Last

year football had its share of tragedies. Players at the high school, college and pro level all passed away as a result of workouts or practices. These misfortunes hit especially close to home with Florida State linebacker Devaughn Darling and Florida fullback Eraste Autin falling within a few months of each other. In February Darling collapsed and died during a spring workout session formerly known as "mat drills". In July Autin died of complications related to heat stroke following a voluntary workout with teammates.

Following the shocking deaths last year both FSU and Florida made changes to their off-season workout programs. In fact, football programs throughout the nation have revised how many rest breaks their players take and how much water is available. At FSU there are now two trainers present at every workouts instead of one. In addition, players now take a required two-minute rest period after every 10-minute drill - it was a 60-second break last off-season. Players are also encouraged to keep an eye on teammates and notify trainers if they sense a problem.

Even though schools like Florida State have made responsible changes to reduce, and hopefully eliminate, the types of tragedies that took place last year, the NCAA wants to take matters into their own hands. A subcommittee assigned to look into summer workouts recently issued a proposal, among others, that would eliminate all supervised activities, including voluntary weight training and conditioning, and workouts that take place during the summer.

The proposal is being submitted under the guise of giving student athletes more "downtime" in the off-season. The unstated purpose is likely to eliminate or reduce the deaths of football players during summer workouts. However, you have to ask yourself whether the NCAA is truly concerned with the safety of student athletes or whether they are simply making a knee-jerk, and politically motivated, reaction to the shocking events that took place last year.

"People are suggesting that since some of these boys have died let's stop doing all of this," said FSU head coach Bobby Bowden of the voluntary summer workouts. "They can't afford too. If they don't (workout) when we start two-a-days they are going to die because they won't be prepared physically. They need to gradually get into it."

Not only would football players not be as prepared for grueling two-a-days practices, as Coach Bowden suggested, a rule prohibiting "supervised" workouts would not prevent athletes from taking part in unsupervised workouts. That could create an even more dangerous situation.

"In my opinion if the NCAA does not allow the student athletes to have supervised workouts over the summer they are in complete neglect," said FSU strength and conditioning coach Jon Jost. "If you want to talk about a dangerous situation it's having kids coming into the weight room unsupervised and coming out here and running without a trainer and without a strength coach. For most of these athletes they are so competitive that more is better. That means they are going to run more, they are going to stay out here for a greater period of time and they aren't going to give themselves as many breaks. You are going to see far more problems come time for two-a-day practices."

As an alternative to the complete elimination of summer workouts, the same subcommittee also proposed permitting supervision by an institution’s strength and conditioning coach when done to "promote the safety of the workout". The strength coach may supervise but may not actually "conduct" the voluntary activities. This rule could be extremely difficult to interpret in that there is a very fine line between promoting the safety of a workout versus conducting it.

If the NCAA is really interested in making sure student athletes get sufficient downtime in the off-season there is a simpler, and safer, alternative than completely eliminating summer workouts or drafting vague rules limiting an institution's role in overseeing off-season activities.

"I don't know all of the objectives behind what the NCAA is proposing but I think from what I understand that they want this not to be a year-round activity," said Jost. "If you want say they have to have X number of weeks off during the course of a calendar year that's the way to do it so that everybody knows they have from the last day of spring ball to June 15th or June 20th or July 1st or whatever it is. But to completely eliminate it in my opinion is not wise... It would give them the last few weeks of school off and let them be a student during that time. Also, give them the first part of the summer off to go home and see their family and all that but not completely eliminate it."

Let's hope in this instance the NCAA does something it normally doesn't, that is making the right decision.

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