The Robert Woods "Concussion" Controversy

As we saw in the comments of an earlier post on CC the hit that Robert Woods took and his clearance to continue playing was and remains controversial.

Lets look at the family side of things first. This is how Robert Woods' mom reacted.

USC receiver Robert Woods endured a scary moment last week at Utah, falling face-first to the turf after suffering a concussion late in the first quarter.

It was so scary that his mother stopped watching the game on TV.

"She didn’t know if I got back in or not," Woods said Tuesday. "Then my aunt called her and said I scored. She said, ‘OK,’ but she still wasn’t watching."

Woods sat out only briefly after taking a hard shot while throwing a block on a punt return. Team medical personnel put him through a concussion protocol on the sideline, including a balance test, math problems and asking him the current date and the name of the president.

I can't even imagine how parents must feel when their sons go down to injury.

The question is simple, should Woods been allowed to continue playing even after passing the mandatory concussion test?

Further complicating the issue is a series of tweets that a writer from Utah's Scout website posted (and then deleted) claiming that Woods failed the concussion test.

Earlier Tuesday, Brian Smith, the managing editor for InsideTheUtes, the Utah Scout affiliate, caused a commotion on Twitter when he claimed that USC wide receiver Robert Woods failed a concussion test but was allowed to play in the USC's 38-28 win over the Utes.

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The original tweets were deleted, but several follow-up tweets were posted as a retraction.

"Ok, time to eat some crow (as the attacks continue). I was not able to hear every word the trainer said, and my words were too sharp for...what I observed," Smith later tweeted. "For sake of the attacks coming my way, I'll leave it at that. I hope the discussions continue generally on concussions."

With player safety at both the NCAA and the NFL level becoming more and more of an issue it is hard not to see why Woods going back into the game could be controversial.

Couple this issue with the conservative approach that USC's team physicians took with Jarvis Jones and Armond Armstead and it gets even more confusing.

Brian Smith has to be out his mind to go down this road in the first place. I could see how this situation could be lined up to take shots at Lane Kiffin. Haters will find any excuse and that is exactly what I think happened here. That Smith backtracked that he didn't hear everything that Woods was asked shows me that this guys was looking for anything to take a shot at USC and/or Kiffin in the face of the loss last Thursday.

Sure, Utah had the early momentum and many USC fans including myself were concerned about how the game would progress but the better team dug in and found a way to win. Utah had some good things happening in the early part of the game but they couldn't hang with 'SC.

For the most part, Utah's fans are pretty top notch...it's a shame that they will take a bit of a hit because someone looking to make a name for himself (because he probably hates Kiffin) jumped the gun in trying to break some news.

I have said it before and I will say it again...

Doctors don't do medicine, doctors practice medicine.

Some things are easy to treat while others can be dicey. Couple that with the litigious society that we live in and it isn't hard to see how Doc's are second guessed.

Unless you are the one treating the patient it is pretty easy to diagnose and treat from your couch. For those with a little bit more skin in the game it is a little more difficult...even with all the rules and regulations out there.