The ACC announced it will ask its teams to issue biweekly, NFL-style injury reports this football season, the conference announced Monday at the ACC Kickoff in Greensboro, Ga. Teams will announce long-term injuries and surgeries on Mondays and week-to-week titles (probable, doubtful and questionable) on the Thursday before the game. Teams will not be fined for failing to include injuries.
In a piece of separate but related news, the website InjuryScout.com has announced it will pay normal students (citizen-journalists!) between $10 and $100 for "breaking news submissions" and other information about athletes' injuries. "Students can often be the first and best source for breaking player injury news", InjuryScout Publisher Mike Walsten said in a release.
It's an interesting tactic--or at least an example of the potential effects of blogs and the digitized generation--especially because college students can often deduce classmates' injuries before the sports information office can release it. For example, next time you see, say, Greg Paulus on crutches, you walk over to the point guard and ask him what happened. Maybe he tells you, thinking you're just a regular student and not representative of any media outlet. And if he does, you're a few bucks richer and a few beers deeper that night.
Is this a violation of privacy? If you're a student, would you report on your classmates' injuries?
--by Ben Cohen
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