President Mark Schlissel said Thursday he has accepted the comprehensive review of in-game player safety procedures in the university’s Athletic Department.
The president asked for the review last October following a Sept. 27 football game in which a U-M quarterback was injured. Several improvements in player safety protocols were immediately implemented and the full review was initiated.
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Schlissel said during Thursday’s Board of Regents meeting that once a draft report was submitted to him he sent it to three outside national experts for an external review.
“The reviewers were extremely positive about our program,” the president said. “There also were areas of improvement identified by them as well as by our own medical team, and I am pleased those improvements have been completed or are underway.”
In a memo accompanying the report, Interim Athletic Director James Hackett said the review of concussion policies and procedure was part of a larger, ongoing effort to “analyze and document the policies, procedures, position statements, and consensus papers related to the health and welfare of student-athletes, and to benchmark those components against other NCAA Division I universities.”
Hackett said the review was led by Darryl Conway, associate athletic director for student-athlete health and welfare, Dr. Dan Hendrickson, head team physician and director of medical services, and Dr. James Carpenter, head team orthopedic surgeon and director of surgical services.
The review covered 15 major areas, including the medical team model and on-field staffing and roles and responsibilities; the on-field communication plan and injury management process; chain of command and return-to-play decision making; emergency action plan, cervical spine injury management, and catastrophic injury plan; and the U-M concussion management plan and education process among others.
The U-M plan was compared to those of the other Big Ten Conference schools and to programs in four other major athletic conferences.
The president said the report was being posted on the university’s website Thursday.
Allen Samuels
The president may be happy with this review but the fact remains that student football players will still be playing a game where concussions are common and occur often. Nothing has changed to eliminate the kind of hits that can cause serious and life threatening concussions and other long term and related medical problems. Rules prohibit us from banging the heads of lab animals together in ways that would cause concussions but we will continue to enable student athletes to do it. Our responsibility is to protect our students, not football.