Denim Millward
Sports Editor
Much has been made recently in national media outlets about college athletes, namely college football players, and whether or not the scholarships they receive are adequate compensation for the revenue they generate for their respective universities and the risks they take participating in their respective sport.
While reasonable points have been made on both sides of the argument, one factor in particular complicates matters.
How can fair compensation be determined for the injury risk an athlete takes when the consequences range from bumps and bruises to permanent paralysis?
Life-altering injuries such as permanent paralysis, though infrequent, do occur. In a football game against Western Montana in Holt Arena 17 years ago, it did.
On Sept. 21, 1996, Bengal cornerback Marcus Jackson was paralyzed from the chest down after what appeared to be a routine tackle. Jackson, then a standout senior, fractured two vertebrae and was momentarily knocked unconscious after he was struck in the head by an opposing player’s knee, according to a report from the Associated Press.
“I would call [spinal cord injuries] my greatest fear,” said Dr. Steven Coker M.D., the team orthopaedic surgeon for Idaho State. Coker, who has practiced for 18 years, was in his first year at the Idaho Orthopaedic and Sports Clinic when Jackson was tragically paralyzed. Though numerous incidents of college football players sustaining some degree of spinal cord injuries are nationally reported each year, there are usually many more injuries of that type in cheerleading than football, according to Coker.
While they may not be as serious as spinal cord injuries, injuries to the lower extremities can have long-lasting consequences and occur much more frequently.
According to the data collected by the NCAA from 2004-09, over 50 percent of all injuries reported were classified as lower limb injuries. Most common of the lower limb injuries are knee injuries, which account for over 17 percent of all injuries. Housed in the knee is the anterior cruciate ligament, or ACL. The tearing of the ACL, one of the more infamous and dreaded sports injuries, nearly always results in the player who suffered the injury missing the remainder of the season.
According to Coker, injuries such as a torn ACL are simply a result of planting or cutting wrong, or even “bad luck.”
“I think it’s just the luck of the draw, whether it’s an injury at sport, and injury at work or an accident driving to either one of those two,” Coker said.
While a large percentage of injuries cannot be entirely prevented, there are preventative measures collegiate athletes can take to be less susceptible to injury.
“Being stretched out, being strong, being flexible, all of those things make your joints work better and your ligaments work better,” Coker advised.
Aside from ACL injuries, injuries to the medial collateral ligament (MCL) and medial meniscus are also potentially knee-related season-ending ailments.
The preceding list of potential sports injuries, though incomplete, is more than enough to make potential college athletes rethink their decision to accept a scholarship. Despite such traumatic injuries still existing, the advancement in corrective surgical procedures, specifically arthroscopic procedures, have improved the prognoses of athletes who have suffered any manner of musculoskeletal injury participating in an athletic event.
Arthroscopic surgeries are minimally invasive procedures that require much smaller incisions to repair damage to the joints and spinal cord. Using an arthroscope, surgeons like Coker can repair injuries such as the dreaded torn ACL and only leave behind a miniscule scar rather than the 9 to 12-inch scar on the knee that was the end result of ACL repairs prior to arthroscopy being used.
“Arthroscopic surgery came about in the mid ‘70s,” Coker said. “Now you start hearing that everybody is doing things through an arthroscope. The idea is ‘smaller incisions, quicker recovery.’”
“Orthopaedics, and especially sports medicine, [are] basically defined in the history of the arthroscope,” Coker added.
In any athletic activity, injuries of every severity are a distinct possibility. With every football tackle, every soccer slide, every basketball jump and every volleyball dive, injury remains a grim possibility. While injuries will never be eliminated altogether, the advancement of medical technology, as well as knowledgeable and experienced surgeons, such as Coker, greatly mitigates the severity of and recovery time from injuries.
Part Two of our feature on sports injuries focusing on concussions will be published in the Oct. 9 edition of “The Bengal.”
