Indiana safety Jonathan Crawford is clear about what he thinks of colleges releasing information on player injuries.
“No. Especially if I have no say in it, I wouldn’t want my personal business out there,” he said.
The US Supreme Court’s decision that allows states to legalize sports gambling has sparked a debate about requiring injury reports in college football, a sport that has not had unified rules.
CONSISTENCY
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) leaders are analyzing whether it is possible to have more medical transparency to prevent collusion and be more consistent among hundreds of teams balancing the rules of various universities, conferences, and state and federal laws.
No formal plans have been proposed as legal experts and compliance officers analyze an issue that is more complicated for college football than the NFL, which has a mandated reporting system.
A similar system of regular, in-depth reports in the NCAA would have the hurdle of privacy for younger athletes.
New rules will likely not come soon — the new season starts in three weeks and just four states have officially legalized sports gambling.
Privacy laws such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act protect players against the release of personal information without the consent of players or their parents if the player is under 18.
‘DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT’
At least some players and coaches want that privacy to stay in place.
“I coached in the NFL for nine years and there is a stark difference between working with professionals and working with college kids,” Stanford coach David Shaw said. “I do not feel right giving out medical information of a 19-year-old. I think it’s wrong in any way, shape or form.”
Still, commissioners from the Power Five conferences generally believe some kind of uniform injury reporting is inevitable, even if the details still need to be worked out.
Players consent to NFL injury reports as a condition of employment. Three practice participation reports are required every game week, along with game status reports and in-game updates.
There is no standard in the NCAA for discussing player injuries.
“My university’s attorney told me: ‘You cannot be specific with any injuries. You can say upper body. You can say lower body,’” said Todd Berry, who coached college football for 34 years and is now executive director of the American Football Coaches Association. “Many times the media would already know what it was, but that’s all I could reference.”
Some coaches are more specific. Others are reluctant to share anything at all.
That inconsistency could potentially raise red flags as legal gambling grows throughout the US.
If one coach reveals more than another, it opens up questions of whether it creates a chance for some gamblers to gain an unfair edge.
INSIDE INFO
“When there’s less info out there, you have a greater chance of having inside information,” Pregame.com senior college football analyst Brad Powers said. “When there’s more information, when everyone knows everything ... then nobody really has any inside information.”
Powers said bettors want a common language across the conferences, while Berry said that coaches also want consistency.
That could mean only releasing a player’s status for the game — an availability report, which might be the safest option — or injuries could be defined as lower or upper body only.
“The more specific you get, the greater the chance is that you will wander into an area that is protected by one or both of those statutes,” said attorney William H Brooks, who works in the NCAA compliance and investigations group for his firm, Lightfoot, Franklin & White LLC.
“Now, if someone gets hurt on the field in front of 90,000 people and you see what happened, then obviously everybody knows what the injury is, but coaches don’t elaborate on the treatment, how the player is doing other than he or she is progressing,” he added.
Berry said an argument can be made that no injury information should be released if institutions really want to protect the privacy of student athletes.
“We’re going to show up and play Saturday — or whatever day it is — and who I put out there is who were playing,” he said. “Although, that wouldn’t make it much fun for the gamblers or for the media.”
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