The Big 12 took another baby step last week when commissioner Bob Bowlsby announced a conference-wide limit of one day per week of full-contact football practices during the season. The SEC and Big Ten took baby steps in the past year when they approved medical observers in the press box who have the power to remove compromised players from the field. The NFL has quietly been taking such steps for several years. Football is changing because it must. As the chair of the new NCAA Oversight Committee, Bowlsby understands this better than most. Bowlsby sees all the money flowing into his league and others from selling football games to television networks, but he also understands the reality. While the game has never been more popular as a spectator sport, its future remains cloudy as parents of potential future players grapple with relatively new medical data that suggest the repeated head-to-head collisions required to play football cause long-term damage. The people born after terms such as “Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy” and “sub-concussive hits” found their way into mainstream football conversation won’t hit high school for at least five more years. Bowlsby knows something must be done to keep the game from withering as the years pass. “I’ve had a couple of pretty prominent football coaches tell me, ‘One of the reasons I don’t apologize for my compensation is because I don’t know that this game is going to be around forever,’” Bowlsby told me in an interview in May. …
Continue Reading: How is college football addressing its new safety crisis? Punt, Pass & Pork
