Easy Goes It For Skinner
The latest news from over at Wake is that Riley Skinner is showing no symptoms from his concussion. That said, the medical staff will take every precaution, as it should. Skinner won’t practice tonight, and he won’t dress in pads on Tuesday. The most he’ll do Tuesday is throw the ball around a little. So he won’t practice in pads until Wednesday, if then, and will not participate in any drills this week that involve contact. He’s still listed as questionable for Saturday’s game at No. 10 Georgia Tech.
This one hits close to home. I have a nephew, Ward Collins, who was one of the toughest nuts to ever play safety for the Franklin High Panthers. He was a captain when Fred Goldsmith really got the program rolling around five years ago, before Goldsmith moved on to Lenoir-Rhyne. But Ward was always lighting people up with such ferocity and force—especially on kickoffs—that even a head as hard as his couldn’t take the punishment. He was sidelined several times with concussions and I remember the stress on my brother Joe and his wife Pam, and how they debated on whether Ward should return to the field. There are no easy calls on this. Ward loved playing football and the team needed him. But the story ended happily when Ward got through his career no worse for wear and ended up at that school somewhere in the vicinity of the geographic center of the state that will go nameless (though I’m sure there are some of you readers who would see that as an obvious sign of mental impairment).
Recently, R. Zach Smith, the sharp young whippersnapper from Houston who covers the Deacons for Rivals.com, turned me on to the long, involved piece written on concussions in football by Malcolm Gladwell for the New Yorker. I needed to read it, but I’m not so sure I’m glad I did. Some pretty gruesome stuff in there, about the damage that can be done when guys this big, this fast and this physical go slamming into each other. It was great journalism and a must-read by anyone with a strong stomach.