A recent report in the
Chronicle of Higher Education talks about the difficulty that many athletic trainers face in dealing with injuries, particularly concussions, because they either report directly to the head coach or feel pressure from the coaching staff to return an athlete to play before he is ready. I'm not going to comment extensively on this, but you can read another opinion
here, and this link contains a
good animation of the problem. For full disclosure, I worked for one of the athletic trainers quoted in the first article when I was at Auburn. There is definitely a clear conflict of interest between an athletic trainer and a head coach, especially in the ultra competitive world of NCAA football. Most coaches have the best interest of the athletes in mind, but during the middle of a game, they cannot objectively decide if a player is able to return to a game, nor are they trained to make this decision. A head coach should also not evaluate the the skills of a medical professional. Except for a few high schools games I covered, I never had to make the ultimate decision about rather or not a player can return to a game (that responsibility ultimately should rest with the team physician), but I can attest that the times I had to tell an assistant coach that one of their position players could not return to a game was not enjoyable. Hopefully this report will open some eyes and lead to positive changes.
