News Briefs
Study: Most high school injuries occur in games
Compiled By David Pickle
The Journal of Athletic Training reported in March that most injuries to high school athletes occur in games rather than in practice. The independent study, conducted by Nationwide Children’s Hospital and The Ohio State University, cited an average injury rate of 4.6 injuries per 1,000 exposures in competition, compared with 1.7 per thousand in practice. 
Football's political football Take your pick: During the last six months, the messages have decidedly been mixed. In January, Georgia President Michael Adams, who also served as chair of the NCAA Executive Committee, created a rumble when he said it was time for BCS teams to consider a playoff. The remark generated excitement at January’s NCAA Convention, but the committee assigned to deal with the topic has been quiet on the subject. Then in late April, commissioners from the Bowl Championship Series conferences announced that the current one-game format would remain in effect through 2014. “After a very thorough, very good discussion among the group,” said Atlantic Coast Conference Commissioner John Swofford, “we have decided that because we feel at this time the BCS is in an unprecedented state of health, we feel it’s never been healthier during its first decade, we have made a decision to move forward in the next cycle in the current format.” That settled things for three weeks until Florida State President T.K. Wetherell, a longtime playoff proponent, chimed in May 16 with an assertion that a playoff is not only likely, but inevitable. “It’s not a question of if there is going to be a playoff, it’s going to be a question of when,” Wetherell said at a college football forum. “It’s going to be driven by money ... We’ll (presidents) run out of money, then we’ll figure out a way to do it. The fight won’t be over whether to do it or not, the fight will be over the take, the split.”
A picture-perfect storm In February, the Chicago Tribune and the Illinois High School Athletic Association became involved in a flap over resale rights to photos. The newspaper sought to print a photo of gymnast Mary Burke after she became the first athlete to win the all-around competition three years in a row. The ISHAA, however, denied the Tribune permission to use the photo (or any picture from the event) because it would not agree to surrender its own rights to resell photography. The Tribune’s response to the restriction was not to carry photography from the event, or from the wrestling competition that occurred at the same time. The outcome? A little more than a month later, the IHSAA and the Illinois Press Association announced an agreement that allows, among other things, the unrestricted use and sale of images by newspapers.
Getting it done by the numbers The number crunchers of college sports most often operate behind the scenes, so it was good to see longtime NCAA Director of Statistics Jim Wright inducted into the College Sports Information Directors Hall of Fame in early July. Wright has spent virtually his entire career with the national office, having joined the staff in 1975 when it was – to say the least – a different era in statistical compilation. “Believe it or not, there were not even calculators when I started in the early ’70s,” Wright said, “so you would actually have to use long division to figure out batting averages and ERAs. “We didn’t really have computers like we do now. We got most of our statistics through the mail. We had to write them on sheets of paper, and we would type the leaders on ditto masters and then we would mail them out two or three days later.” Watch an interview with Jim Wright by clicking on the video icon above.
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