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Ask the average person what special day is celebrated in May, and most will say Mother's Day. Ask sports fans who athletes most often thank when they are interviewed on television after a big win, and they are most are likely to say their moms. Now, ask someone in what month does the country celebrate National Sports Moms Month, and I bet you would be met with a lot of quizzical looks.

Fact is that there hasn't been such a month, at least one that I could find. So, in 2012, I decided to declare May to be Sports Moms Month.

The decision by San Francisco 49er Chris Borland to retire from the NFL after just one season out of concern for the long-term effect of head trauma has predictably generated a media firestorm. But lost amid the hoopla is what it means for sports parents.

Here are two lessons I think parents with kids playing -- or considering playing -- football or other contact and collision sports can take away from the Borland retirement, and one lesson they shouldn't take away:

In July 2013, the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment ("NOCSAE") published a press release on its website stating that football helmets equipped with add-on products that were not originally affixed to the helmet during lab testing "void[ ] ... the helmet manufacturers'] certification of compliance with the NOCSAE standard." 

Last Friday, I attended the summer meeting of the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment (NOCSAE) at the Boston Harbor Hotel. It was hard to be inside on such a spectacular summer day, but made easier by the location of the meeting: in the Atlantic Room, directly above Rowe's Wharf, with a view of a sparkling Boston harbor filled with sailboats and power boats.

It is hard believe that it has now been six years since I gave the keynote address at the National Sports Concussion Summit in Marina del Rey, California. Harder, yet to think we have been leading this charge since 2000.