The purpose of this study was to explore the potential etiology of the cognitive deficits found in soccer players by previous researchers.  Two separate explanations have been advanced to account for previously reported cognitive performance deficits or electroencephalographic abnormalities found in soccer players when compared with control subjects.  The explanatiolns for these differences are believed to either result from intentionally directing the ball with the head ("heading") or are a direct result of acute head injury (i.e., concussion).  To investigate the efficacy of these explanations, male soccer players (n = 25, M age 21.12 years) and track athletes (n = 21, M age 20.42 years), all with collegiate athletic experience, reported the frequency of heading and concussions and were also administered a battery of neurosychological tests.  These two groups showed no statistically significant differences (p > .05) on tests of reaction time, visospatial processing, attention/concentration, or short-term memory.  The results of this study indicate that healthy, actively competitive soccer players perform similarly to an athletic comparison group, and that neither heading the ball in the amont prevalent among soccer players in the present study nor previous concussions more than 3 weeks prior to testing were correlated with performance on neuropsychological tests.  Comparison of these results with the results of other studie that have found neuropsychological deficits among soccer players suggests that soccer players who head the ball more than 15 times per game and those within 2-3 days of receiving a concussion may be prime candidates for performance deficits on psychoneurological tests.