Working in conjunction with the College Athletic Trainers’ Society and medical organizations, coaches, administrators and conference commissioners, the NCAA last week released a new set of guidelines on concussion safety that recommends a reduction in the number of contact practices football teams can hold during the preseason, season, and spring.
The recommendations called for limiting contact practice restrictions to a maximum of four practices a week and twelve overall during two preseason, two contact practices a week during the season, and only eight contact practices during the spring.
The football practice contact guidelines mirrors a policy first implemented by the Ivy League in 2011 and then by the Pac-12 last season.
In addition, the NCAA said new medical guidelines are also developed put decisions on when players can return in the hands of medical professionals rather than coaches. It’s also calling for schools to visibly post their concussion management procedures and make them a matter of public record.
A group of trainers, neurologists, team doctors, sports medicine directors and representatives from numerous conferences including the five major conferences worked together over the past six months in order to introduce these guidelines “in advance of preseason football activities this summer.”
“When you build inter-association consensus, I think it speaks much more powerfully because it’s not simply the NCAA making a rule,” said NCAA Chief Medical Officer Brian Hainline, in a statement. “It’s consensus from numerous well-respected medical organizations, from football coaches, from football associations, from all of us. In terms of changing the culture around health and safety, that’s the best way to do it.”
According to NCAA’s statement the guidelines were created “to generate a cultural shift within college athletics, encouraging all participants athletic trainers, coaches and team physicians, among others to embrace the parameters because they played a part in crafting them. The many groups involved in creating the documents hope that these guidelines generate immediate, tangible changes.”
In recent years, the NCAA has been criticized for how it has overseen concussions over the past several decades. NCAA has largely said individual schools are responsible for the safety and protection of their athletes. Much like the highly-publicized retired NFL players lawsuit, a dozen lawsuits have been filed by former athletes and those lawsuits earlier this year were consolidated into a single lawsuit in a federal court in Illinois.
The guidelines are not a binding set of legislation at this point with the NCAA allowing flexibility to adjust the guidelines in real time. Ongoing research, including a recently-announced $30 million initiative between the NCAA and Department of Defense, could reveal information that necessitates a real-time change in the approach to preventing and managing concussion.
“Medicine really is a process that’s much more fluid, which led us to the guideline approach rather than pursuing legislation,” said NCAA Chief Medical Officer Brian Hainline. “The words we like to use are ‘living, breathing.’ We’d much rather have a living, breathing document that can shift based on emerging evidence.”
The NCAA’s new practice guidelines include:
Preseason: For days scheduled for two-a-day practices, live contact is only allowed in one of the practices. Additionally, “a maximum of four live contact practices” are allowed per week, “a maximum of 12 total” can occur throughout the preseason and “only three practices (scrimmages) would allow for live contact in greater than 50 percent of a practice schedule.”
In-season, postseason and bowl season: No more than two live contact practices per week.
Spring practice: Eight of the 15 sessions “may involve live contact.” Three of those live practices can include greater than 50 percent of live contact for scrimmages. Additionally, live contact practices are limited to two per week and can’t be on back-to-back days.
Independent medical care: Medical authority “should be established independently of a coach” and a licensed physician should serve as medical director. The guidelines call for that medical director to be given “unchallengeable autonomous authority” concerning players coming back from injuries. Any student-athlete diagnosed with a concussion will not be allowed to return to a game or practice and a student’s return to athletics or academic pursuits will be based on a “protocol of gradual increase” in activity physical or educational.
Transparency: The guidelines suggest that universities “make their concussion management plan publically available.”
