The events of yesterday haven’t change my view of the game, but I have taken the discussion on concussions to heart. A few years ago, if this same chain of events had occurred, I simply would have taken whatever doctor’s word that was put out there that Best would be fine to return in a couple of weeks.

Now, the new information and talk about concussions, especially in the NFL, have changed my thinking. At this point(and I know I’ve said it a lot), I honestly don’t think Best should play another snap of Cal football this season. Even if we had beaten Oregon, USC, and OSU and we were staring an undefeated season, a Rose Bowl Bid, or even a national title in the face – I’d still want to shut him down for the year. There’s so much we still don’t know about the long-term effects of even one concussion, and we know even less about the cumulative effect of multiple events. As a fan, I’m much more likely to err on the side of caution for a player’s safety, especially for college kids. Part of the problem, though, is that if it were left up to Jahvid, he’d be right back out there, possibly putting his life on the line, to support his teammates. That’s the kind of atmosphere that’s grown up around the game – man up, don’t let down your boys, tough it out. These kids have their whole lives ahead of them – it’s up to the coaches and doctors to learn the lessons of the past, and keep these kids from damaging themselves, regardless of the consequences.

As much pressure as there is for college kids to perform, it pales in comparison to what players in the NFL go through. NFL players have to fight through twists, sprains and even broken bones all in the course of a game. Travis Henry played the entire 2nd half of a football season with a broken fibula, and he was congratulated for it. True, it’s not a load-bearing bone, but that shouldn’t be the kind of thing a player is allowed to ‘fight through.’ To void letting down their coaches, their teammates, and their families(gotta put food on that table), players will suffer through, ignore and even lie about injuries to stay on the field – and they’re both tacitly and explicitly encouraged to do so by fans, some coaches, and upper management. To stay out for an extended period of time because you ‘bumped your noggin’ is often seen as a sign of weakness in professional football, so one wonders how extensive such a hidden problem really is and fears for the future of these players.

As to the future of football? Well, we all know how slow change is to come to most professional sports. Updates in equipment, enforcement of steroid rules, changes to rules of the game – all these things are always reactionary, never preventative, and the NFL is right in there with all the other leagues. Something tragic has to happen, and often several times at that, to actually foment change. Even team doctors are under such immense pressure to get players back out there that that they will begin and continue to act in the team’s best interest, not the players – basically violating the oath they swore when they became doctors(do they still do that anymore, btw?). Articles I’ve read, about teammates having to look out for each other because the doctor won’t, are simply frightening.

What football needs is a culture change. There needs to be a cultural shift for things to start to change – the NFL needs to see that the players’ health comes first, money be damned, and provide adequate care, both medically and financially, to make it happen. That culture change needs to flow through team management, doctors, coaches, and even the players themselves, such that everyone understands that the MOST important thing is health, and to adjust eveything to make that the priority.

The other change that football needs is a safety net. More than any other professional sport, football is a game where each game could be your last. More education needs to be given to the players on how to make the most of life after football. Make sure people have backup plans, fund their further education if they desire it. The biggest thing, though, is that players need to know that their families will be taken care of if they get injured. This would require the NFL to pony up a lot more money in terms of liability insurance and supplemental insurance. This peace of mind would encourage players to come clean about serious injuries that they have, so they can get the help they need without having to rush back onto the field. This also ties into the culture change though – players WANT to get back onto that field. They put pressure on themselves, not to mention the pressure from other teammates and coaches, to ‘tough it out’ and ‘be a man.’ Unfortunately, these attitudes currently are made to go hand-in-hand with the mental toughness needed to play the game of football.

Will this ever change? I don’t think it will. What it really comes down to is this: The people, to paraphrase the man on the 10-dollar bill, is a great beast. We love violence. We always have. The Roman ruins of the great Colosseum are evidence of our violent sporting past, and the billion-dollar NFL stadiums of today are evidence of our violent sporting present and future. Nowadays, we just like ‘controlled’ violence. More to the point, a cultural shift and mass protests in the fan base would certainly foment change. Why? Because as much as we like to complain about how owners do this and owners do that, fans control the flow of money. If fans don’t put their money in, there’s no revenue. If the revenue starts to dry up, the NFL suddenly becomes much more receptive to what the fans have to say. This, of course, is a total and complete pipe dream.

Much like politics, it will have to come down to the leaders in the NFL. We can only hope that one day someone, at some point, will have to have the foresight to make some very unpopular decisions – ones that will pay dividends for the future good of the league and the health of its participants.

As a certified nerd, I turned to the scientific literature and talked to a couple of MD’s to better understand concussions. What I learned:

- Best likely suffered a Grade 3 concussion. Diagnosing signs include stiff arms/blank face, and loss of consciousness.
- In a grade 3 concussion, mitochondria in the brain become overloaded with calcium ions and don’t get needed O2. This causes a neuronal energy crisis. Blood flow drops and cells begin to die.
- 1.5 million people get concussions a year
- 3.3% of all patients with concussions die (50,000)
- If you have 3 or more, your risk of getting depression increases by a factor of 3.
- After a concussion, the brain is VERY sensitive to changes in cerebral blood flow and the brain struggles to maintain proper chemical and ionic concentrations. If this can’t happen, brain cells die.
- Best’s second concussion occured whil the brain was still recovering from the first concussion, and this could have potentially killed him.

Again, these aren’t opinions…this is scientifically known.

Like most of us here, I spend a ridiculous amount of my extra time on football, be it watching it, discussing it, or even thinking about it. I enjoy the hard hits, the athletic plays, all the highlight reel plays. Football games honestly dictate how I feel. I was stunned silent after Oregon State in 2007. I was cold and bitter after USC 2008. I was angry after Oregon 2009.

This was an experience unlike any other. For starters, I was in the student section, but I was on the 50 in about the fifth row. I was so close to the action that I could see Kevin Riley’s beard, I could actually hear the players on the sidelines when a player tried to rally the rest of the team following Best’s injury (more on this later).

What really made this experience unlike any other was Jahvid’s play. He’s always been athletic and a competitor. I’ve had somewhat of an odd “personal” attachment to him. I read his scouting reports on here before he was recruited to Cal. When he took the field as a true freshman in 2007, I was yelling at all my friends about this kid and what a phenom he was going to be. He was fast, he was strong, he was mature, and never gave up.

The last time I can remember him making a dive like this into the end zone (at a game I was attending) was either ASU or UCLA 2008 (memory is a little shaken up right now). I’m used to seeing him do these ridiculous plays. So when he went airborne, I, like the crowd around me, cheered wildly and high-fived everyone. The stadium went wild. Then, in roughly ten seconds, it went dead quiet when we caught a glimpse of him still laying there on the replay board. They quickly cut away from it, but we all knew that he was down.

I have never heard Memorial Stadium this quiet. I’ve seen the Main Stacks louder than it was at that moment. Everyone around me was on their phones, texting their friends who were watching the game on tv, or quickly loading ESPN to see what was going on. My friend texted me that Best wasn’t moving at all and thought crossed my mind for a second that, well, maybe he had something worse than a concussion.

Over the summer (cit: Peter King), there was a conference of quarterbacks where Carson Palmer famously stated, to dead silence, that someone would die playing the game of football as it is right now. No one disagreed with this sentiment, but no one knew what to say about it either. This quote came to my head every single time I saw a ticky-tacky “roughing the passer” call or whenever I heard Ray Lewis or Joey Porter claim that the rules protect the QB too much. This effect was doubled after seeing Tim Tebow’s huge concussion against Kentucky.

Fortunately, Best was finally taken away alive on a stretcher and was moving his extremities. At this point, all I could ask for was that he recover quickly, even if his football career at Cal would be over.

At this point, the entire crowd was psyched up. “Win it for Jahvid” became a bit of a rallying cry at this point. As loud as we all were in the student section, we became ten times louder. I heard a quick defensive huddle on the field, where one player started shouting passionately “They took out one of our brothers!” It was an inspiring moment in an otherwise uninspiring game.

We got a bit of a scare later when Riley himself got a concussion on a tackle and my mind flashed back to Oregon 2008 when Riley suffered a concussion and ended up waking up in the locker room, remembering nothing. This only added to the general disillusionment at the time.

We know the rest of the story of the game, but part of me doesn’t want to blame anyone for this. I stayed out there and supported my team as best as I could, but I had a heavy heart about it. I stayed till the end and slowly trudged out of the stadium.

After the game, I was to meet some friends at a South Asian a capella concert, for which I was extremely late, but already had a ticket for. The place was packed and wouldn’t let anyone in, so they refunded my ticket. As I still had to wait for my friends, I went to MLK and ordered some green tea and just sat there at the counter for about half an hour. And at this time, I started reconsidering everything I love about football. The hard hits, the athletic plays, the highlight reels. And it took me this moment to realise that these are actual human beings and, in many cases, kids who are younger than I, playing this game.

This moment has really made me rethink my dedication as a football fan, to think about the human cost behind everything. I still do not have an answer and am still desperately trying to seek them. I followed NFL scores on Sunday and a little bit of highlights, but I honestly didn’t have it in me to watch the games.

I really just don’t know what to think anymore.

I was hosting a few Old Blues to watch the game on Sat, and after Best took the leap we all collectively held our breaths for a while. Based on the TV image of how Best held his left arm so rigid and straight after he fell, she thought he had broken his neck or spine. The rest of us had similar thoughts or fears.

Immediately things fell into a larger picture. The game was now just that: A game. Child’s play. Winning or losing suddenly lost it’s importance, and the celebrations of the OSU players and fans after big plays and/or scores seemed almost crass (note: the only reason I single out the OSU fans/players was because they were the only ones with anything to celebrate. On the odd successful Cal play ensuing celebrations felt equally as crass).

I’m convinced that I’ve seen the last of #4 on the field. At least I hope so. These kinds of injuries are far worse than ligament damage or broken bones. Best is still a kid, and to think that he could sustain another brain injury is scary, and just not worth his future. By all accounts he’s quite bright and could have a great life outside of football. He doesn’t seem like the kid who got a gift scholarship and wasn’t expected to handle classes, but a kid who earned admission to UC Berkeley on his own merits, and who also had the skill to play football at such a high competitive level.

Hopefully everyone involved in this (Jahvid, his family, friends, teammates, and coaches) will sit down and find the perpective and decide that even for Jahvid football is just a game, and that his life and health is more important. I really enjoyed watching #4 play, but the last thing I want is in 20 years time to have a home game called the Jahvid Best Memorial game to bookend the Joe Roth game.