College football coaches prefer to hide injuries from opponents, to avoid targetting injured players.
For the sake of sports betting integrity, the Big Ten Conference has asked the NCAA to institute a national college football injury reporting system similar to the one the National Football League (NFL) uses. The Big Ten believes a weekly injury report would bolster the integrity of college sports betting, in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down the PAPSA federal ban on sports betting.
While the Big Ten cited the NFL’s system, its leaders stressed they did not want to institute a policy as strenous as the one in pro football. Still, they are serious about the matter, as the conference’s athletic directors sent a proposal for a NCAA Football Oversight Committee in June.
The memo came just weeks after the May 14 Supreme Court decision which changed the face of US sports betting.
Speaking at a National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics conference last week, Ohio State AD Gene Smith said, “We have to be more transparent. In football, we’re going to kill this [idea of] gamesmanship around injuries.”
Gamesmanship is a tradition in college football — sending mixed signals to throw off an opponent’s strategy. In January, Washington State head coach Mike Leech told the USA Today his opinion on the matter, saying, “Whatever weaknesses or vulnerabilities that we have as a team, I can’t possibly fathom why I would have any interest in revealing that to my opponent.”
NCAA Injury Report: Like the NFL?
A national college football injury report is certain to have opponents. Keeping injuries hidden from opponents is a tradition with college football coaches, so they will not want to report accurately their players’ injuries. In football and hockey, especially, players target injuries when they know their location.
In the football, the strategy might not be to knock an opponent out of the game, so much as it is taking advantage of a player slowed or weakened by an injury. Penn State head coach James Franklin spelled out his philosophy on injuries to reports in 2015, which described how coaches gain an advantage from knowledge of injuries. Coach Franklin said, “Number one, football coaches typically are paranoid. I want to know who is playing each position, that played the previous week, what their numbers are, know what their strength/weaknesses are; if their starting corner goes out, and their backup comes in, we’re going to try and throw a go [route] on that guy.”
“As early as you can get that information, the better, because it has a big impact on your game plan and what you’re trying to do. Basically, I know what we value, and I try to take those things away as much as I can from those opponents.”
In the NHL, hockey players are known to target the injuries themselves, leading to the infamously vague “lower body injury” on NHL injury reports.
How Injury Reports Work
The NFL has enforced an injury report for decades. Each week beginning on Wednesday, NFL teams are required to report all injuries players on their roster have at the moment, along with the severity of the injury.
As the NFL system goes, teams are required to file a Wednesday injury report based upon the first two days of practice (Tuesday, Wednesday). After Thursday, Friday, and Saturday meetings, teams are supposed to update a player’s status, along with giving a description of the kind of practice a played logged. Practice reports might state a player “practiced in full”, had “light contact”, or practiced on the side. Bookmakers, sports bettors, and fantasy owners can track a player’s progress throughout the week.
Ohio State‘s Gene Smith addressed concerns about gamesmanship in the new era of sports betting. Smith also made a simple suggestion for reporting injuries: “We don’t know if we want to report as many days as the NFL, but clearly on Mondays if somebody is injured from Saturday and you know they’re not going to play the following Saturday because they broke their leg, why not just say that?”
Bill Belichick and Mike Shanahan
Certain NFL coaches balked at the new rules. Bill Belichick of the New England Patriots was fined for not reporting injuries, so one season, Belichick began listing almost half of his roster on the injury report — either to make a point to the league office or to confuse his opponents in another way.
Belichick was not the only one. Mike Shanahan of the Denver Broncos and Washington Redskins became infamous for the unreliability of his injury reports. Fantasy football owners, who came to rely on the NFL Injury Report for their own contests, eventually bestowed the nickname “Shenanigans” on the canny head coach.
Though the NFL was against legalized sports betting, coaches and players knew that the injury report was designed to help gamblers. In fact, San Francisco 49ers cornerback Richard Sherman (then a Seahawk) called out the NFL on its hypocrisy. All of that is ancient history now, as the NFL prepares for wider sports betting. Yet the NFL is much more ready for the new age of sports betting than the NCAA is.
NFL Injury Report Designations
For years, an NFL report had four designations: Probable, Questionable, Doubtful, and Out. “Probable” meant the player had roughly a 25% chance of missing the game, while “Questionable” meant the player had a 50% chance of missing the week’s game. “Doubtful” meant the player had a 75% of sitting out, while “Out” meant the player would miss the game that week.
The designations were designed to give bookmakers and sports bettors an idea if a key player might miss the game. Even if there was doubt one way or the other, bookmakers and handicappers could make an educated guess on the impact of an injury on a game — based on the percentages. Transparency was supposed to maintain the integrity of the game, so gamblers would not try to get inside information on whether a player would play that week.
In 2016, the NFL tweaked its injury report. The “Probable” designation no longer exists. All NFL players have lingering aches and pains as the season transpires, so any could be considered probable to play. Eliminating the designation meant teams only place players on the list who are in danger of missing a game.
Gene Smith on NCAA Injury Report
When the Big Ten made its request of the NCAA, it included the NFL’s injury report policy as a point of reference. Gene Smith seemed to assure coaches the Big Ten’s suggested injury report would not be as elaborate as the NFL’s.
The OSU athletic director said, “It would be a modified version of what the NFL has in place. If any of our members have any ideas, we need to get that in place now. I see some of these things being implemented to be pretty simple.”
