| Summary: | 6 theconcordian.org • September 28, 2017 THE CONCORDIAN Sports BY ABBY SHARPE asharpe@cord.edu With an undefeated start to the season, the Cobber football team is striving towards greatness and senior captain Chad Johnson has been an instrumental part of the 3-0 start. The hot-start has put Johnson within two touchdowns of tying the Concordia football record for most all-time career touchdowns. Johnson is currently third on the all-time touchdown list with 32, trailing current head coach Terry Horan, who had 33 touchdowns, and 2012 graduate Brett Baune, who holds the record with 34 touchdowns. “It’s pretty surreal,” Johnson said. “To be in the same category as some of the greats is truly honoring.” Head coach Horan is not surprised with the level of play Johnson has achieved. “His numbers are no surprise,” Horan said. “He’s a physical guy with great athleticism. He gets a lot of help from our offensive line and has great field awareness and vision.” So far this season, Johnson, who has picked up the nickname “The Bus Driver”, has run for 471 yards and seven touchdowns on just 59 carries. His numbers have him atop the MIAC in rushing yards, rushing yards per game, yards per carry, and touchdowns. “Chad is a really great athlete,” Horan said. “He’s a big part of our offense. He’s been getting minutes since freshman year so he has great experience and understands what we’re asking of him.” Johnson appeared in all 10 games as a freshman, contributing mostly on special teams while adding one touchdown on 11 carries. “The Bus Driver” stepped into a featured role on offense the very next season, scoring 10 touchdowns as a sophomore and 14 as a junior. It was during his freshman campaign that Johnson had to round out his game and embrace a different role. Co-offensive coordinator and fullback coach Aaron Willits coached him through this transition. “Coming from high school where Chad had the ball every play, we had to coach him through what to do without the ball,” Willits said. “He’s become a great blocker and does a lot of things for us without the ball.” While Johnson grew into a player who can impact the game without the ball, his ability to make plays with the ball did not go unnoticed by the coaching staff. “Chad started freshman year at the slotback, and after we graduated our fullbacks we decided he was the guy to have at the fullback position,” Willits said. “It’s a place we can have him get the most touches on the ball.” Johnson came to Concordia ready to grow as a player and a teammate. “My freshman year was a really good team of guys who I learned a lot from,” Johnson said. “After that I knew I would have to put some weight on to get more physically game ready to accomplish what I wanted at the fullback position.” Johnson brought the work ethic every coach dreams of in an athlete. “He’s the hardest working kid I’ve seen during my time here,” Willits said. “He finishes every drill and goes hard every play. Every coach looks for someone that will go out there and do everything you ask, and he’s that player.” It’s that work ethic that has led Johnson to be a key playmaker for the Cobber football team. Going from around four carries a game freshman year at slotback, Johnson is averaging just under 20 carries a game as a senior fullback. “We want our fullback to be our best player,” Willits said. “They get the most touches and have the opportunity to impact the game, and that’s what Chad does for us and that’s what Baune did for us, too.” After a bye week, the Cobber football team heads into Homecoming Weekend prepared to take on Gustavus Adolphus College, kickoff at 1:00 p.m. Johnson runs toward history COBBER SID Senior football captain Chad Johnson. BY ELI SWANSON eswanso4@cord.edu When Juan Trevino Jr. stepped onto the field for Lumberton High School (Texas) in August, it was his first taste of high school football. Just a few short weeks later, the 15-year-old was confined to a hospital bed with a life-threatening brain injury sustained during practice. Trevino’s family told 12News that Trevino’s road to recovery could be very long after the freshman underwent brain surgery at the University of Texas Medical Center. “Every day is a little bit of progress in a different way. He hasn’t opened his eyes yet but that’s what we’re waiting for him to do,” said Trevino’s aunt, Alicia Yokubaitis, to 12News in August. The incident was the latest in a long string of substantial head injuries suffered by football players during practice. Just last week, the Boston University Alzheimer’s Center released the findings from a study of the brain of former tight end/convicted murderer, Aaron Hernandez. The former Patriot had signs of stage three (of four) of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy—the most advanced state ever observed in a player of Hernandez’s age, 27. Dr. Ann McKee, BU’s chief neuropathologist, performed the autopsy and said of her findings, “Mr. Hernandez had early brain atrophy and large perforations in the septum pellucidium, a central membrane.” Furthermore, McKee noted that CTE has been associated with “aggressiveness, explosiveness, impulsivity, depression, memory loss, and other cognitive changes.” While the NFL has been reluctant to acknowledge the negative effects of head injuries caused by contact to the head, the Canadian Football League took a welcome step forward last week when it announced an immediate end to contact in practice. With its announcement on Sept. 13, the CFL became the first professional football league to ban padded practice and contact in practice while simultaneously acknowledging the negative effects of consistent hits to the head in practice. The ban was a joint venture between the CFL and its players’ association. Commissioner Randy Ambrosie, who took over the job in July, shifted the league’s stance on concussions 180 degrees with the move—a welcome change from his predecessor, Jeffrey Orridge, who last year denied any link between football and the development of CTE. The new policy came as the CFL faces a $200-million class-action lawsuit from former players over head injuries and brain trauma. Commissioner Ambrosie told Sports Illustrated last week that the future of football will be crafted by the decisions made now to make the game safer. “We need to fight, literally, for the future of football, and we do that by making it safe,” Amrosie said to SI’s Peter King. “I think the battle for the future of the game is one we will win. We’re teaching safer tackling. It’s gonna take us all pushing it. Change is hard. We all know that. The fraternity of football people, we’ll find our way. I’m honored to be part of it.” For former Concordia football star and current Edmonton Eskimo wide receiver Brandon Zylstra, the change comes with positives and negatives. “I’m really kind of indifferent about the change,” Zylstra said. “A lot of players on the team were pumped, especially the linemen who have to go down and make a hit every play. I don’t mind it, and it gives the younger guys the chance to show what they can do without pads.” In addition to the elimination of contact practices, the CFL also lengthened its regular season to include an extra bye week for each team—reducing the number of short weeks and increasing recovery time for players. Stateside, the NFL was forced to acknowledge the link between blows to the head and long-term brain disease last year when it settled a class-action lawsuit against former players, who claimed the league knew the dangers of head injuries and withheld them from players, for $1 billion in compensation. Over the last few seasons, the NFL has placed an emphasis on targeting penalties and general contact to the head, but the league still has a long way to go before it matches the CFL’s recovery schedule. Each CFL team has three bye weeks in the 20-week season; NFL teams have one bye in a 17-week schedule. As the NFL continues to question widely-accepted science, the CFL took an active step forward to reduce the risk of injury for its players. Commissioner Ambrosie has shown that his players are the first priority—something that can’t be said for NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. Zylstra says the positive changes are not going unnoticed. “He’s done some good stuff,” Zylstra said. “He’s a former (Edmonton) Eskimo, so he’s someone a lot of guys can kind of relate to. He’s making a lot of good changes for player safety and the guys like the changes he’s made for the most part.” Football will never be a safe sport, but if the NFL expects the general public to believe its supposed emphasis on player safety, it must follow the CFL’s lead. Jim Cella to join hall of fame BY BRADY DRAKE bdrake@cord.edu This Saturday, four new names will be added to the Concordia College Athletic Hall of Fame. One of the four inductees, Jim Cella, has managed to make a positive impact on all 20 of the school’s athletic programs despite never having competed as an athlete for Concordia College. Cella is the only non-former Cobber athlete among a group that also includes Tory Langemo, football 1997; Shawna Letnes Erickson, swimming 2001, and Brandi Myers Rostad, women’s basketball 2001. Many people often make the mistake of calling Cella “Sid.” The mistake stems from the acronym used for his title, sport information director, on social media. The @CobberSID Twitter account has become so synonymous with Cella that he makes sure to let incoming football players know at the beginning of fall camp that his name is in fact Jim. As Concordia’s sports information director, Cella serves on the committee that selects former athletes and coaches for the Hall of Fame. The other members of the committee surprised Cella this year after easily selecting the first three members. “Usually we want to have four candidates inducted,” Cella said. “We got Tory, Shawna, and Brandi right off the bat and so for the fourth I’m going, ‘Here are the ones we could do for the fourth, we can do this person, this person’s good, this track person’. I look up and everybody in the committee’s looking at me and I’m like, ‘What? We got to come up with a fourth.’ Then they look at me and start laughing and I go, ‘What? Do I need to do this, guys? We need a fourth.’ And they say, ‘We got a fourth’ and I say, ‘Really, who is it?’ And they all looked at me and said, ‘It’s you knucklehead.’” Cella did not try to hide his emotional response to the surprise. “I found out and then I broke down,” Cella said. “So then I called my wife and I could barely talk.” Or his shock. “I deal with all the people that go in and I see all the people that go in and to put myself in that category, I can’t even fathom it,” Cella said. “You start thinking about Jake Christensen … you know, all the big names that have come through, Sonny Gulsvig, and you’re just like, ‘Woah and now I’m going to be in that same category.’” Although Cella has a hard time imagining himself in the Hall of Fame category, deputy athletic director Rachel Bergeson thinks that Cella is an obvious selection. “He is really a front-runner in some of the new endeavors in sports information directing, so a lot of people look up to him as a leader and come to him for advice,” Bergeson said. “He’s always willing to try new things as far as social media and he’s one of the better SIDs in the MIAC and all of Division III.” Cella’s ability to stay up-to-date with social media trends is what sets him apart professionally, but students who have worked for him think it is his ability to teach that makes him a leader. Austin Hawkins, currently a graduate assistant coach for the Winona State University Warriors men’s basketball team, worked for Cella while attending Concordia. Working for Cella opened doors for Hawkins, allowing him to intern in a role similar to that of an SID with both the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks, an independent minor league baseball team, and the Rochester Red Wings, the triple-A affiliate of the Minnesota Twins. “He cares so much about Concordia athletically and as a place,” Hawkins said. “He wants the athletes to be successful on and off the field.” Though most current students know Cella as Cobber SID, he is also the winningest coach in Concordia men’s soccer history. During his 12 seasons as head soccer coach, Cella won 105 regular season games and back-to-back conference championships with titles in 1995 and 1996. He also was head coach of the women’s soccer team from 2000 to 2001 and served as an assistant coach for men’s hockey as well as softball. After the 2001 season, Cella decided to step down from his role as head soccer coach and move into the SID role. Although he cannot completely let go of the coach in him—he still serves as an assistant coach with the men’s soccer team—he has clearly embraced his new role over the years. Cella subscribes to the thought that if you love your job, you will never work a day in your life. “I’ve been blessed,” Cella said. The hall of fame induction is scheduled for 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 30 in Barry Auditorium. BAILEY HOVLAND The Concordia Athletic Hall of Fame. Op Ed: CFL leads the way in player safety by banning contact practice “If the NFL expects the general public to believe its supposed emphasis on player safety, it must follow the CFL’s lead.”
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