On April 11, President Eisgruber announced that the University has decided to discontinue the sprint football program.
Princeton sprint football, until two weeks ago, was mostly notable for its comically tragic win-loss record: in 18 consecutive seasons, it has had no wins. In fact, starting next year, incoming freshmen will have been born after sprint football had its last victory.
But the lack ofsuccessof the team on the field wasn’t why the team was canceled. If it were, then I would not be writing this column. The reason the team was disbanded was, in Eisgruber’s own words, that “the risk of injury to players is unacceptably high, and the University could not responsibly permit the program to continue in its current form.”
Seems reasonable, right?
The team had a high injury rate, and the University is just looking out for the athletes’ best interests. And I’m sure the injury rate had nothing to do with the University not allowing sprint to recruit athletes, as essentially every other varsity sport is allowed to do.
In any case, why the injury rate was higher than average is irrelevant. Discontinuing a team because of its injury rate is misguided at best and downright dangerous at worst.
Now that Princeton has made it clear that a sport may be canceled if it has too many injuries, all other teams know that to continue, they have to keep their reported injury rates low enough. The keyword in that sentence was “reported.” Princeton has created a huge reason for teams to underreport injuries and dismiss minor problems. There is now a tremendous incentive for players and coaches to shrug off what they consider minor injuries rather than take them seriously.
Maybe, fearing that yet another reported concussion could jeopardize the team’s future, a player will not mention to a coach a persisting injury incurred after that last hit. Even if it is reported, maybe a coach will be biased, consciously or not, to assume that the injury isn’t worth mentioning to anyone and send the player right back into the game, even though the player really shouldn’t be playing.
So what’s the correct response to a team with unacceptably high injury levels? Work with coaches and players and medical professionals to find a way to make the game safer, but don’t punish the team. All that does is encourage other teams to pretend that injuries don’t happen.
Canceling a team due to injuries sends a crystal clear message to players and coaches: shut up or lose your team. Princeton is telling all athletes in the clearest terms possible to not mention injuries and to ignore pain on penalty of disbandment.
A further concern is the truthfulness of the University. Although the University claims that the reason for ending sprint football is because of the injury rate, I can’t help but be suspicious. I think I am not alone here. Sprint football suffers from a lack of recruited athletes and has difficulty winning games, almost definitely since it does not get to recruit. It looks to me like Princeton was withholding recruited athletes from the sprint team and is now depriving them of their entire team under the guise of safety.
What is the safety threshold that a team has to meet? If regular football had a higher injury rate, would it be disbanded? I seriously doubt it. Princeton clearly favors some teams over others. Regular football has almost 100 players on the roster. In the NFL, the maximum size for a roster is 53. I’m sure if it were really a priority, Princeton could have taken a few of the recruited athletes’ spots from regular football and given them to sprint.
But instead, they let the team get to the point where it was winless, and then eliminated the team, claiming that it’s about safety. Even if it were about safety (which is not certain at all), disbanding a team over safety sets a very dangerous precedent.
Does President Eisgruber want to have players get seriously hurt at Princeton? Then he made the right call with sprint football.
Beni Snow is a freshman from Newton, Mass. He can be reached at bsnow@princeton.edu.
