Study: Pac-12 Athletes Burned Out, Sleep-Deprived

A study of Pac-12 Conference student-athletes has found that an average of 50 hours per week is consumed by the individual's given sport, with as much time spent traveling (22 hours) as is devoted to the actual athletic activity (21 hours). The result is students sacrificing sleep as they try to keep pace on the field and in the classroom.

The study, conducted by Penn Shoen and Berland, surveyed 409 students in all sports at nine of the league's 12 schools. USC, Arizona and Utah did not participate. It is part of the Pac-12's larger commitment to student-athlete welfare. Study participants reported that “sleep is the number-one thing their athletic time commitments prevent them from doing, ultimately hindering their athletic and academic performance.”

More than 70 percent of the athletes said their athletic commitments were hindering their sleep schedule more than anything else. Moreover, the idea that "voluntary" workouts actually be voluntary and the creation of a rule that practices cannot begin before 6 a.m. or conclude after 10 p.m. were listed by athletes as the most appealing among eight proposed reforms.

Whether this serves as a wake-up call for conference decision-makers remains to be seen. Jamie Zaninovich, the Pac-12 deputy commissioner and chief operating officer, told Huffington Post, "“The next step for us is to take the conversation that was started here and to report on that with our larger group of administrators and coaches."

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