Posted on 05/29/2014 10:03:05 AM PDT by Second Amendment First
President Obama said Thursday that he may have suffered from mild concussions while playing football in his childhood.
"When I was young and played football briefly, there were a couple times where I'm sure that that ringing sensation in my head and the needing to sit down for a while might have been a mild concussion, and at the time you didn't think anything of it," Obama said at a White House event designed to highlight the risks of sports-related brain injuries.
Obama said his experience was common and underscored the need to "change the culture" around concussion injuries in sports, in which athletes are told to "just suck it up."
"The awareness is improved today, but not by much," Obama said. "So the total number of young people who are impacted by this early on is probably bigger than we know."
Obama said parents, coaches and administrators had a responsibility to make sure student athletes "are able to participate as safely as possible."
The president said a crucial part of that effort was filling in the gaps in concussion research.
"We want to keep them safe, and that means we have to have better information. We have to know what these issues are. And the fact is we don't have solid numbers, and that tells me that at every level we're all still trying to fully grasp what's going on with this issue," Obama said.
Toward that end, Obama announced millions of dollars the administration had solicited from corporate and nonprofit partners to help fund additional research into the risks of repeated concussions.
That will include a $30 million joint effort between the Pentagon and NCAA for what the White House described as "the most comprehensive clinical study of concussion and head impact exposure ever conducted."
The National Football League will also pledge an additional $25 million over the next three years to support partnerships promoting youth sports safety, including efforts to expand access to athletic trainers for student athletes and education programs designed to teach students about the risk of sports injuries.
"We've got to have better research, better data, better safety equipment, better protocols," Obama said. "We've got to have every parent and coach and teacher recognize the science of concussions."
Obama added that the research was important not only for athletes but for the nation's military.
"I've seen in my visits to wounded warriors, traumatic brain injury is one of the signature issues of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan," Obama said.
Despite the risks associated with concussions, the president repeatedly emphasized that he thought sports played a central role in childhood development.
"First of all, the first lady thinks everybody needs to move," he quipped, referencing his wife's signature policy initiative.
But, Obama said, sports are "fundamental to who we are as Americans and our culture."
"We're competitive. We're driven. And sports teaches us about teamwork and hard work and what it takes to succeed, not just on the field, but in life," he said.
But the only “football” he played was soccer!
He was NOT in AMERICA when he was at that age, and did NOT play football in Hawaii nor in the brief months in the northwest.
Only way he could have been concussed was getting his head banged up against the bedrails while in college playing wide receiver or tight end with his roommate!
Well if anyone complained about his head he made sure to kill those queers in his church.
Stick it to the man...
Was this lie in book too?
Actually, there is a fair amount of head injury in Soccer.
It’s true. Zero played tight end. ‘Til he got loosened up.
That explains it all. And no, not in his book, ‘cause he forgot, due to the concussed state.
I rolled my eyes so hard, they were stuck up in my head for five minutes.
Wow....glad he cleared that up....
Can we move on to the more important stuff...like when he stubbed his big toe, had a bloody nose, had a nasty rash on his ass, and the plague of toe fungus.....
I doubt it because the one thing he needed most was a good hard slap upsida his head........hard enough to concuss him
I agree. I think he is confusing the phrase ‘taking the ball in the backfield’ with ‘taking it in the backside’.
I am sure all the pounding of his head on the headboard gave him a concussion. But that is not nearly as bad as the gay bowel syndrome.
So THAT’S the problem. Brain damage.
I bet he was the goofy kid who showed up at the first practice wearing a jockstrap and cup on the outside if his pants.
This recollection is an amalgam of all the times he played as a child.
Bingo. In Indonesia football means soccer. He concussed trying to hit the ball with his head.
I guess "mild concussion" is Hawaiian for "massive brain surgery."
Some other kids were playing “Smear the Queer” and just told him it was football when they smeared him.
Was that where the Soviets installed the control electronics?
Did he read about it in the paper or was it on TV?
Hey Soetoro!
In the United States it’s called “soccer.”
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