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Pulling back Coaches need to keep players from pushing too hard
There is no aspect of college football in which the sport has made more progress than the caring for the health of its players. Think of all the changes over the last 40 years: more trainers, more doctors, more water breaks, fewer practices, shorter practices. There are no more Junctions, the infamous summer camp that Bear Bryant held prior to his first season at Texas A&M nearly a half-century ago. Coaches now consult the heat index when making out their practice plan for the day. And players are still dying. Eraste Autin, an incoming Florida freshman, died last month 11 workouts into his college career. Devaughn Darling, a Florida State redshirt, died in February. And pro football gives us Korey Stringer, the All-Pro right tackle for the Minnesota Vikings, who died early Wednesday of complications from heat stroke. Football has never been more sophisticated in its approach to maintaining its athletes, yet what do we have to show for it when the players remain in danger? "You're trying to push your players up to the edge," Florida coach Steve Spurrier said Wednesday at the SEC's media day in Birmingham, Ala. "Obviously, you can't push them over the edge. You push everybody right up to the edge where they give all they've got that day." "Give all they've got" may be an unfortunate choice of words, but Spurrier captured the essence of what coaches attempt to do: find the edge and get their players to put their toes on it. Coaches have been trying to do that for generations. In the old days, drinking water during practice was seen as a sign of weakness. Players took salt tablets to replenish what they lost while sweating. The team trainer was a cranky old guy who wrapped ankles and didn't dispense much more than advice. By comparison, Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville schedules popsicle breaks during practice. He says that memory is a tricky thing. "I don't think the practices were as hard then as they are now," Tuberville says. "It was a toughness thing back then, but you can only do so much after you run out of energy and fluids. It used to be that you couldn't take your helmet off in practice. Now we make them take their helmets off. That's how most of your heat comes out -- through your head. Now we do so much. If we have certain players getting more exhausted than others, we take them out of there." Tuberville suggests that the NCAA allow freshmen to be put on scholarship for the summer prior to their first season, if only to give athletic departments the chance to perform complete physicals on incoming athletes. Perhaps Florida would have found a defect in Autin that would have saved his life. Still, a checkup didn't save Darling, who appeared perfectly healthy during his brief career as a Seminoles linebacker. You can only imagine the number of checkups that Stringer endured during his career at Ohio State, where he was an All-American, and then in the NFL. The fact is that today players work out more and work out smarter. Spurrier remembers spending the summers during his playing days on the golf course. Players of the 21st century train year-round. Darling died during winter conditioning. Autin died during a workout that was "voluntary," at least according to the NCAA Manual. Their actions are indications that football has become a 12-month sport. A statistician might be able to sit down, add up all the workouts that football players endure over the course of a year and show that the death rate is lower now than a generation ago. But it's impossible to reach a definitive conclusion because the NCAA didn't track workout totals back in the day, and in the end it really doesn't matter. One death is one death too many. For a century, the NCAA has changed the rules of the sport to protect the players. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt demanded that football be made less rough; a year later the American Football Rules Committee was formed and the game began to evolve. In the early 1930s, the NCAA outlawed the flying wedge -- in which blockers locked arms and swung downfield -- after the death of Army player Richard Sheridan, who was fatally injured when returning a kickoff. There is no presidential edict now. There is no tactic to outlaw. The game on the field has never been better. No one would dare suggest that workouts be curtailed. You can't stop people from pursuing excellence. The challenge is to prevent them from pursuing it over the edge. Sports Illustrated senior writer Ivan Maisel covers college football for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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