Surrounded by reporters, Randy Walker stood a few yards off Northwestern’s practice field, engulfed in the shadows of Welsh-Ryan Arena and questions about his players’ injuries.
Freshman defensive end Corey Wootton was a particular subject of conversation, along with the neck strain Wootton sustained earlier in the season and apparently had reaggravated.
“He is OK,” Walker said, but the coach deferred to his trainer when asked about Wootton’s official status. Busy coaching his players, Walker said he often doesn’t know such details, adding, with a smile, “If they show up, we play ’em.”
Years ago, however, this might not have been the case.
Walker or any other college coach would have determined his players’ status, serving as head football coach and head of safety. Water breaks and injury treatment were in the coaches’ hands. Coaches taught whatever technique brought them wins. And athletic trainers simply were there to administer first-aid.
“We’ve come an awful long way from what was depicted in the ESPN movie (‘The Junction Boys’),” said Dr. Tracy Ray, a physician at the Alabama Sports Medicine and Orthopedic Center, referring to the 2002 TV movie about Paul “Bear” Bryant’s first summer as Texas A&M head coach.
The ESPN movie showed a brutal coach and a brutal game circa 1954.
But in 2005, studies show that college football isn’t always the injury minefield it’s perceived to be. Instead, it’s a dangerous, full-contact sport – but one that many rule changes, trainers and doctors make safe.
And it’s getting safer.
According to this year’s NCAA Sports Medicine Handbook, there was a 4 percent chance of a college football player sustaining an injury in a game in 2004-05. There was a 1.3 percent chance of injury in spring practice, and the likelihood dropped to less than 1 percent in summer and fall practice.
The National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research (NCCSI) showed in a recent study that college football players sustained catastrophic injuries – defined as fatal, paralyzing or other severe injuries – at a 0.01 percent rate from 1982 and 2004.
These numbers are declining, something NCCSI director Frederick O. Mueller, Ph.D., said is a result of rule changes, coaching techniques, and medical and technical advances – all demanded by the 70-year-old organization and many other medical experts watching out for football.
“It probably could be safer,” Mueller said. “But I think it’s an ongoing thing. You have to keep talking about safety, keep talking about (being) careful.”
All of this talk has affected the game, making America’s most popular college sport a mostly safe extracurricular activity.
Mostly.
When tragedy strikes
The images are stark and disturbing, like pages ripped from pulp sports fiction.
There’s Penn State cornerback Adam Taliaferro lying on the ground, a mob of frantic navy-clad trainers surrounding his motionless body.
There’s Missouri linebacker Aaron O’Neal, face down on the practice field less than two hours before his July 2005 death.
Both nightmare situations, both all too real. And catastrophic situations like these are all too familiar to NU, which faced its own worst-case scenario with the August 2001 death of senior safety Rashidi Wheeler.
Medical reports showed that Wheeler died of an exercise-induced asthma attack after a preseason workout. The 22-year-old had taken a supplement that contained ephedra, a stimulant now outlawed by the NCAA.
Wheeler’s, O’Neal’s and other heat-related deaths are highly preventable, said Ray, also a member of the NCAA Committee on Competitive Safeguards, which produces the yearly sports medicine handbook.
Ray said trainers and coaches must keep a closer watch on players during the warmer practices, “and if people are struggling, (coaches have) to not just blow it off and say they’re out of shape or they’re not trying.”
Still, while Ray said the tough-it-out culture of college football can contribute to these deaths, previously hidden or unknown conditions – like bacterial meningitis and the sickle-cell trait, both reportedly present in O’Neal – often cause them.
Also, Ray said, it’s not as if coaches are going out of their way to dehydrate their players.
“I don’t know of any coaches now that are holding back water as a discipline reason,” Ray said.
While heat-related deaths grab national attention, more common among catastrophic injuries are those sustained during games, like the spinal chord fracture Taliaferro sustained – and surprisingly overcame, thanks to extensive rehab – in 2000.
These, like heat deaths, are preventable, said Paul Schmidt, athletic medicine supervisor at the University of Michigan.
Schmidt, Ray and others said most of these often-paralyzing injuries are caused by poor tackling technique. These injuries are less directly preventable than heat illness, usually averted by teaching proper technique and steadfast rules enforcement by the officials.
After the playing days are over, equally disturbing effects may surface. This was investigated in a 2001 “Sports Illustrated” story by Lester Munson and William Nack, which described the suffering of Hall-of-Famers Johnny Unitas and Earl Campbell, among others, due to the many hits they took as professionals.
Schmidt said that while these players took most of their big hits in the NFL, a football player doesn’t have to go pro to be affected later on in life.
“If you’re in college and you have six surgeries, that’s pretty significant,” Schmidt said. “That person is at greater risk … than the player who played on the same team and had no surgeries.”
Despite these examples of horrific injuries and deaths, Ray said public and media emphasis – especially on player deaths – blows the actual risk out of proportion.
“It’s just ridiculous how much we talk about it and how really rarely it happens,” Ray said. “It’s catastrophic when it does, but can (the NCAA) do a better job than we’re already doing? I’m not convinced that we can. We’ll continue to see if we can improve things, but a lot of times when you try to improve on some things you end up going backwards.”
‘It’s a much safer sport’
According to the NCCSI, college football in the 1960s experienced more than three direct fatalities – fatalities caused by football-related injuries – per 100,000 participants.
Since 1987, less than one direct fatality per 300,000 participants has been reported, about one-tenth the frequency in the 1960s. In 14 of the last 18 years, no direct fatalities have been reported.
“It’s a much safer sport,” said NU coach Randy Walker, who played for Miami of Ohio from 1972-75. “I think there are more positive things happening with research.”
Some of the research showed the spinal cord injuries were caused by defenders tackling with their heads first, exposing their necks to powerful impact.
Spearing and helmet-to-helmet tackles are now 15-yard penalties in NCAA games. In addition, safer helmets have been developed, and coaches on both high school and college levels have been instructed, particularly by the NCCSI research, to teach safer tackling technique.
Other research came out of the NCAA’s 1977 creation of its sports medicine handbook. Along with research, the book provides guidelines that, while unenforceable, help institutions develop their own medical and training programs, NCAA assistant director of education outreach David Klossner said.
The development of better athletic training programs have helped, Walker said.
“I go back, seriously, to the time when trainers – didn’t always have professional training,” Walker said. “They could maybe wrap an ankle and they might have had first aid (training).”
Nowadays, nearly all trainers are certified and are able to provide rapid medical treatment at a moment’s notice.
Tory Lindley, in his fourth year as NU director of athletic training services, serves as the Wildcats’ head football tra
iner.
Lindley said today’s athletic trainer must perform a myriad of duties – from menial jobs, such as moving a bag of balls out of the players’ way, to the highly technical, such as leading a year-long rehabilitation of a torn knee ligament.
As shown in the Wootton situation, the athletic trainer’s job also includes deciding which players can practice and play, and to what extent.
In addition to deciding player status, Lindley and his staff are responsible for living up to the sports medicine handbook guidelines, which cover everything from medical issues to drug testing.
“We exceed all of them,” said Lindley, who leads a football staff of four certified athletic trainers and eight student assistants – above average among Big Ten schools.
The NCAA has its share of enforceable safety-related rules, particularly dealing with the number and length of pre-season practices. These regulations include a mandatory no-pads period at the beginning of fall practice and banning of back-to-back two-a-days.
“We would have laughed at that back in 1972,” Walker said.
But, he added, because of research and rule enforcement, “People are doing things that are a lot smarter.”
It’s a wild world
Days after his son’s first concussion, Chris Deckas is a little pensive.
Never an issue before, the elder Deckas admits to thinking a little more about safety after his son, Dan, a senior linebacker and potential NU recruit from Edina, Minn., sustained the concussion during a high school game.
Still, Chris Deckas says, it’s not the most pressing issue. He played college football. He knows the risks and their rarity.
Inspection of medical facilities and training staff won’t be a focal point of his son’s college search, Chris Deckas says, a search that includes NU, Dartmouth and Wisconsin – all reputable institutions in the father’s eyes.
When Dan Deckas chooses a school, his family won’t be the only one to have brushed by the safety issue.
NU freshman running back Tyrell Sutton said he and his family didn’t look into the school’s safety preparedness, because “we knew that it’s a Big Ten school, so they obviously have a lot of medical staff and a lot of medical attention here for the players.”
Players often refuse to admit their vulnerability, choosing to play through the pain and the extreme risk. Others say thinking about injuries is the best way to get oneself hurt.
Some, though, said they’re aware of the risk but still feel safe playing football thanks to all the advances in technology and athletic training.
“I think it’s safe, but I think the violent nature makes it appear like it’s not,” senior quarterback Brett Basanez said. “As far as injuries go, I don’t know. We wear a lot of pads out here.”
Though the headline-grabber, football’s not even the most dangerous college sport across the board.
While football accounts for the most injuries among NCAA sports, gymnasts and wrestlers sustain more surgery-requiring injuries during competition. Also, the NCCSI found that college gymnastics and ice hockey have higher rates of catastrophic injury than college football.
“I kind of get a little tickled when (parents) say: ‘Well, I don’t want my son to play football. I want him to play soccer,'” Ray said, emphasizing the danger in soccer, other sports – and life itself.
“You can mess yourself up pretty bad just falling down the stairs,” Ray said, adding: “I think (football) is a good, safe sport.”
It’s thanks to advances in technology and approach, like that which calls for Walker to coach his players and the athletic trainers to watch over their safety.
“It’s safer than it’s ever been,” Walker said. “Now, are kids going to get hurt? Yeah. It’s hard to have 300-pound men running into each other at full speed and not have (injuries).
“There’s just a lot of products out there for the athlete’s benefit. There’s just a whole lot more known and understood.”
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