Rich Jarzynka was in the mall again Tuesday, at the corner of the food court that had long served as his home office, the place where he had written his book and hand-knitted his soul back together.

It's a healing place, tucked between the down escalator and a netherworld of mental torment, no more or less pivotal to this North Catholic and Georgia Tech footballer than his other healing places: his proximity to Christ, the psychiatric hospitals, or the Duquesne University campus where he earned his masters degree in psychology.

"The last class I took to get it," he smiled Tuesday, "was while I was still in the psychiatric ward at St. Francis Hospital. They'd release me, I'd go to class, then report back to the hospital at night."

Jarzynka's brain works fine these days, better than most, in fact. He's working toward ministry certification at the Allison Park Church of God. He's an author, a counselor, soon to be a radio host, and his Facebook page has turned into an online comfort zone for victims of bipolar disorder and their families.

But there's one thing he's never going to comprehend, and if you've been following sports even passively this year, you know he's not alone.

"If you were walking down the street," he said, "and you saw a kid wearing a helmet, and he was running into things head first, that person would be involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility. If there were an adult there encouraging him to do it, that person would be arrested."

So welcome to another football season and another round of 300,000 concussions, which is not my guess, but that of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons in a statement released last Friday. Forty-five thousand of those will put people in emergency rooms.

Certainly you've become aware that the NFL is nearing a very uncomfortable conundrum on this. For the first time, the league is posting grim warnings on the potentially catastrophic results of concussions in every locker room, and the great attitudinal shift has begun toward a place where the game will ultimately be safer, but perhaps much less appealing to an American audience virtually weaned on violence.

But it isn't the NFL's problem Jarzynka's worried about, nor is it that of the colleges.

"If you're an adult -- and I'd consider an 18-year-old an adult -- and you make an educated decision that you're going to ram your head into someone else who is willing to do the same thing, then that's up to you, but if you're not ..."

Millions of people who are not will suit up for such activities in the next week. Locally, Aug. 16 is the day high school kids can start banging heads. The harder they hit, the more they'll be praised.

Sure, I did it.

Maybe you did it.

Plenty of people you know did it.

By the grace of God, most of us have no ill effects, or none of which we know. But the odds and the logic have come into sharp focus in the new century, and the game's gloried backdrop is fading fast.

A number of credible studies have linked traumatic brain injury with psychiatric disorders, including high rates of depression, bipolar affective disorder, anxiety, borderline and avoidant personality disorders, and, don't forget, death. Or at least what clinicians call "co-morbidity."

"I can't prove that football is the reason I'm bipolar, but the possibility certainly exists," Jarzynka said. "I had two diagnosed concussions. Many other times I saw stars and just played through it. I can remember in college being so dizzy from hitting my head that I didn't know which way to turn to go back to the huddle, and then I'd come out on the next play and bang my head into somebody again."

Of course, like just about everyone who plays, he thought nothing of this. He was 6 feet 4 and 245 pounds. He was getting accolades. Getting scholarship offers. Then one day years later, the world started coming apart in chunks, as it did for late Mike Webster, for late Terry Long, for late Justin Strzelczyk, for the late Chris Henry and the rest of the ominously documented All-Brain Injury team.

"I cracked up," Jarzynka wrote in the first chapter of his book, "Blessed with Bipolar."

"I cobbled together some mad reality, and blew a fuse."

Hospitalized seven times for bipolar disorder, he has cobbled together a hopeful and high productive reality that betters lives all over his community and cyberspace. He knows his football opinions are to be judged in that context, and still, on this one I'm in total agreement.

"My opinion is that the three-point stance should be banned at every level prior to college," he said. "Of course, given my history, it's entirely possible that I'm not thinking straight."

You should know that Roger Goodell has had straight thoughts of this very same idea for the NFL. But every year the league says it's cracking down on spearing and helmet-to-helmet hits, and every year, 80 percent of them are not penalized. The first football highlight I saw of the new season was of a Cincinnati Bengals punt coverage man running into a Dallas Cowboys punt returner who had signaled for a fair catch.

Head first, of course.

Is anyone paying attention?

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