College Football Season Off to a Rough Start

With the NFL starting this afternoon, football is now officially a hundred percent underway.  Of course, with any new football season comes the renewed concern for player injury.  Yesterday, that concern didn't do much to keep a trio of players from being carted off the field in what felt like one of the rougher weekends in college football. Arkansas quarterback Tyler Wilson had to be taken out of the game for the second half after taking a shot to the head in a loss against Louisiana Monroe.  He had to stay in Little Rock overnight, but is still expected to play next weekend against Alabama.  If ULM can knock him out, I'd hate to see what the Crimson Tide will do. Even worse, Indiana QB Tre Roberson is now out for the year after suffering a broken leg against Massachusetts that caused him to have to leave in an ambulance.  Roberson had scored three touchdowns by the time of his injury early in the second quarter; two rushing and one passing.  Now he'll have to redshirt the rest of the year and hopefully make a recovery by next year. By far the most severe of the injuries, though, was sustained by Tulane safety Devon Walker just before halftime against Tulsa.  Walker had come in for a hit against a ball-carrying Tulsa player when he suffered a helmet-to-helmet shot.  As a result of the tackle, he suffered a fractured spine and collapsed lung, and medical staff had to perform an emergency tracheotomy on the field.  Walker is currently in the hospital, and is expected to undergo surgery in the next few days. We've been fortunate to have avoided similar injuries so far (knocked on every piece of wood within twenty feet of me), and hopefully the recent rash of injuries has just been a fluke.  Regardless of what happens in the coming weeks, we can only hope that these players make a healthy recovery.