The Right Thing for Tebow to Do Is Sit Out for Several Weeks

The important distinction is that a concussion is an injury to the brain. It is not a kneecap: it is the brain, an irreplaceable object containing everything you are as a thinking person, an organ of complexity mystifying the smartest people in the room for centuries. It does not respond to training table’s attentions. It does not get game-ready with a cortisone shot. It needs the most expensive treatment possible to heal: time.

He will probably be out there, and it will be a bad example for the kids he hopes to reach with the scripture painted onto his eyeblack each week. When they suffer a concussion in their high school football games, what template will they use for making a decision? Or worse still, what example will their coaches urge them to use? Someone like Tebow, most likely. This is what you might call a teaching moment. We hope he chooses the lesson that it is just football, and that sometimes discretion is the better part of valor. Simultaneously, we are not optimistic about him making this choice.

If Tebow has suffered a concussion, and is genuinely concerned about setting an example for the people he wants to reach, he should let John Brantley start against LSU.