Every little boy playing pee-wee football dreams of one day wearing size 12 shoes, stepping onto the celebrated college football stage and going against the top competition in the game.

No little boy dreams of being carted off of the field after sustaining an injury while a stadium chock-full of fans look on, some with their voices raised to a fever pitch, some flummoxed as to what just materialized on the field below.

Despite the bedlam and commotion, the football player lying powerlessly in the mist of the green grass becomes the focal point of every person’s attention. TV commentators speculate, and analyze the replay while trying to establish what could be plaguing the athlete who went down.

The medical staff’s feet pound on the turf as they swiftly trot to the athlete’s side. Trying to tune out the squawks and bellows of boisterous and impassioned fans is forced to become the second nature of trainers and others in the sports medicine field alike.

“In an on the [football] field situation, you’re not going to do a full exam. The biggest thing you’re trying to do is determine what body parts hurt, what’s the extent and the seriousness of the injury and then how best to transport them from the field in a safe manner so they don’t injury it anymore,” said Ron Courson, director of sports medicine for the University of Georgia. “When you’re on the field and there’s 90,000 people yelling, it’s hard to ask questions and get good answers.”

If while on the field assessing an injured athlete, Courson feels as though the injury is of a more serious nature, such as concerning the head, neck or spine, he and his team respond accordingly, and transport the player with the neck and head supported and immobilized properly.

With two Bulldogs sustaining concussions in the heartbreaking loss to LSU Saturday, having to deal with the reality of head injuries becomes a forefront for Georgia instead of watching Florida’s quarterback Tim Tebow go through the motions of recovering from his more than newsworthy concussion he sustained against Kentucky.

Sophomore receiver Tavarres King and redshirt sophomore tailback Caleb King both suffered significant blows to the head against the Tigers, and will remain in the Classic City while their teammates make the trek up to Rocky Top land.

“Head injuries are more difficult to evaluate because it’s not like an ankle where you can palpate it and you can stress it and you can do a range of motion strength test,” Courson said. “Part of a head injury is [trainers and doctors] are dependent on their history.”

That history includes previous head injuries as well as a series of tests, known as baseline testing, that athletes complete each preseason to give doctors and trainers a point of reference to compare if an athlete were to suffer a concussion over the course of a season.

Using computerized tests for each component of the process, the three systems from which a person’s balance comes are measured – the devisual system (the eyes), the vestibule system (the inner ear) and the proprioception system (foot to ground contact).

“If I know what your normal balance is and you have a concussion, then I have something to compare it to,” Courson said.

The baseline tests are then repeated immediately after a concussion is initially sustained and again when the athlete no longer reports signs or symptoms.

Written symptom tests that indicate severity and duration of concussion-related signs and symptoms are administered to athletes throughout their recovery period. When the athlete no longer has any of the signs depicted on the symptomatology index, a slow progression of getting them back into physical activity is then initiated, starting with a 10-minute bike ride and then eventually back to full-contact practice. Each stage eases the athlete back into being physical once again, and raises their inner cerebral pressure little by little.

“If anywhere along in there they have some symptoms, we stop them and back them back down,” Courson said. “They may go through that [progression] in one day, they may go through that in four or five days. It’s just a matter of progression. We monitor from that standpoint.”

Courson and his staff evaluate each injured athlete, and look over their injury and treatment plan with a fine-tooth comb every morning. After compiling an injury report, the entirety of the football staff, including coaches, gather at the daily staff meeting to ensure that everyone is up to date on each athlete’s injury status.

“If we have an idea what their baseline balance is and if we test them again and they’re too far off you’ve got to hold them. There’s ways to monitor it and check them out and see if they’re safe to play,” Georgia coach Mark Richt said. “We as coaches, we’re totally at the mercy of what our trainers say, what the doctors say. And that’s the way it should be.”

The doctors and trainers work side-by-side the strength and conditioning coaches throughout the recovery and rehabilitation of an athlete.

“We keep each other informed. Ron tells me everyday what is going on. I’ll go and tell our staff, ‘These are the things that they’re allowed to go, ‘what they’re not allowed to do.’ Start them real slow, then we go little by little, getting better and better and better,” said Dave Val Halanger, director of strength and conditioning for Georgia’s football program.

The role of strength and conditioning in the game of football has become more and more prominent in recent decades, not only as something that can improve an athlete’s game, but also as a key ingredient in injury rehab.

“College football has gotten to a game that is so big, so powerful, so fast and so strong that training has become essential to them. It’s the catalyst to winning and the catalyst to bringing kids together,” said Val Halanger. “We want to emphasize the team. Safety is a big factor in everything that we do.”

But on Sept. 28, safety in Southern California’s weight room faltered for just a split second.

In that second, USC running back Stafon Johnson sustained a traumatic injury due to a weight room accident. While bench-pressing, the bar slipped out of the senior’s grip and collapsed on his face and neck, causing catastrophic damage to his larynx and throat.

The damage required seven hours of surgery to repair Johnson’s extensive injuries, and was something Val Halanger thinks was an unfortunate freak accident, so to speak.

“I’ve done this for 30 years, and that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of anything happening in a college setting to an athlete like that,” Val Halanger said. “The bench press is usually a simple, easy exercise to do with a spotter, and there was a spotter right there [with Johnson]. It happened so fast, it just came down on Stafon’s neck.”

Van Halanger spoke with players about the incident the following day when they came in for a weight lifting session.

“As soon as our players came in on Tuesday after hearing about it Monday, we sat down again and went all over it and told them what happened and what we’re going to do to prevent that,” Van Halanger said.

As a beginning measure of prevention, when a freshman football player sets foot on Georgia’s campus for the first time, the strength and conditioning coaches immediately shuffle him into the weight room to accurately demonstrate and teach the correct techniques used with each different lift.

“They do about two weeks of learning the lifts and how to properly execute the lifts. They always have spotters. They always have proper hand placement or foot placement, depending on the lift,” said Rex Bradberry, a strength and conditioning graduate assistant. “Those are some things we try to prevent because safety is our number one concern.”

Prevention of injury will never be perfected, especially in a rough and tumble sport such as football. Van Halanger, Bradberry, and every member of the strength and conditioning staff work year in and year out to make sure they are providing the best weight-lifting education and injury prevention knowledge they can.

“We’re now investigating ways and strategies and techniques to prevent injury because it is hard for a kid to work so hard and [get hurt],” Bradberry said. “We don’t want a situation like [Johnson's] to ever occur, but if it does occur we want to be able to respond.”

Across the board, these men work to protect, train and rehabilitate the athletes groomed in the red and black that fans cheer for every Saturday. It’s a process that goes unnoticed by the average Bulldog inside Sanford Stadium, but quintessential in the smooth operation of a high-caliber college football program.

“Because safety of the kids is our number one goal as a staff. If you want to put a product on the field that’s healthy, the number one goal of a strength program is to prevent injury,” Bradberry said. “If a guy gets hurt on the field and has surgery, then we’re working directly with Ron and his staff on exercises he can begin to do in his post-rehab phase to get him back.”