Written by Gregg Doyel at IndyStar.com
Two quarterbacks, two concussions. Same weekend. Not the same decision.
IU quarterback Zander Diamont is done with football, or will be after the Hoosiers’ bowl game. He’s a junior but went through senior day festivities before Indiana’s home finale Saturday against Purdue.
Diamont, who has suffered multiple concussions, has another year of eligibility and a coach who is keeping after him to use it — more on that in a minute — but he knows who he wants to be in 10 years. And it’s not someone standing on a football field, or worse, sitting in a wheelchair and wondering how he got there.
“I need my brain,” Diamont was saying Saturday after Indiana’s 26-24 victory against Purdue, ostensibly his last game at Memorial Stadium.
If this is how it ends, it was glorious. Diamont, a little bitty Big Ten quarterback listed at 174 pounds but playing at about 160, scored an early touchdown against the bitter rival Boilermakers and led the winning TD drive late in the fourth quarter.
If this is how it ends, it’s another shocking sign — well, maybe not so shocking anymore — of football’s civil war.
I need my brain.
So does Andrew Luck, but the Colts QB knows who he wants to be in 10 years. He wants to be a Super Bowl champion, as many times as possible. And so Luck, one week after bouncing the back of his helmeted head off the playing surface at Lucas Oil Stadium, said he’s “ready to go” for the Colts’ next game on Monday at the New York Jets.
This was Luck’s first concussion, and it cost him a game last week when the Colts played the Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday, just four days after he suffered the concussion. Luck went into the NFL’s concussion protocol and wasn’t released in time. He remains in the protocol, as does safety Clayton Geathers, but coach Chuck Pagano said both are in the final stages and should be on the field Monday in New York.
Luck met the media on Monday, and unlike the giddy Diamont — happy that IU had beaten Purdue, relieved to have his decision out in the open — Luck was pensive, reluctant to discuss his injury, at one point plaintively making this plea:
“Enough concussion talk, please.”
Nope, not the way it works. Not when you’re the franchise quarterback, and not when the issue is your brain. This is an enormous topic and it’s not going anywhere, and a player with a concussion need not have Luck’s stature to be thrust into the headlines.
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