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bit A DEEPER Making Headway Reactions to sports and brain injury. By Mary Chellis Austin Illustration by Bart Galloway "I t's very important we get the head out of the game," Mike Glaser says. Wait — did the former St. Xavier head football coach of 31 years just say that? Out loud? During the same season in which a school-bus load of Trinity players came roaring through the Highlands, gearing up for the annual clash of the city's biggest high school rivals? If Drew Brees can carry my fantasy football team (the Checkin' Chellises) to the playofs, nothing else matters . . . right? We're at Vincenzo's in early September for a discussion held by the Louisville Forum, a nonpartisan public-issues group. Glaser — along with Dr. Tad Seifert, a neurologist and director of the Norton Sports Health Concussion Program; Brynn Mays, a former soccer player at Assumption High School; and Chellis Austin, executive director of the Brain Injury Alliance of Kentucky — are here to talk sports concussions. 28 LOUISVILLE MAGAZINE 11.13 (Full disclosure: Chellis Austin is my father.) Austin, who has worked with the organization since 2001, introduced and helped pass legislation (HB 281) that requires high school and middle school players to pass a doctor's exam before returning to post-concussion play. (It's worth noting that the NFL assisted Kentucky lawmakers in writing the legislation.) Austin suggests broadening the law to include non-scholastic youth leagues, which are more loosely organized and difcult to regulate. Seifert, who has studied sports concussions for more than fve years and helped push for the bill's enactment, encourages coaches, parents and players to investigate the risk of concussions while noting the benefts of sports' exercise, teamwork and self-discipline. Ten the moderator reads aloud questions from the audience: "Can football be considered a form of child abuse?" "President Obama has said he would think long and hard before allowing his son to play football. Would you let your son play?" You might fnd the questions a bit dramatic. We're changing the rules, aren't we? Can't we go back to the stands and cheer now? Glaser, 60, retired as head coach last year, but he continues to teach English and works as the school's director of sports activities. A few days later, I meet him at school. He brings up the child-abuse comment. "Tat shocked me, took me aback," he says. "But anytime you talk about something, it seems worse than it is. We needed an overreaction at frst; now we've got everyone's attention." Glaser says that, in addition to playing by the new rules, coaching players not to hit with their heads will make football safer, as will proper helmet fttings. Football isn't the only dangerous game. At the forum, Mays said she ignored the lingering signs from a concussion and then sufered another one before recovering. "I can't ever play soccer again," she said, adding that the headaches, nausea and depression she's dealt with can happen to any stubborn player who feels obligated to stick it out. Data from the National Center for Catastrophic Sports Injury Research in Chapel Hill, N.C., ranks football third in a list of 10 deadliest sports — behind men's water polo and gymnastics. Days after the forum, Jacob Quaife, a football player for Waggener High School, got hit in the head during a game. He had trouble walking and underwent emergency brain surgery when doctors discovered brain bleeding. Luckily, Quaife is not one of the fve high school football-related deaths nationwide this season resulting from brain injury, heatstroke, neck injury and heart failure. But, according to a story in the magazine Te Atlantic headlined "Te Case Against High School Sports," Quaife is now among the 15 percent of high school players who sustain brain injuries during any given football season. In a recent piece on WAVE-TV, Quaife said he wanted to play again this season. "It's a scary thing," Glaser tells me. "I can remember in 1997, in a playof game against PRP, we had a linebacker named Bernard Jackson, who went on to play at Tennessee. Te quarterback was in the shotgun formation; he fumbled the ball, went to pick it up, and as he stood up, Bernard — who was like 6-foot3, 245 pounds — hit him on a dead run right in the helmet and knocked the young man out. Everybody cheered for a second, and then it grew deafeningly silent because a young man's just lying there. Tere've been a lot of those during my career where you see it and you just pray that it's nothing serious. Fortunately, he got up and everything was fne. But you know, I think back — that's almost 20 years ago — I think he came back in the game that night." Unlike some who think football is doomed, or should be, Glaser says the sport will survive. Maybe it's because, like many of us, he can't imagine life without it. Before coaching on some level at St. X for 42 years, Glaser played on the school's 1969 state championship team. "Football's been engrained in me my entire life," he says, "so I'm gonna make it safe and I'm gonna make sure that it stays very popular." He pauses briefy, then adds: "But very safe." For years, Glaser had a sign in his locker room called "Te Big Lick Award." It went to the player who made the hardest hit. I ask when the sign came down. It takes him a second, and then he says, "Well, it was still up the last year that I . . . I don't think I ever thought of it as one where you were hitting somebody with the head. It never really dawned on me. But thinking now, if I was still coaching, I would take that down. Tat would not be one of our awards or goals for the week."