that you always want to stop the game for any player that is injured and have them evaluated by professionals. Most officials do not want to evaluate injured players. That being said, if you have an obvious concussion symptom with a player, you will be sending them out for that and they will not return.