The team doctor cleared him to play: Laveranues Coles' concussion treatment

New York Jets football player Laveranues Coles had sustained a concussion on Oct. 28 in a loss to the Buffalo Bills. The Jets coaches held him out for one game, and he presumably passed the neuropsychological tests that the league made mandatory this year. Apparently the team doctors cleared him to play, and he returned to the football field for several games.

While discussing his reputation for playing hurt, he said, "Sometimes I may need somebody to step in there at certain times and say, 'Laveranues, I think you need to do what's best for you.' But it is what it is."

Pete Kendall, a former Jets lineman now with the Washington Redskins, said he was "concerned for Laveranues. He seemed more subdued [when playing later that season] than normal." Lethargy is a common sign of an unhealed concussion.

Pete questioned whether critical decisions should be made by team-employed doctors, saying "I see guys playing in games that I don't think a personal advocate would allow them to do. The doctor who is supposed to be looking out for you is also the same guy who may put you into a game that the team has to win. You're mixing business with medicine."

Advice to the parents of injured athletes: Get a second opinion to verify the team doctor's opinion of your athlete's readiness to play.

Browse for similar stories in our index at the very bottom of this page, or read a athlete’s story.

Thanks to Alan Schwarz for the source story in the Dec. 22 issue of the New York Times.

A surgeon quarterback turned Samaritan: Heart disease prevention

Dr. Arthur Roberts’ story:

At age 58, he had long since hung up his NFL Dolphins jersey and heart surgeon’s scrubs. “I still had the athlete’s mentality, where you think you’re indestructible.” But the record-setting Columbia University quarterback wasn’t following his own advice about exercising and eating well, and he suffered a stroke six years ago.

Feeling lucky and grateful, he set up the Living Heart Foundation, with funding from the NFL players union. He’s trying to prevent deaths like those of Reggie White—the Hall of Fame defensive lineman who died at 43 from cardiac arrhythmia—and of lesser-known athletes like Kevin Mitchell, at age 36,from a massive heart attack, and Johnny Perkins, at age 54, of complications after heart surgery.

Kevin Guskiewicz, the Director of the Center for the Study of Retired Athletes at the University of North Carolina, explains, “the retired athlete can’t exercise because of the injuries he’s sustained and the pain he is in, and that leads to higher weight depression, bad eating habits, high blood pressure, and so on.” Guskiewicz calls this the Snowball Effect, which he discovered through studying 27,000 retired football players.

Advice to spouses of retired athletes: Get your coach’s whistle and have your spouse lift hand weights during every TV commercial during the game.

Read another of our football stories, or Harvey Araton’s source story, “Brush with Death Puts a Doctor on a Mission,” in today’s New York Times, page C-16.