concussion, 16-year-old died. the autopsy would reveal this, it could have been prevented. hello and thanks for joining us. that's a glimpse of the documentary, big hits, broken dreams. we are talking about the topics and the findings on concussions and how to prevent them. what do young players, parents and coaches need to know? it's not just football. it's other sports as well. not far behind is soccer. there are more head injuries in girls. we invited brandy to join us. she's going to show us what she teaches her players to keep them safe. on to the nfl. there was a hearing in miami this week in federal court with more than 100 players and families suing the league over concussions. right now, the judges are trying to decide on whether to combine the suits into a single case. meanwhile, the super bowl is set, giants versus the patriots. after the giants won in overtime last weekend, the players talked about the 49ers kick returner with two critical fumbles. they targeted him to knock him out of the game because they knew he had a history of concussions including one just last month. this comes after a season where the nfl has taken steps to fight back the tide of injuries. joining me to talk about this is co-chair of the head, neck and spine committee. >> thanks for joining us. i want to talk about that giants/49ers game in a moment. you know, we have been investigating these concussions in football for some time and one of the things that was brought up to me while we were making the documentary was look, there is a culture. players want to stay in the game and win. that's no surprise. this is a competitive sport. if the doctors and the medical team are also part of the team, so to speak, they are the team doctors as you call them, does that culture extend to them? are they empowered to pull a player off the field and keep them off the field? >> you know, i can only tell you from my observations. i have not seen -- i have not seen where a coach has interfered with the team physicians. i think the commissioners made it pretty clear the team physicians decision and the professional athletic trainers decision on the field is not trumped by anybody. i haven't seen anything to the contrary. i can't speak to what happened in the past. itis clear now that the team physicians are making the final determination of who stays in the game now. >> do you think there's any having that person be an independent person, an independent medical professional to make that decision? >> this is a huge job. they have to see them through the season. get a baseline on them. you can't tell if a player is con cussed unless you know their baseline. there's no better person than to take care of the players than the person who has seen them before the game, after the game and throughout the entire season. >> one of the things that threw a little bit of cold water on, the giants/49ers game we mentioned earlier, the giants players, at least one player said they were targeting one of the 49ers because they knew that player had four concussions. the nfl said nothing illegal was done here. no illegal hit or anything like that. what did you make of that, targeting a player because they knew he had four concussions. it's like going for someone's bum knee in mixed martial arts. >> i read the same media reports you folks did as well. i don't have any -- i don't have any firsthand knowledge of what happened. i watched the game like everybody else. i can't comment on that. >> i know you are a michael vick fan. he suffered a head injury and was back in the game pretty quickly. it seemed like from what we have been talking about, that is what's supposed to be prevented. they got hit pretty hard. they got concussions and were back in the game. how can that happen? >> you know what? the first game, we had a spotter. i was both on the field and up in the media box. i actually see how it can happen. it's like looking through a microscope. you have a very small field. when you are on that field, you see only the ball and the person running with the ball. you don't see the entire field. once you are up in the media box, you get a 360 view of the field. i think it's very easy not to see all 22 players all the time on the field when you are on the sidelines and there are 6'8" guys standing in front of you. it's a lot different when you add professional athletic trainer in the media box looking down and sees everything. he knows both football and he knows, you know, medicine. they can spot that. >> you are painting some of the realities of again, some of the signs and challenges still ahead. do you have a pick for the super bowl? are you allowed to talk about that being on the committee? >> you know what? i was born in new york city and raised -- i mean i was trained in new england. how about that for having a schizophrenia about who to root for? >> i applaud your work. go giants and patriots, i guess. >> that's right. thank you so much sanjay. take care. >> appreciate it. thank you. coming up, i eem going to show you what parents and coaches need to know about concussions and how to keep everyone safe. that's next. every season, according to the sports concussion institute, one in ten high school football players get a concussion. 35% get more than one. little o's are thosg made from carefully selected oats that can help lower cholesterol. is it a superhero? kinda. ♪ kinda. life with crohn's disease is a daily game of "what ifs". what if my stomach pain and cramps come back? what if the plane gets delayed? what if i can't hide my symptoms? what if this takes too long? what if? but what if the most important question is the one you're not asking? what if the underlying cause of your crohn's symptoms is damaging inflammation? for help getting the answers you need visit knowcrohns.com/tv and use the interactive discussion guide to speak with your gastroenterologist. a concussion is a brain injury. people think of it as getting your bell rung or getting a ding. the truth of the matter is,itis a brain injury. the biggest cause of a concussion is getting hit to the head. it can happen in all sorts of different ways. it can happen certainly on the sports field, on a helmet to helmet collision, for example and happen in ways you might not expect. in a car accident, even if your head doesn't hit the dash board or windshield, the violent moving back and forth can cause a concussion. people think, for example, if this is the brain, around it is a skull and a helmet. if there's a blow, you just get a blow to the brain. it's not exactly what's happening. if the brain is moving this direction and another helmet this direction, the brain keeps moving and bouncing back and forth like a beach ball in a swimming pool. the brain is elongating. it's a fluid medium. it's like jell-o. it's going back and forth and stretching out at the same time. it's really what causes the concussion. the back and forth, the stretching out. one thing to keep in mind about concussions, they don't mean that you necessarily lost consciousness. people can have concussions and been awake. typically, someone is going to feel out of sorts. they may have a hard time figuring out where they are, what their surroundings are, seeing stars especially in the outside of their vision. things may sound hollow because their hearing is not exact after a concussion. typically, it's people around somebody that has had a concussion that will notice the most. all people recover differently from concussions. some people take weeks to recover. some take a few days. the key is they have to be absolutely symptom free. they can't have any symptoms at all. the brain is not completely healed. if it's not completely healed and the person gets a concussion, you have taken a problem they can recover from and turn it into a potentially fatal problem. the brain needs rest. no texting. no screen time. reading puts a strain on the brain. tell people to really, completely do nothing for several days until all their symptoms have gone away then you slowly resume activity. i tell you, i have seen this quite a bit as a doctor and learned from my investigation of head injuries and looking at young football players in particular. a lot of discussion about helmets like this one. the way to think about that, they work great to protect your skull. when you are hit hard, your brain is what's moving back and forth from the shock wave inside the skull. it's moving back and forth and the helmet can't do anything to stop that. a helmet cannot fully protect against concussions. forward thinking schools and teams across the nation give baseline cognitive exams to players. this is important. why? if a player is hit, they say they feel fine, you can re-examine them. if not, it's a sign you need to give the brain rest before putting him or her back in the game. next, we are going to talk about a different sport, one that i love to play as well, soccer. it's a number two sport for concussions. this will surprise you but girls are more at risk. in a moment, we are going to talk with brandy. a u.s. team soccer sensation. i don't know if you can hear me. hello. we'll be with you in a moment. >> hi. >> to hear how you are going and get tips on preventing concussions in soccer. i'm phil mickelson, pro golfer. if you have painful, swollen joints, i've been in your shoes. one day i'm on top of the world... the next i'm saying... i have this thing called psoriatic arthritis. i had some intense pain. it progressively got worse. my rheumatologist told me about enbrel. i'm surprised how quickly my symptoms have been managed. 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[oinking] [hissing] [ding] announcer: cook foods to the right temperature using a food thermometer. 3,000 americans will die from food poisoning this year. check your steps at foodsafety.gov. with flavors like glacier freeze and riptide rush, you have to wonder, what goes into a sports drink. >> there are three things, fluids, an easy one. the right amount of sodium and carbohydrates. >> you can drink pick el juice. >> it has a ton of sodium. they have done studies on it showing how it relieves muscle cramping once athletes are dehydrates. >> call me old fashioned but a gatorade shower sounds better than a pick el shower. another choice, coconut water. when you are done with the tough work out, how about a big cool glass of chocolate milk. >> most people use it as a recovery drink. it's trendy. people love the fact they can drink chocolate milk, do your exercise, drink your chocolate milk. it has carbohydrate fluid and a little bit of protein. >> drink up. good advise there for any athlete. we have been talking about con kugs in football. as a father of three girls a take away i have is women and girl athletes are more susceptible to concussions than boys. in a study of team sports, girls soccer had the highest number of concussions than football. the biggest risk is when they head the ball. i thought who better to talk to than brandy. she's joining us from santa clara where she works with players on the college team. welcome. so good to see you. >> thank you so much for having me. i appreciate it. >> i think everyone remembers you serving from the penalty goal. you scored in the 1999 world cup final and celebrated the famous images of tearing off your shirt. the magazine covers were everywhere. >> back in that game, your teammate had a concussion and i wonder, first of all, at that time, watching a teammate go down, it must have been really hard. how much did you know about concussions? how concerned were you about that? >> it was difficult to see her go down from a standpoint of she's important to our team, not so much this is a concussion and this is what it means. the information wasn't as out there as it is now about, you know, what it means to have a concussion and what literally happens to the brain when there is a concussion. i don't think we were as educated. >> one of the stats, frankly, i learned -- i don't know if you know this but they say, take soccer for example soccer, for example, as a sport, if you compared girls and boys and men and women, women are 68% more likely to have a concussion playing soccer as compared to men who play soccer. in basketball, women are three times more likely to have concussions as compared to men who play basketball. do you have any idea, has anyone ever told you any idea why that might be? >> it's a shocking statistic in terms of the disparity. but it's not surprising to me because when i watch young girls and watch young boys when they're first learning about being physical and being on an athletic field, it seems that the boys are a little bit more a await spatially than young girls. part of it for me is not so much about getting the ball. it's more about how fast is an opponent coming, where is your body in space, how do you protect yourself? and i don't think there's enough education about not too much about preventing concussions, so to speak, what happens when you get your head hit, but how do you protect yourself in space so you might not have that head first collision and go on and be able to be happy and play in the game. so i think that's something we should talk about more. >> brandie, since this is something that you teach and you coach, as well, can you show us about how to prevent these concussions? >> well, i think the first thing we do, sanjay, is we teach the players about their startal awareness when other players are trying to infy trait their space. we have four players here trying to shield the ball. if you notice, they have their arms out creating a barrier between themselves and the defender to keep the ball away. that's it, girls, now, let's take the ball and we'll put it into the air. that's something that happens when the ball is on the ground. we want to have the kids protect themselves because they don't want to get close to anybody's head. now, as we know, the ball and soccer gets into the air a lot. we've asked kate and northan to show how to protect themselves, how to get away and protect themselves from the defender. good. morgan has created some space for herself. so it's kate and katie, lauren. good. notice they have their arms out, protecting themselves 37 and this is something that you can do with your kids on a regular basis out on the field. get them to get their arms out so, again, when the ball is in the air, morgan separates herself from kate. we have two very tall players, very good in the air. they seem to be dominant over -- not that -- not that a good 5'1" is not that tall, but it's important for them as much as it is for lauren to protect themselves when the ball comes into the air. >> really quickly, 1,300 hits per season a head for each player on average. that seems like a lot of heading of the ball and a lot of that takes place during practice, i imagine. is that necessary? we heard about these minor hits to the head being problematic in the long run. >> absolutely. i think the actual heading technique is really important. if you watch each one of these players as i watch the ball to them. the space they're hitting the ball is right here. i think with young kids, they get a lot of balls that are up on the top of their head, maybe to the side of their head, coming across the ball, using their neck. these players are technically really gifted, so they know that there's a space that just above your eyebrow, if you attack the ball, hitting it here, it creates almost -- you almost don't feel it. it's like when you have a good golf swing and you hit the ball just right. again, we'll show morgan. night right with the space right above the eyebrows. good, katie. that's it, lo. so, again, i think good technique, good technique on the ball. you know, with i think education is everything and it's a good thing that you're bringing it up. the ncaa puts out information and each university has their own protocol on how to deal with a concussion after it's happened. but we haven't talked a lot about how to prevent it. i think if we educate our players about spatial awareness, good technique with how you head the ball and with what space, i think we'll see those numbers go down. >> it's fascinating. i could watch it all day. it's so great to see you and see what you're up to your players, as well. we appreciate it. coming up, we have a former nfl player who found a seps sense of mission when he learned what these head injuries can do. before we go to the break, it's more of the documentary called "big hits, broken dreams." >> subconcussive blows are the everyday hits, small hits. they don't cause concussions. an average high school player sustained more than 650 of these hits per season. >> you're talking about people in their -- you know, young, in their 40s developing demental, almost alzheimer's like diseases. it can be a result of many smaller hits over their career. >> a series of those subconcussive insults to the head that add up every over time. 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[ male announcer ] want great taste and whole grain oats that can help lower cholesterol? honey nut cheerios. at the university of wisconsin and then on to the detroit lions, lamar campbell was known as a fast, tough defensive back. he played corner back and safety. he knew the drill. he was expected to hit people and hit them hard. if he got hurt, you shook it off and you just got out there on the field. simple enough. but when he left the game in 2002, he learned that that hurting, it wasn't done. lamar campbell has achieved what many young men only dream of. after four years starting for the university of wisconsin, he made it to the pros. >> i got offered to come to camp for the detroit lions. i made the team and played with them for five years. injuries ended his nfl career. but campbell successfully found a new life after the game as a roadw real estate broker. and radio talk show host on the voice of america platform. it's a platform he uses to educate other players about transitioning to life after football as well as the dangers of injuries he can't really see, repeated hits to the head. >> it's the perception of what a concussion was is different. i don't think you had a concussion until you were knocked out on the field. >> as a player, he didn't know that concussions could cause serious injuries to the brain. now campbell says playing football takes years off a player's life. >> i wake up with cramps uhl over my body and headaches and migraines. >> he says he suffers memory loss. >> there were situations where with i didn't remember certain series. i would be out there and not realize exactly what was going on. >> while he was never diagnosed, looking back, he believes he had over ten concussions in his career. he believes players today need to recognize the symptoms and be willing to let their brains heal. >> let guys play the gme