* The Baltimore Sun reported that Baltimore Ravens defensive lineman Haloti Ngata probably won’t need surgery for the knee injury he suffered during Super Bowl XLVII. And defensive back Bernard Pollard played the game with six broken ribs, according to NFL.com.

Ngata wasn’t on crutches at the team hotel Monday in New Orleans and was moving quickly.

According to sources with knowledge of the situation, they would be surprised if Ngata has any major ligament damage and are hopeful that it’s just a sprained medial collateral ligament.

* TheBloodyElbow.com wrote about how concussion research by the NFL will benefit the UFC.

Dana White wants the UFC to be the biggest sport in the world. And that’s fine. Unlike others, I don’t fault him for his lofty ambitions. It’s precisely that ambition that has brought live MMA to fans across the world in places we simply wouldn’t have imagined would get the chance to see a show ten years ago. But if you want to sit at the big kid’s table, you can’t still be sleeping with a mobile above your bed, and sometimes MMA still looks like it’s strapped to a onesie. And so this means being responsible, and socially conscious. It means being a client for ImPACT, taking part in vital research, and it most certainly means not asking your fighters to compete a month after suffering a brutal knockout loss, as DaMarques Johnson did in his back to back fights with Mike Swick, and Gunnar Nelson.

If the UFC expects to contend with with the NFL’s popularity, it needs to think hard about what threatens it. Nobody is listening to Dion Sanders. They’re listening to Dr. Robert Cantu, and Dr. Ann McKee. The astute point, that it’s not hard to imagine a sport as popular as football being marginalized when you consider how popular boxing and horse racing were early in the 20th century, cannot be overstated. Of course, brutality and animal cruelty weren’t the only reasons for their decline, but these are factors all the same.

 

* Fox2-TV in St. Louis interviewed former Dallas Cowboys player Howard Richards about the concussion symptoms he still faces.

* KDFA-TV in Amarillo reported on efforts to limit full-contact practice in Texas high school football.

* KHOU-TV in Houston wrote about how some parents are taking preventive measures for concussions in youth sports.

* And the Australian Financial Review wrote about a company that has developed a teaching app for Australian Rules Football and cricket.