The news is replete the past few days relative to how coaches handle players. The firing of Kansas football coach certainly brought the topic to surface. More recently, the accusations by Texas Tech players and family fueled this fire.

My point is merely, there are different ways to handle injured athletes. I think it prudent to realize there are several issues worth reviewing/addressing here.
1. The physicians and athletic trainers should handle health care and the supervision of injuries and related matters.
2. The literature is supportive of rest following concussions. I don’t think the literature supports isolation in a room. The placement in a dark room would certainly make sense for a post-concussive event; but I think the application of this procedure could have been better implemented. From reports from the physician and athletic trainer involved; this request was mandated by the coach.
3. Administrators need to empower health care teams to care for injured athletes without influence of coaches. The NCAA put this into a rule relative to dealing with heat illness and conditioning activities. Funny that the NCAA had to make a rule for this autonomy to be provided to the health care team.

We cannot legislate or mandate ethics. Administrators need to make sure student-athletes are afforded a standard of care – and it is important administrators make sure that health care is objective and valid. The student-athlete does have a bill of rights!

Needless to say, I write this from the point of view of the health care team. Athletes have rights, and we need to make sure their safety is provided while they participate in a safe environment.

Athletic Trainers, Team Physicians, Coaches, and Equipment Managers need to warn players about the potential cataststrophic events which could occur using helmets and shoulder pads. The recommendations is to warn players about the potential of heat illness being exascerbated by protective equipment including helmets and shoulder pads. The article can be found at .

As I reflect on my career in Sports Medicine / Athletic Training, dating back to my college days studying Athletic Training in the seventies, there certainly has been a lot of evolutionary change in the area of management of health care data. I recall the early days when Appalachian’s Head Athletic Trainer Ron Kanoy filled out NAIRS forms weekly, and returned them to Penn State where the research was conducted. Those were the days of injury surveillance. Basically, these were data collection to look at the incidence of injury and researchers made scientific statements and recommendations relative to the prevention of injury and training and conditioning trends. Read the rest of this entry »

Over the recent years, interest has grown significantly relative to injury (especially of the lower leg) and sport surfaces. Are players getting injured due to changes in surfaces, are the infill synthetic turf leading to more injuries, or are there certain shoe types that are precluding injury?
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I’d like to share some thoughts on cost containment relative to the administration of health care in today’s collegiate athletics. As I reflect on my 28 years of service to this sector, the ability to provide the highest level of care in an economic means is a challenge. As a rule, institutions have been more willing to pay non-covered medical expenses of student-athletes at a greater rate in Division I, with less willingness in lower divisions. The financial ability is just greater to provide such services in the higher level divisions.

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