ACC – Athletic Training Today

least three times last football season a Virginia Tech assistant coach stationed in the press box alerted medical personnel on the sideline to an injured player. The instances reminded Mike Goforth that as watchful as he and his staff try to be during a game, they cannot see everything.

That’s why Goforth, the Hokies’ associate athletic director for sports medicine, applauds the ACC for mandating that each conference team place either a physician or athletic trainer in the press box for every game.

Following similar stances by the Big Ten, Southeastern Conference and Pacific 12, ACC commissioner John Swofford announced Monday that league athletic directors had unanimously approved the measure.

“This team-specific medical observer will have the benefit of knowing the medical history of the players,” Swofford said, “because it will be someone who is involved with them on an ongoing and day-to-day basis. They will travel with the team and observe every game, home and away, conference and non-conference.”

The observers will not have stoppage power, in the form of a direct line to the game’s referee, but they will be connected with medical officials on the sideline.

In this time of bigger, stronger and faster athletes, of more violent contact, and of more scientific data on the enduring effects of brain trauma, the more precautions the better. You don’t want to encumber the game, or those who play it, but the harrowing tales of the last 20-plus years, involving athletes at all levels, make clear the sensibility of this measure.

Though a few meaningless weeks behind — it is the offseason, after all — on press box observers, ACC schools have long been on the leading edge of concussion protocol and research, and the University of Noth Carolina’s Dr. Kevin Guskiewicz serves on the NCAA’s concussion committee.

Brain trauma is most studied in Blacksburg, where Stefan Duma heads the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences. From safety ratings for helmets to sensors that warn of high-force collisions to a Department of Defense concussions study designed to aid athletes and military personnel, Tech’s academic research has been invaluable to Goforth and the medical team.

“We’re going to make this as proactive as we can,” Goforth said of the ACC policy, “and I think it will be a big help to us. …
“If you have the right culture around an athletic department, specifically the football program, this kind of thing already occurs. Last year on at least three occasions our coaches called down for me to look at somebody.”

Goforth declined to reveal the players involved but said the injuries involved a knee, concussion and ankle. Trainers on the field had noticed the first two, not the latter.

But coaches, or medical staff, can’t be expected to notice every possible injury. The game is too fast, especially with no-huddle, hurry-up offenses en vogue. Trainers are tending to players on the bench. Coaches are hatching strategy. Medical observers, perched on high and presumably equipped with binoculars and television replay, will be less distracted and more likely to notice anything amiss.

The ACC’s policy is only a week old, but Goforth already has created a one-page, game-day concussion protocol that includes the press-box observer. There’s a photo of Goforth examining the concussed Logan Thomas at the 2013 Sun Bowl and an edict that any player diagnosed with a head injury “is ruled out of the game and their helmet is taken by the equipment manager.”

An integral part of Frank Beamer’s football program since 1998, Goforth has decided that the Hokies’ press box watchdog will be an athletic trainer, since trainers have more frequent interaction with players than physicians and are more familiar with their medical histories. Moreover, Tech’s observer will be armed with not only medical background and insurance information for every player, but also the seat location of players’ parents – cell phone service in a crowded stadium can be spotty.

Such information used to be stashed in a trunk on the sideline. Upstairs it will be more easily accessible.

“You know Coach Beamer,” Goforth said. “Coach Beamer has never, ever put pressure on us about an injury. But he will pressure me about communicating with parents. It’s of utmost importance to him that Mom and Dad know what’s going on with that kid. Practice, game, whatever.”

On game day, Goforth also positions some Tech medical staff on the opponents’ sideline, where they operate an x-ray machine. The more eyes from the more angles the better, he figures, the same premise that inspired the Big Ten, SEC, Pac-12 and ACC — the Big 12 recently limited live contact drill to two days per week, including game day.

Goforth recalled Tech running back Lee Suggs’ torn ACL in 2001. With a clear view of the play, Goforth sensed the injury even before Suggs collapsed into a heap, and that knowledge informed his immediate treatment.

Indeed, for medical personnel, there’s no such thing as too much information

“I think we’ve got a lot of things in place,” Goforth said, “some good mechanisms to help us identify student-athletes that could be injured that we might not have seen. …

“If anybody can see how it happened, that gives us a clue about what might be wrong with them. Just to have another set of eyes that can say, hey I saw this person get rolled up on their right knee, so on and so forth, that’s a big help.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

http://www.dailypress.com/sports/virginia-tech/dp-spt-teel-column-acc-medical-observer-20150726-column.html

So many of the hurried changes to college sports have that barn-door-after-the-horse-is-gone feeling, a desperate attempt to forestall the wave of lawsuits and other athletic activism that has erupted in recent years.

Giving athletes the same cost-of-attendance benefits as students on academic scholarships was as sensible as it was long overdue, even if the athletic community at large had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st Century and is still complaining about having to pay for it.

On Monday, the ACC announced it has adopted one improvement that is neither forced or overdue. It’s actually timely, and perhaps even forward-thinking: The conference’s application of the NCAA’s new medical-observer protocol for football.

The NCAA last week adopted an experimental rule allowing conferences to use a medical observer to monitor for injuries, not specifically but obviously potential concussions, with the power to stop play if necessary.

The SEC will use one athletic trainer to monitor both teams, in communication with the referee. The ACC’s athletic directors voted Sunday night to adopt a different protocol, with one member of the medical staff for each team in the press box, in communication not with the referee but his sideline.

The issue isn’t whether this is a good idea. It is. It’s a no-brainer. The issue is whether what the ACC is doing goes far enough.

The SEC – and presumably Big Ten, which co-sponsored the NCAA legislation – will let its observers halt the game if needed. The ACC decided not to give its observers that ability, which leaves a narrow time frame for an observer to identify a potentially injured player, communicate with the sideline and remove that player from the game.

“We didn’t really see the necessity in that,” ACC commissioner John Swofford said. “The medical observer should be able in talking to the sidelines to have a timeout called or pull a player from the game. But this is all experimental. We’ll see how it actually works in real time. If there needs to be some adjustment to that then we’ll see. This is where we felt was appropriate. It’s a little different than what some other conferences are doing.”

It doesn’t happen often that a clearly staggered player returns to the huddle without the medical staff on the sideline noticing, but it happens often enough that conferences have seen the wisdom of adding an extra set of eyes in the press box. And in those situations, it’s a fair question whether the ACC’s process will work quickly enough to help that player, especially in an era of hurry-up offenses and quick tempo.

In their meeting Sunday night to debate and approve the observer protocol, the ACC’s athletic directors decided not to go as far as the NCAA would allow, focusing on a team-based model instead of a neutral, officiating-based model.

“This seems sufficient,” N.C. State athletic director Debbie Yow said. “It’s a common-sense approach.”

North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham said there are other benefits to the ACC plan.

“There’s so much chaos on the sidelines that it can be confusing,” Cunningham said. “Someone out of the chaos may have a better perspective, especially if they have a view of a TV.”

The far greater priority was having someone doing the assessments who was aware of each individual player’s medical history, which led them to the two-person, two-team model the Pac-12 used on a limited basis last season and is expanding to all games this season.

“The important thing to us was that our observer was connected to the history of the student-athlete,” Pittsburgh athletic director Scott Barnes said. “We need an observer who’s part of our staff and knows the issues involved. That was our primary concern.”

And while there’s some expense involved in bringing an extra staff member on the road, it’s relatively minor compared to the benefits.

Cunningham said North Carolina typically travels with two or three doctors and may reallocate one to the press box.

“There might be an extra hotel room,” Yow said, “but so what?”

It is a small price to pay for an improved level of player safety and a change that is, for once in college sports, as much proactive as reactive.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/luke-decock/article27944956.html#storylink=cpy

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/luke-decock/article27944956.html

Tag: ACC

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