Rick Pitino on Concussions: I Don’t Buy It

Awareness of concussions in sports has grown enormously in recent years.  As we’ve seen with all the to do surrounding head shots in the NFL, league officials and doctors are working to try to make sports safer — right now and down the road.  Is the raised awareness the result of advanced research in the medical field or just plain paranoia?  From the sound of it, Rick Pitino is going with the latter.

The Big Lead passed along a few comments Pitino made to The Courier-Journal after one of his Louisville Cardinals was diagnosed with a concussion.

It’s the seventeenth concussion we’ve had this year,” Pitino said. “I’ve been coaching now 35 years. I’ve seen maybe 5 concussions in 35 years. The new thing is everybody has a concussion. If you walk out and slightly brush the door, you have a concussion. That’s the way it is today.”

You might wear a white coat, Rick, but you aren’t a doctor.  From a coaching standpoint, I can understand how an increase in concussion diagnoses can be frustrating.  After all, there’s a good chance it means your guy can’t play in the next game.  However, I don’t see how you can argue that it’s a bad thing.  Doctors aren’t looking to screw players out of playing time by claiming they have some sort of injury that doesn’t exist.  Medicine advances and safety improves.  Rick Pitino and James Harrison will just have to learn to deal with it.