iNSIDE SCOOP: Head-Banging

NASCAR joined the National Football League in adopting a concussion protocol for its personnel.

Good.

The science is far from settled on concussion-related injuries over time, but it’s leaning hard in the direction that does. NASCAR drivers may not absorb as many hits over time as NFL players, but the ones they do take are a lot harder, on average. You have a few bell-ringing incidents inside the race car and you know about it down the road.

Ironically, the test is known as the ImPACT test (pardon the pun, won’t you?). It stands for Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing, a big mouthful that essentially says, ‘hey, step over here…you got your bell rung? What day is it? How many fingers am I holding up?’ and then matches answers with a pre-test that you took when you were ostensibly un-concussed.

This particular test evaluates an athlete's verbal and visual memory, processing speed and reaction time. By performing this test prior to the start of a season of competition, doctors are given a snapshot of an athlete's brain function while in a healthy state. Doctors can then use that baseline to compare to post-concussion tests to assist them in both evaluating the effects of any injury and informing their decisions to return an athlete to competition.

Brett Favre, the NFL quarterback who was recently asked if he wanted to come out of retirement to play for the St. Louis Rams, told the team no, because he had some memory troubles. How bad were they? Well, he couldn’t remember his own daughter at a soccer game earlier this year.

That’s what the long-term effects of repeated blows to the head, helmeted or not, can do.

ImPACT tests aren’t new to NASCAR, as they have used them before. Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s Chase-busting two-race absence featured the test last year.

It’s a growing trend among professional sports leagues, and I applaud NASCAR for taking the time and effort to do it right. Dave Duerson, the Chicago Bears defensive back who committed suicide recently, did so because he knew he had brain damage from his years on the gridiron.

Duerson grew up in my hometown, and his father was an administrator in the public schools. I watched him play in high school and he was a smart cat. He graduated from Notre Dame, and you don’t do that if you’re not very smart. Junior Seau had the same sad outcome.

Think of Steve Park and Jerry Nadeau, who suffered big hits and have never been the same since. Two drivers, young and just entering their primes, were laid low by traumatic brain injuries in single crashes, no less. Now, no one knows how many hits they had taken before that, but it had to have had some effect, don’t you think?

Having a baseline test in the bank is a good way to get ahead of the concussion discussion, and I’m proud of NASCAR for making it mandatory.