Two former Hawkeyes got concussions this week

So, it was just another night in the National Football League.

Seth Olsen, a former University of Iowa player and an offensive lineman for the Minnesota Vikings in his fifth NFL season, was carted off the Metrodome field Thursday night after taking an inadvertent knee to the head from Tennessee Titans linebacker Scott Solomon in the final preseason game for both teams.

He landed helmet-first on the artificial turf. Fortunately, as this St. Paul Pioneer Press story details, Olsen was walking around in the Vikings' dressing room after the game.

A time zone away the same evening, third-year New York Giants safety Tyler Sash suffered a concussion in his team's preseason finale at New England.

I shuddered when I learned of that. It was just 20 months ago when Sash was concussed by a wicked blindside by the 49ers' 281-pound Demarcus Dobbs in the Giants' NFC Championship win at San Francisco.

I interviewed then-rookie Sash in Indianapolis four before the 2012 Super Bowl, his first game after that concussion. He played on special teams in that Super Bowl for the winning Giants.

“It doesn't really scare me,” Sash said that day. “I've seen my brother get concussions playing football when I was younger. I've seen my teammates get concussions. Some of my best friends in high school got concussions.

“It's just part of the game. I know they're trying to do everything that they can with the rules to protect players, but at the end of the day it's a bunch of grown men playing a game where it's legal to go hit people.

“I feel I've dished out a lot more than I've received.”

“It's kind of ironic. I was talking to one of my buddies the Wednesday before the San Francisco game. I told him I hadn't really had a ‘Welcome to the NFL' moment hit, then I got it on Sunday against San Francisco.

“Better late than never, I guess.”

Well, the hits just keep on coming. If you listened to national sports talk radio Friday, a day after the NFL settled for $765 million with a group of 4,500 former players who sued the league over concussion-related issues, you heard horror story after horror story about the long-term effects of concussions, the neurological damage those head-injuries cause.

Today brings the season-openers for a multitude 0f college football teams. Let's hope none of us see anyone get concussed today. But if we don't, we will again soon enough.

“It doesn't really scare me,” he said here last Wednesday. “I've seen my brother get concussions playing football when I was younger. I've seen my teammates get concussions. Some of my best friends in high school got concussions.

“It's just part of the game. I know they're trying to do everything that they can with the rules to protect players, but at the end of the day it's a bunch of grown men playing a game where it's legal to go hit people.

“I feel I've dished out a lot more than I've received.”

Sash didn't miss a game in his first NFL season.

“It's kind of ironic,” he said. “I was talking to one of my buddies the Wednesday before the San Francisco game. I told him I hadn't really had a ‘Welcome to the NFL' moment hit, then I got it on Sunday against San Francisco.

“Better late than never, I guess.”

- See more at: http://thegazette.com/2012/02/04/super-bowls-biggest-bashes-are-on-the-field/#sthash.nmc7hrUm.dpuf