Concussions followed Jeff Ulbrich throughout every stage of his playing career, from high school all the way to the starting ranks of the NFL.
The routine was always the same whenever Ulbrich’s head felt woozy.
“It used to be “˜touch your toes, touch your nose,’ give you smelling salts and get back out there,” Ulbrich said.
Ulbrich, 35, isn’t out there anymore, due in no small part to a series of concussions that ended his NFL career as a special teamer and linebacker. He’s now content with walking the sidelines. Ulbrich was hired in January to coach the two phases of the game he knows best, special teams and linebackers, at an age when he could still be playing the sport he loves.
Like many of his contemporaries, Ulbrich can’t pinpoint exactly how many concussions he had. He knows his first one came in high school. The last came in his 120th and final NFL game, when he went down covering a kickoff.
Violent post-concussion episodes ensued. He was dizzy, nauseated and getting lost while driving. Soon after, Ulbrich and a team of Stanford doctors mutually decided that it was time to call it a career.
Ulbrich has seen the word “concussion” accumulate weight during recent years. He now coaches in a world where the diagnosis and treatment of concussions is vital to preventing a host of long-lasting brain injuries that have befallen players at all levels of the sport.
Even more comforting for Ulbrich is the fact that his boss is well aware of what he calls an “epidemic” in football.
UCLA coach Jim Mora continues to insist that his staff will hold safety in the highest regard when it comes to his players.
“I’ve been with guys that have really suffered personally because of the fact that they maybe played through some things that they shouldn’t have played through,” Mora said.
As a UCLA team physician for 18 years and counting, Dr. John DiFiori has been at the forefront of concussion treatment at UCLA.
DiFiori, who works primarily with the football and men’s basketball teams, is responsible for setting UCLA’s concussion protocols ““ the sequential treatment process every concussed UCLA athlete must go through before returning to the field of play ““ and has seen his protocols evolve as awareness grows.
Paramount to DiFiori’s handling of head injuries is education. At the high school level, 40-50 percent of concussions go unreported, DiFiori said.
Ulbrich said he rarely missed time with any of his, even though his brain was in a depleted state.
Athletes can be wont to dismiss headaches, whether out of fear of missing playing time, fear of seeing their replacement take minutes or simply a lack of knowledge.
“We hope that education and recognition will hopefully have players feel more comfortable learning to recognize what’s going on and bring these issues to the attention of the medical staff,” DiFiori said.
Most concussions heal in a week, DiFiori said. But after suffering one, the risk of suffering another ““ one that can take much longer to heal ““ is increased. For these multiple-concussion athletes, the monitoring process becomes more stringent.
During the football team’s recently completed spring practices, the cases of redshirt junior Alex Mascarenas and redshirt sophomore Wade Yandall were under the microscope.
In 2011, Mascarenas played defensive back in four games and started twice before sitting out the rest of the season with a head injury. Yandall was similarly getting his first-ever shot with the first team, starting three times before he was sidelined for the final four games with a head injury.
Mascarenas missed all of spring practice while Yandall, expected to compete for a starting spot on the offensive line this season, suited up for two practices all spring. Mora discussed his handling of Yandall’s situation before the spring game.
“His symptoms reappeared,” Mora said. “He got a headache and there wasn’t one significant incident; it was just his symptoms reappeared. You just don’t play with that stuff. I’m not playing with that.”
Mascarenas and Yandall were not available for comment under UCLA football’s policy regarding injured players.
Mora was also firm in his response to redshirt senior starting linebacker Patrick Larimore, who suffered a concussion and healed late in spring ball: You are sitting.
“It’s hard when you’re dealing with a 19-year-old kid who plays football as a passion, to explain, “˜let’s really proceed with caution as we proceed through your career here,'” Mora said.
Ulbrich empathizes with young players who are going through what he did and is happy to see an increased emphasis on player safety, which could prevent someone from suffering his fate.
“I don’t think I ever thought about (concussions),” Ulbrich said. “I always tried to play dumb. I never looked into it, never thought about it. I knew that I was having them on a fairly regular basis. You don’t want to know when you’re playing.”