EAST LANSING - Hit after hit the Spartan medical staff is on the sideline, ready to assist players after dangerous hits, specifically involving the head.

“A concussion is a complex injury that involves either a direct blow of an athletes head or to another object like the ground,” MSU football's team physician Randy Pearson said.

Lately, concussions have been a subject of discussion in the sports world but at MSU the staff has always taken head injuries very seriously.

“The protocalls change over the years," Pearson said. "But the degree of medical attention that those injuries bring up for us has always been the same.”

Head Athletic Trainer Sally Nogle is the first to respond to a suspected head injury.

"The most common sign is headache," Nogle said. "So when someone takes a significant hit that causes a headache right then we're concerned about it, more commonly after the headache, it might be dizziness, it might be foggyness. They’re just not quite with it. Slower than normal.”

If a player is diagnosed with a concussion, further action is taken immediately.

“So when we diagnose an individual with a concussion we’ll remove them from play, and then in the near term we actually do evaluations to make sure theyre not getting worse," Pearson said. "Because there are other conditions that can happen with the brain."

After evaluations and diagnostics, messages are immediately relayed to coaches.

“There's a lot of communication happening, our coaches are great. They're not gonna put someone back in they say we can't go and they say tell us when they're ready or not ready and they go with what we say,” Nogle said.

Although the medical staff continues to treat concussions as they always have, Pearson said treatment processes are always subject to change.

“We do what we do based on the best available evidence," Pearson said. "But, it may very well be 5 or 10 years down the road people may figure out that the best thing is not to rest the brain it's to exercise the brain and we’re just not there yet.”

Until then head injuries will still be taken with the same caution to keep players off the sideline, and on the field.