Most of the buzz about the commercials that aired during this Sunday's Super Bowl was about the Chrysler ad featuring Clint Eastwood, but, for me, the one commercial I won't forget was the 60-second spot by the N.F.L. at the end of the third quarter touting the league's progress since its founding to make the game safer.

Brilliantly directed by Peter Berg, the creator of the critically-acclaimed TV show, "Friday Night Lights", the ad was sharp and compelling. But in the end, it was, in my view, a woefully tame and romanticized depiction of the steps the league has taken to protect its current players from the dangers of head injuries in a sport that has left too many of its former players struggling in retirement with symptoms of early dementia, depression, and thoughts of suicide. In short, as someone who has been writing on concussions in sports for over a decade, I agree with Michael Hausfeld, a Washington-based attorney representing some former players in concussion-related lawsuits against the league, who told the New York Times that the commercial "obscured reality." 

For years professional football swept the issue of head injuries under the rug, denying that a serious problem even existed. When I was the keynote speaker at the National Sports Concussion Summit in Marina Del Rey, California in 2008, I urged the league to do more. Here's some of what I said then:

"While parents with kids in some sports can take some comfort in knowing that the national governing body for that sport is taking steps to address the concussion issue, too many have yet to follow its lead.

And, even though only a tiny fraction of athletes playing sports at the youth and high school level will go on to play college ball and then to the pros, this country's professional leagues could and should be doing more when it comes to concussions, not just for their own athletes, but because children follow and take their cue from the examples set by their heroes in the pros.

From where I sit, as a parent and editor of a site for parents with children in sports, I believe that the NFL has thus far been a little too slow to get on the concussion bandwagon and to set the right example for the parents and children of this country. ...

Unless and until professional sports send a clear message that concussions are dangerous and need to be treated as the serious, potentially life-altering or -ending injuries they can often be, parents are going to be fighting an uphill battle in convincing their young warriors to likewise take concussions seriously.

I think it is time for the NFL, as the professional league in the sport which experiences the largest number of concussions by far, to demonstrate in a tangible way its commitment to concussion safety and education, both for its players, for the players at the youth level who emulate them, and the parents whose job it is to keep them safe. To that end, I would love for the NFL to join with MomsTeam in sponsoring a public service campaign about the dangers of concussions in sports. This need not be a campaign about the danger of football but the importance of concussion management."

It wasn't all that long afterwards that the N.F.L. did begin running spots during its games warning about the dangers of concussion. Since 2009, the league, to its credit, has also been lobbying hard in favor of laws - now in place in 31 states and the District of Columbia, and with more sure to follow this year - requiring concussion education of parents and athletes, banning same-day return-to-play after a suspected concussion, and requiring medical clearance before a concussed athlete is allowed back on the playing field, diamond or ice.

But I still think the National Football League too often follows, instead of leading on head injuries, and reacts instead of being pro-active. Only after a regular season game in which the Cleveland Browns' medical staff somehow "missed" a hit to the head of quarterback Colt McCoy (a hit that anyone watching on television could clearly see had knocked him unconscious), which allowed him to return to the game with what was later diagnosed as a concussion, did the N.F.L. place "independent" observers at each game to help detect possible concussion, and, for the playoffs, install video replay systems behind each team's bench so medical staffs could evaluate hits they might have missed (According to the Times article, the league says replay systems will probably become standard by the start of next season)

The problem is that even now, the league isn't taking advantage of cutting-edge technology that already exists to detect possible concussions, technology that doesn't rely on players reporting symptoms (that chronic under-reporting by athletes remains a serious problem is undeniable) or the ability of sideline observers to detect the often subtle physical signs of concussion (which studies show can and often do escape detection by even the most vigilant observer on the sideline or in a replay booth), but relies instead on objective, scientific data about the force, direction and magnitude of hits to the head to alert sideline personnel to those that warrant further evaluation.

Two new products now on the market - the Impact Indicator from Battle Sports Science and the Shockbox from Impakt Protective - do just that.* The Impact Indicator uses a sensor in the chinstrap of a player which flashes red to alert sideline personnel about a blow to the head of sufficient magnitude to cause possible concussion. The Shockbox is a wireless system in which a sensor in a player's helmet triggers an audible and visual, color-coded visual alert (yellow, orange, or red) on a smartphone or laptop computer if it detects a hit of sufficient force to cause a concussion so that an assessment can begin immediately on the sideline using a standard concussion assessment tool (e.g. SCAT2). In fact, New England Patriot running back, BenJarvis Green-Ellis, wore a chin strap equipped with the Impact Indicator during the Super Bowl.  Thankfully, according to WHDH-TV in Boston, the indicator never flashed red.

While I congratulate the NFL on tackling the issue of its players' health and safety head on, there is no denying the fact that we are never going to see a non-violent game of football, or one from which the risk of permanent brain damage is completely eliminated (the touching pre-game feature on former New Orleans Saints player Steve Gleason's battle with ALS was proof enough of that).

And, as much as I would like to see the N.F.L. do even more on concussion safety, it isn't completely up to the league, or the National Hockey League, or any single organization, of course, to carry the ball on safety.   All of us involved in youth sports - from parents, to coaches, from athletic trainers to school athletic directors to the athletes themselves - have a responsibility to do what we can to make contact and collision sports safer, whether it by reducing the number of hits to the head a player receives over the course of a season (such as N.F.L. and the Ivy League are doing in limiting full-contact practices, and the Sports Legacy Institute recently proposed be considered at the youth and high school level in its Hit Count program), teaching football players how to tackle without using their head (as former pro football player Bobby Hosea has long advocated), changing the rules (as the governing body for high school hockey in Minnesota did in the aftermath of the Jack Jablonski injury or USA Hockey did in banning body checks at the Pee Wee level), or giving serious consideration to whether athletes below a certain age should be playing tackle football at all (as the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend).

In the end, the N.F.L.'s Super Bowl ad was on the money in at least one respect: when it comes to brain injury safety, "We're just getting started."

Questions/Comments? delench@momsteam.com

The video clip of Landon Collins went viral almost instantly, not to mention setting the blog- and Twitter-sphere ablaze.

There was the nation's top ranked high school safety announcing his decision to attend the University of Alabama during the Under Armour All-America Game three weeks ago, while his mom, April Justin, looked on with a pained expression on her face, shaking her head in disapproval of his choice.

By now, most of the story of how Landon came to announce that day that he had chosen the Crimson Tide over the L.S.U. Tigers - emphasis on "most" - has been told, including a long article by Christopher Schultz for ESPN The Magazine.

While the "tide" of public opinion (sorry, couldn't resist) has been, as far as I can tell, running against April, much of it portraying her as an over-protective mom unable to let go, my initial, instinctive, reaction upon watching the video, was a bit different. Not surprisingly, as a mom, I viewed it a bit more from her perspective, through the lens of a mom.

I am sure she wasn't thrilled that Landon was going to play his college ball a four and a half hour ride away in Tuscaloosa, Alabama instead of right up the road in Baton Rouge. But that couldn't be it. After all, Landon had played his high school football in Geismar, Louisiana, where his dad, Thomas, and stepmother, Jamie, had built a home after Hurricane Katrina, which was an hour's drive from her home in New Orleans, where April is raising his half-brother, Gerald Willis, III, and half-sister, Gerrah. As April told ESPN The Magazine, she had agreed at the time that the move was in his best interest.

But I knew there had to be much more to the story than that. I have spent years around moms and their athletic kids and have honed a keen sense of awareness of how protective a mother can be of her children, like a Mamma Bear guarding her cubs.

Then yesterday the following Tweet appeared in my timeline:

I wanted to know myself, so I got April's number, and gave her call. I started off by telling her that I was the author of Home Team Advantage: The Critical Role of Mothers in Youth Sports, the founder of MomsTeam.com, and a fellow sports mom.

No doubt sensing that, given my background, I might lend a more sympathetic ear (she was right), we ended up talking for the next hour. Mostly, I just listened. Some of what she told me has been previously reported, but some of it was new, and it confirmed my mother's intuition that there were reasons she wasn't supporting her son's decision to go to Alabama instead of LSU that the rest of us didn't know about.

April expressed some serious concerns about the college choice her first-born son had made, and not just because of the distance between Tuscaloosa and New Orleans. "Every year we as a family develop short term goals and long term goals," she told me. "His choice doesn't fit into Landon's or the family's long term goals. Landon has met all of his short term goals. I am so proud of him and the way he met those goals, but his choice does not meet his long term goals."

A single mom, and a former athlete herself, April has raised her three children, Landon, Gerald and Gerrah, to put family, education and sports - in that order - at the top of their list of priorities. "I only allow my children to play video games on Saturday and Sunday and never during the school week," she said. She knew that her athletically talented children needed to focus on sports and their academics in order to get a college scholarship.

She said it was really tough not being able to watch all of Landon's games after he moved away to live with his dad and step-mom. "He was playing an hour away, and his games were on Friday night, the same time his younger brother [Gerald] was playing". Factor in the volleyball games that her daughter Gerrah had on Tuesday and Thursday, and I quickly got the sense that April was a mom who has a lot to juggle, and is doing the best she can as a single mom. Not only is it a logistical challenge to get to Landon's games, but it is a financial challenge as well: two hours on the road requires a fair amount of gas in the tank. At close to $4.00 a gallon, the cost adds up fast.

But logistics and expense aside, were there other things that were bothering her? As she had told other reporters, she also told me she was upset about the recruiting process and "the politics that surround it."  Most worrisome, April said, was that "At ‘Bama they want to red shirt - or grey shirt - him and they want him playing nickelback instead of safety. He is the top safety in the country and he will never play a game his freshman year. Now, at LSU coach Les Miles is offering to play him as safety during his freshman year. His (Nick Saban's) goals don't meet the criteria of the family; they meet the criteria of Alabama."

What were, then, her goals? "For Landon to win the Heisman Trophy and to be able to play close to home at LSU with his younger brother, Gerald, who is also an outstanding football player who has offers to play at LSU." She said these weren't just her goals; they were shared by his younger siblings.

I got what she was saying. I think all sports moms, especially those with more than one child playing sports, do. From the time they started playing T-ball when they were five until high school, my three sons all played on the same team. There is something magical about watching your children play together, especially on the same sports team. I remember how tough it was when they were on three different teams during high school and I had to decide whose games to attend. Mama April was hoping to see both of her sons play on the same team at LSU.

Was there anything else that didn't sit right with April? As it turned out there was. It had to do with Landon's girlfriend, Victoria. ESPN The Magazine reported about a confrontation between April and Victoria at the All-America Game after Landon's sister had urged her to stand onstage for his big announcement. April wanted only family in front of the camera. Landon's dad, Thomas, ended up having to intercede. When the cameras began rolling, there was Victoria standing directly behind Landon.

What the article didn't mention, however, was the reason April was apparently upset, which may have tipped the scales in Alabama's favor. According to April, Victoria had allegedly been offered a job to work in head coach Nick Saban's office.  I

In all fairness to Saban and Alabama, I have been unable to independently confirm April's story on this point (Citing NCAA rules, Doug Walker, Associate Athletics Director, Communications, at the University of Alabama, stated in an email to MomsTeam that the school "would not comment on anything relating to the recruitment of a prospective student-athlete."  Asked if Landon's girlfriend had been offered a job, he stated, "I have no information regarding that.").  All I know is what April told me.

But suffice it to say, April appears to have reasons for feeling the way she does about her son's decision, and they have less to do with her being an LSU fan and a mom who doesn't want to let go, and more to do with her understanding what was happening behind the scenes, outside camera range, that may have played a role in that decision that didn't square with the way she raised her children.

Take a look at the video clip again. The focus has been on the reaction of Landon's mom to the news. But Landon doesn't look all that thrilled either.

There is a Jewish proverb that says, "A mother understands what a child does not say."  Perhaps it explains everything.

It would not surprise me if Landon were to step back to try to understand exactly where his mom is coming from before he formally commits to the Crimson Tide. We'll find out if he does on February 1st.*

Comments/Questions? Join the conversation on MomsTeam's Facebook page.

NOTE: For more of my blogs, including reaction to this blog, click here.

Updates (February 2, 2012):

1. For a follow-up interview with April Justin on al.com, click here.
2. An article on Landon Collins choosing Alabama written just after he made his announcement, click here. 

* Landon ended up signing with Alabama as he had announced at the All-America Bowl, with the support of his mother.

An article in the Boston Globe, last year,  titled  "Taking the ‘little' out of Little League" reminds us not only about what is wrong in today's youth sports, but how needed reform can occur. 

I wrote this blog in 2010 but the issue continues to come up, questions are asked and think this may help. 

According to the Globe article, the 31-member board of the 14-team Parkway Little League in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, many of whom had been on the board for years and years, had used its power over virtually everything the league did to effectively create a "farm system" that allowed managers in the so-called "majors" to hold some players back in the "minors", to be called up when needed, and permitted certain favored coaches to monopolize talented players.  Not surprisingly, some parents eventually cried foul, claiming the system unfairly penalized some players by holding them out of league-wide tryouts and preventing them from advancing to other major league teams.  A number of long-serving board members had then, the story reported, "hijacked the board and blocked efforts to change the system."

What the article described sounded like the kind of politics and favoritism that a mom described in an e-mail I received several years ago.  She was irate over how grown men could turn what should have been a wonderful Little League baseball season into a joke. Apparently, the player selection system in the town where she lived provided for players to be selected by the coaches in rotating fashion based on a points system. Players in the pool were each assigned a score from the tryouts. Once selected, a player's points were added to that team's total and the team could not select another player until its point total was the lowest.

The system was supposed to ensure competitive balance.  But some coaches apparently figured out a way to beat the system. Because the sons of the head coach and all of his assistant coaches got to play on the same team (let's call the team the "Giants"), and because they just so happened to be fathers of the four "best" players, they could, simply by agreeing to coach together, ensure that they would have far and away the best team. Even though the four players' high point total meant that the Giants had to wait for quite a while to draft other players to fill out the roster - players with much lower point scores than the four stars - it was clear from the get-go that the Giants would steamroll through the regular season undefeated and the playoffs to a championship.  Not surprisingly, that's exactly what happened! They might as well have handed the trophy to the Giants before the season even started. The other coaches, and many parents of players on other teams, quietly grumbled, but nothing was done to change the system.

The Parkway saga escalated to the point that lawyers and Little League  headquarters in Williamsport, PA were called in.  But even the presence of a Little League representative at league meetings and a stern warning letter threatening to revoke the league's charter didn't help.  Only after two months of trench warfare, with both sides refusing to give an inch and the kids caught in the middle, was the logjam broken when the league cut the size of the board in half, showing the door to some of the staunchest defenders of the status quo (and presumably ushering in some much needed changes).

What the battle illustrates is how an entrenched group of adults can take the youth out of youth sports and turn a game for kids into a stage on which to play out adult power games, one where young players are exposed to the risk of permanent injury by ignoring pitch limits and  tryouts, drafts and player placement are manipulated to favor certain coaches, all in the name of winning (and it goes without saying that winning is what this approach allowed Parkway to do; no wonder it won the state championship in 2008 and advanced to the Little League regionals in Bristol, Connecticut). 

Fortunately, what the feud also demonstrates is how a courageous group of parents can successfully challenge the status quo to put the word "youth" back in youth sports, and how it is usually only at the grass roots, community level, that reform takes place.

So what are the lessons of Parkway for sports parents?  Here's just five:

1. Listen to what children want: Studies repeatedly show that the vast majority of boys and girls, when asked what they would like to see changed about youth sports, say they would like to see less emphasis on winning. We need to start listening to what are children tell us.  All too often, youth sports are adult- not child-centered.
2. Have the courage to speak up. I believe that a vast silent majority of parents in this country want a youth sports system that serves the interests of children but worry - and not without basis -  that their kids will be ostracized if they challenge the status quo. Those who demand more games, more wins, more trophies, more travel and more of everything tend to have the loudest voices and sound the most convincing. It's up to parents who believe in a child-centered sports system to have the courage to be just as passionate on the side of balance.
3. Require accountability and transparency by youth sports organizations. Most youth sports organization are run like small- and, in some cases, not-so-small - businesses with virtually no oversight beyond their volunteer board of directors. Push for formation of a Parent Advisory Group representing parents with children currently playing in the program to provide the Board of Directors with feedback. 
4. Establish term limits. As the Parkway saga shows, directors, administrators and coaches who become entrenched in a program tend to defend the status quo. New blood can keep a program fresh and strong.
5. Use the power of the permit. In most communities, youth sports organizations need permits from the town or municipality's parks and recreation department to use taxpayer-funded fields, diamonds, tracks, and pools. That makes them subject to public oversight. Priority for permits should be given to programs that serve the interests of children, not overcompetitive adults bent on gratifying their own egos.

These are just some of the ways to reform youth sports.  For more, click here.

 Questions/Comments? Send them to delench@momsteam.com

This weekend a father from Michigan sent me an article in the Detroit News about a highly successful high school basketball coach in his daughter's league who had just quit as a result of what the newspaper described as "extreme parental interference."

He wanted to know what I would suggest to the coach, who happened to be a personal friend.

My advice, which I have been sharing with parents in the U.S. and Canada for the past twelve years, is simple, at least in concept: communication and collaboration.  The coaches who don't have problems with parents tend to be great communicators. They let parents know where they stand early, before the season even starts, at a preseason meeting, which all parents are required to attend, and during the season, they make themselves available to parents on a regular basis to answer questions and allow them to voice concerns.

Many coaches have also established a volunteer assistant coach program where they invite some of the more experienced parent coaches to pitch in occasionally. Good coaches know that the time of the passive sports parent has long since passed, and that, in order to get on the same page with parents and players, the coach has to truly listen to what is on the mind of parents, but also to set up rules of the road so that parents know what is and what they can and can't do.  

The article doesn't say whether the coach in this instance had held such a pre-season meeting at which he set firm boundaries so that parents knew in advance that the kind of extreme interference that led him to quit would simply not be tolerated.

For all I know, he did, and some of the parents simply ran through all the stop signs he put up.  If that's the case, then the parents who pushed him too far should be ashamed of themselves. 

Of course, I don't know the whole story (indeed, the article doesn't really shed much light on the coach's side of the story), and, as is almost always the case, there are probably two sides to this one, too.  

But what I do know is that the problem of pushy sports parents isn't one that is going away soon, and is undoubtedly getting worse, as the pressure on youth athletes, and their parents, continues to ratchet ever higher. 

Is it any wonder, as MomsTeam contributing expert, Doug Abrahms noted in one of his recent "Heroes" columns, fewer and fewer high school coaches stay in coaching very long these days?  

All a coach can do is set boundaries.  But sometimes, sadly, some parents think they can ignore the rules of the road.  The result: a crash where everyone - coach, players, parents, school and the wider community - ends up getting hurt.

 Questions/Comments? Reach me at delench@momsteam.com 

I have tried to understand how Sarah Burke's freestyle ski injury actually ended up resulting in her death this week. The information, at first, was pretty sketchy.  Ultimately, we learned that, when Sarah's head snapped back in her fall, the whiplash caused a tear (dissection) of her vertebral artery, which cut off the blood to her brain, causing her to go into cardiac arrest and resulting in irreversible brain damage.

The injury that took Sarah's life occurred just after landing a trick she'd successfully executed a thousand times before.  It reminds us all that many of the high-speed, high-flying events that take place during the Winter X and Olympic Games come with potential and real danger.

In a tragic coincidence, Sarah's accident took place at the same superpipe venue in Park City, Utah where snowboarder Kevin Pearce nearly died from a brain injury in a fall just over two years ago.

So how does an injury like Sarah's happen and can it be prevented? I decided to ask an expert to weigh in, so I contacted Dr. David Geier, an orthopaedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist and the Director of MUSC Sports Medicine in Charleston, South Carolina and asked him to submit a guest article for MomsTeam.  To read what Dr. Geier has to say about the injury Sarah Burke suffered, click here.

Have you ever known of a person who suffered such an accident? Was their tear surgically treated successfully? 

 Questions/Comments? Reach me at delench@momsteam.com