I wanted to take a moment here on this Championship Saturday for college football to discuss a story that has been in the new for the last week.

Last Saturday, Florida State University’s quarterback Tate Rodemaker suffered an apparent concussion after being hit by two University of Florida defenders on their last drive of the game. At the time, FSU was only up 2 points against Florida and was looking to close out the game and remain undefeated going into the game in the conference championship and keep their hopes alive for a shot at making the college football playoffs.

Rodemaker was already the back-up quarterback for FSU as their starter suffered a tib/fib fracture the week before and was sitting up in the suites watching the game. When he was sandwiched between two defenders, you could see that he was very slow to get up and that the medical staff quickly sprinted onto the field to assess him. During multiple replay angles, you could see that his eyes gave a blank stare and he appears to not have control of his body, both indicators of a loss of consciousness. He also required assistance from the medical staff off the field to the sidelines for a full evaluation.

What is a sports related concussion?

A concussion is a blow to the head followed by any number of signs or symptoms of a head injury, including loss of consciousness, poor balance, nausea, dizziness, etc. These signs and symptoms may present immediately after the injury, or a few minutes, hours or days later. When there is a suspicion of a concussion, athletes are to be pulled from competition and evaluated by a standardized set of tests to evaluate various brain functions and to try to elicit subjective symptoms and objective signs. That is the gold standard of care.

Concussion Evaluation Tools

Earlier this year, the British Journal of Sports Medicine released their Consensus Statement on Concussion in Sport on the latest best practices for diagnosing and managing sports concussions. They also updated the Sideline Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT6) for ages 13 and up, and the Child Sideline Concussion Assessment Tool (child SCAT6) for ages 8-12.

They also released a Concussion Recognition Tool that can be used by parents or coaches in identifying if a concussion may have occurred and when to get an evaluation.

Within that CRT6, you will find that a loss of consciousness or responsiveness, lying motionless on the playing surface, dazed, blank, or vacant looks, slow to get up after a direct hit to the head, and unsteady on the feet are visual clues of a possible concussion. From the television feed, you could see that Rodemaker had all of those. Those signs would have indicated that he would have needed to undergo a sideline concussion assessment to be able to go back into the game.

Having unsteady balance or slow to get up alone would not be enough to assess an athlete for a concussion outside of a hit to the head, seen or unseen. An athlete with a number of injuries, especially lower body injuries, can be slow to get up or have unsteady balance that isn’t a concussion.

A sideline assessment test should take a physician or athletic trainer 10-15 minutes to fully perform, prohibiting a player from returning to the game on the same drive. The assessment takes this much time to fully assess the brain functioning, give time for symptoms to be recognized, and to be thorough. Any athlete who presents with ANY sign or symptoms after a blow to the head should be removed from the game and not return to any game the same day.

How this applies to Rodemaker

In youth sports, it is best practices for the athlete to be seen by a concussion trained physician prior to returning to play. Governing bodies, like the NCAA, require schools to have concussion protocols that they have pre-established that determine the next steps once a concussion is expected.

Florida State is scheduled to play this evening against University of Louisville for the ACC Championship and Tate Rodemaker is listed as “game time decision.”

I’ll let you in on a little bit of inside information…they know whether is he going or not, they just aren’t telling the media or letting Louisville plan accordingly.

FSU announced earlier this week that Rodemaker had suffered a concussion and developed symptoms on Sunday, not uncommon with concussions (although he clearly showed signs on Saturday after the hit and why he shouldn’t have been allowed to go back into the game).

The reason that FSU already knows if he is going to play tonight or not is because there is a return-to-play protocol that has to be followed before an athlete can return to competition. See the chart below.

In order to play on Saturday, Rodemaker would have to have tolerated light activity that did not increase his symptoms by Monday, light aerobic exercise by Tuesday, and individual non-contact, sport-specific activities by Wednesday.

He would have had to have had a complete resolution of his symptoms by Thursday and been able to go through a non-contact practice at high intensity, and then been able to go through a full, regular practice on Friday to be prepared to go on Saturday. If he didn’t have a regular practice on Friday, then he wouldn’t have been able to pass the progression and be cleared to play.

That is how they know if he is going to go today or not.

And those are just his return-to-play physical progression. He would have also have not had any cognitive issues with school or have needed any accommodations. See the chart below.

I’m not saying that Florida State did anything wrong with the handling of Tate Rodemaker’s concussion, I don’t know what has gone on. But I want to inform you as a parent, that what you might be hearing in the news is not necessarily always what it seems. He shouldn’t be treated any different than any youth or high school athlete with a concussion, no matter how important the game. The brain doesn’t care what level you play or how important the game is to your team, school, or alumni base.

I guess we will all be waiting until 8:00 pm EST for that decision. That is in fact, game time.

Be on the lookout soon for more posts about sports concussions what they mean for your athlete.