College athletics continue to adjust to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to essentially legalize sports gambling, as the Big Ten this week asked the NCAA to consider developing a weekly national football injury reporting system.
According to a report from CBS Sports, Big Ten athletic directors argue that the move is needed to protect the integrity of the sport.
The release of injury reports has traditionally been at the discretion of the coach, but gambling necessitates that such information be accurate and widely available.
"We have to be more transparent," Ohio State AD Gene Smith said during a National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics panel last week. "In football, we're going to kill this [idea of] gamesmanship around injuries.”
Any move would need to be approved by the NCAA Football Oversight Committee, which tabled further consideration of the measure following its June meeting. One of the main challenges of such a mandate revolves around student privacy and circumventing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which requires that athletes consent to having their injury information released.
"It could be interesting," added UCLA AD Dan Guerrero. "If you don't get 100 percent of your players willing to allow you to do it [then it could be a problem]."
Sources from the Big Ten told CBS that they are looking to be proactive with regards to legalized gambling in an attempt to stem any negative impacts the change could have on college sports.
"When your football coach gets up there on Monday at his press conference and he says, 'The quarterback is out of the game. The left tackle has a banged-up knee, he's day-to-day. The defensive back is day to day,' What happens with [that] sharing of information [with] people that are setting these lines in our state?" Smith asked.
