Earlier this month, LSU head football coach Brian Kelly announced that he’ll share official team injury reports three times a week this season.
Kelly’s standardized reporting process stems from his belief that releasing injury reports can prevent possible nefarious sports betting activity within his program. If LSU is transparent about its injury situation, theoretically it decreases the likelihood a bettor will contact an athlete or coach for inside information about injuries.
Kelly’s decision comes after a series of recent sports betting infractions across college sports, including former Alabama baseball head coach Brad Bohannon allegedly offering inside information to an Ohio bettor.
“I don’t want it to be a situation where somebody loses their job or somebody loses eligibility,” Kelly said. “To me, that’s a bigger issue than, ‘Well, we got a tactical advantage today because we found out he was playing.’”
NCAA inactive on injury reporting
Despite Kelly’s decision, the prospect of NCAA-wide injury reporting hasn’t gained traction.
An NCAA spokesperson told Sports Handle that injury reports haven’t been a recent topic of discussion for the organization. The NCAA’s most recent public statement on the topic came back in August of 2019, when it decided it wouldn’t implement mandatory injury reporting.
The 2019 press release from the NCAA said that a committee on sports wagering determined official injury reporting “would not advance student-athlete well-being nor the integrity of competition.” NCAA executives have stressed the importance of learning more about sports betting’s impact on athletes, but injury reporting has yet to come up in those recent conversations.
The NCAA recently conducted a survey of young adults to better understand their gambling habits. The association also plans to conduct a national survey of student-athletes and their sports betting habits during the 2023-24 academic year. Those findings will lead to future discussions among NCAA administrators, where injury reporting discussions could theoretically come up.
Conferences ponder idea
With the NCAA not stepping in, it’s up to conferences to determine whether they should have mandatory injury reporting.
December reports suggested the Pac-12 was looking into the idea ahead of the 2023 football season, but a Pac-12 spokesperson told Sports Handle last week that the conference won’t require league-wide injury reporting this season. Like the Pac-12, the Mountain West Conference has looked into the idea but isn’t committing to injury reports this season, a conference spokesperson told Sports Handle.
“Injury reports are at the discretion of each institution,” the MWC spokesperson said.
ACC football teams once issued injury reports every Thursday before conference games, but the league ended the practice ahead of the 2019 season. Some ACC coaches at the time cited a desire for the NCAA to mandate them, but that never happened.
#Hokies coach Justin Fuente on getting rid of ACC injury reports: "We want it to all be the same, from league to league, from coach to coach, across the country."
— Mike Barber (@RTD_MikeBarber) August 26, 2018
The ACC doesn’t plan on bringing back injury reports this fall, according to a conference spokesperson.
One of the ACC’s most prominent coaches, Clemson’s Dabo Swinney, voiced his support for injury reporting last week when asked about the topic. Swinney said he’s open to the idea of weekly mandatory injury reports, although he didn’t go as far as Kelly in committing to a standardized reporting process for the 2023 season.
“I don’t really have a problem with it, to be honest with you,” Swinney told local media. “It’s really not that big a deal to me. I would be perfectly fine If I had to release it on Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever. I think early in the week is probably [better]. You know a guy’s out, it’s gonna come out either way.”
Like Kelly, Missouri’s Eli Drinkwitz supports the idea of widespread injury reporting. Drinkwitz is one of the few coaches who shares a weekly injury report during the season. Some coaches don’t reveal any injury information whatsoever, while others will reveal some when questioned by media members.
Despite Kelly and Drinkwitz offering official reports, an SEC spokesperson told Sports Illustrated this month that league-wide injury reports are “not a topic of discussion right now.”
A MAC spokesperson told Sports Handle that injury reports won’t be mandatory in that conference this season. The same is true in the AAC, CUSA, and Sun Belt, conference spokespeople said.
Sports Handle also reached out to representatives of the Big Ten and Big 12, but didn’t hear back from those conferences prior to publication. Neither of those two Power Five leagues have given any indication that they plan to implement official injury reporting.
