Wait and see? I saw. And I think disclosing injuries is the right step.
Published: 9/14/2012 12:24 PM
Last Modified: 9/14/2012 12:24 PM
A giant step forward for rational thinking has occurred.
A few weeks ago, when Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy was at the microphone for a press conference, he was asked a question about an injured player’s availability. Gundy said something along the lines of how OSU was going to start releasing a team injury update to the media each week to make things easier on everybody.
At some point in this millenium (or maybe before), many college football coaches determined that injury data should be double-secret classified information. It was easier to get a coach to talk about sun dresses and poodle grooming than it was to get them to elaborate on an injury.
I have an extremely high opinion of the coaching ability of former University of Tulsa coach Steve Kragthorpe (all he did was resurrect the program), but he took extreme measures in cloaking injuries and was concerned that if injury information leaked out, other coaches would, for instance, try to aim for an ailing knee and end a kid’s season or career. Or he just wanted a competitive advantage. Or both.
I got so jaundiced in regard to coaches and how they guarded injury information that I sort of had a “yeah, right” reaction when current TU coach Bill Blankenship said last season that G.J. Kinne seemed ready to play against Boise State only seven days after Kinne sustained a knee injury against Oklahoma State.
I was so skeptical that Kinne wouldn’t play that I called backup quarterback Kalen Henderson’s high school coach and picked the coach’s brain for information I might use for a column when Henderson started against Boise State.
Guess what? Blankenship told the truth about Kinne, who played against Boise State. And the Henderson information went unused. When I told Blankenship about the scenario, I fessed up about not necessarily believing him because of what had transpired in seasons past. Lesson learned, I’ll believe Blankenship every time he says a wounded player will play.
That relates to current events in Stillwater in this way: Gundy’s policy once was that he would not talk about an injured player unless that player was out for the season. That was par for the course for young Gundy, who put up a lot of walls after he became head coach. Many of the walls have since come down and, as he got older, I suspect that (like the rest of us) he learned to fight only the battles that are worth fighting. As a result, he is -- my opinion -- much more enjoyable to be around than he might have been at other times in his head coaching career.
When Gundy said he was going to have OSU’s sport information staff release a weekly injury update, I don’t know if my reaction was “yeah, right,” but I definitely had a thought balloon above my head that said “let’s wait and see if this actually occurs.”
What happened? For the second week in a row, OSU released an injury report that detailed the status of players before a game. For instance, this week’s report says starting center Evan Epstein, backup receiver Austin Hays, backup linebacker Lyndell Johnson and reserve cornerback Andrae May (still bouncing back from a spring knee injury) have been ruled out for a Saturday home game against Louisiana. Starting linebacker Alex Elkins and Torrance Carr are questionable.
Props to Gundy for moving toward disclosure. OSU won’t win or lose this weekend because the injury report is out there for all the world to see. Injuries are a part of the game. Louisiana quarterback Blaine Gautier sustained bruised ribs in a victory at Troy last week. So you put the next guy in and you go play. And that’s what happened. Gautier’s backup, Terrance Broadway, led the Ragin’ Cajuns to a big road win.
Here’s my biggest concern -- and it should be an NCAA concern -- about hiding injuries. If you don’t put injury information out there for the public to see, are gamblers the only folks who have it? And to what lengths ($$$) will they go to get it?
Plus, this is the internet age, where everyone with a cell phone camera and a Twitter account is the media. If your prime time player is walking to class on crutches a couple of days after a game, that’s not the sort of thing that is going to stay a secret. The way to control likely-to-leak information is to be the leak. Congratulations to OSU for agreeing to be the leak.
Written by
Jimmie Tramel
Sports Writer
