In 2012, Matt Scott, a University of Arizona quarterback, took a knee to the head as he slid across the turf in the final quarter of a game. Not long afterward, he began vomiting—a clear sign he had suffered a serious head injury—but he continued to play. Television announcers questioned why he had been allowed to stay in the game:
Last Saturday, Shane Morris, a University of Michigan quarterback, took a hard helmet-to-helmet hit and fell to the ground in the final quarter of a game. After he stood, he had trouble keeping upright, but coaches allowed him to stay in for another play. Announcers again questioned why he had remained on the field:
Two concussions, two different reactions: In Arizona, the response was mixed, and the incident was mostly forgotten. In Michigan, two years later, there’s been an uproar.
And students have led the charge in protesting the university’s handling of the situation.
A column in The Michigan Daily, the university’s student newspaper, called for the firing of the Wolverines’ head coach, Brady Hoke. An online student petition, drafted on Monday night, upped the ante, demanding the resignation of Michigan’s athletic director, David Brandon. The petition has now drawn nearly 11,000 signatures.
And on Tuesday a few hundred protesters flooded the lawn of President Mark S. Schlissel’s on-campus residence, demanding that something be done. The criticism of the university’s response became so pronounced, in fact, that Dr. Schlissel issued an apology and instructed the athletic department to conduct a review of its player-safety procedures.
The firestorm has made some observers wonder: Has there been a shift in the public’s—and, especially, students’ and fans’—perceptions of player safety and the treatment of concussions?
‘Pendulum of Concern’
Some sports-health experts believe so. Dan Hooker, a former associate director of sports medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said that as more information has been released on the topic, more people have started paying attention.
“The volume of information has permeated society,” Mr. Hooker said. “Five years ago, the quarterback would have been hit and people would have said, ‘Whoa. He really got smashed,’ and celebrated it as a great hit for the other team. Fortunately, we have swung the pendulum of concern from celebrating to saying: Oh, did you see that? That quarterback was stunned. That’s illegal.”
It’s hard to argue that awareness of concussions hasn’t been raised. In the last year alone, two ESPN reporters published League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth, a widely read book spotlighting the issue; PBS’s Frontline aired a subsequent documentary of the same name; the National Collegiate Athletic Association released a set of guidelines to prevent concussions; and countless studies and articles have taken on the topic.
What happened at Michigan wasn’t “a horrible event that required anyone to be fired,” Mr. Hooker said, but it’s not hard to understand where the response came from. “Fans are reacting to the media blitz of this,” he said.
But there could be more to the reaction at Michigan than news-media attention or increased concern over players’ health, said John F. Burness, a visiting professor of practice at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and a former senior vice president for public affairs and government relations there.
The Michigan team, a football juggernaut that has claimed 11 national championships, has trended in the wrong direction under Mr. Hoke. For the first time ever, Michigan had lost three games by the end of September.
“It was clear Shane Morris had taken a horrendous hit,” Mr. Burness said, “and it raised a lot of perfectly understandable questions in the eyes of the public about the responsibility of the coaching staff.”
But he added: “This was just one more weapon in the arsenal of people upset over the misfortunes of Michigan football. It was the perfect storm.”
The university’s president, Dr. Schlissel, now finds himself trying to calm that storm just three months into his tenure. Mr. Burness, a crisis-management expert, said the university’s response depends on what its investigation concludes. “The president clearly has come out with a forceful statement expressing concern with how this was handled,” Mr. Burness said. “But there are still some questions. Until we have answers, it’s difficult to know what it is that Michigan should be doing.”
Frustrations Boiling Over
The creator of the student petition was Zeid El-Kilani, a graduate student in public policy and applied economics. Mr. El-Kilani said concern over the quarterback’s safety was one motivation for circulating the online document.
“Keeping the players safe is very important,” he said. “They are student-athletes. They’re our classmates, they’re in our project groups. We work and learn with them, we see them on campus. For a lot of people, it’s about keeping our friends safe.”
Mr. El-Kilani, who was at the game on Saturday, said the student section began booing after the quarterback’s injury wasn’t acknowledged. “A lot of us grew up in an environment where they cared more about player safety,” he said. “So the discussion hasn’t been about concussions. The discussion has been about how the administrators reacted.”
Saturday’s incident was just a catalyst for expression of broader concerns, he said. “The larger factor is, How does the athletic department bring value to the university?”
Mr. El-Kilani said he and many other students had been pondering that question for some time. If students’ thinking on player safety is evolving, so is their thinking on the prominence of athletics on the campus.
And that goes beyond wins and losses. Mr. El-Kilani pointed out that this was not the first time the university’s image had taken a blow for an athletics-related incident; he cited a sexual-assault case involving a player that came to light last fall. Beyond that, he said, students are frustrated that the athletics department treats them “like customers, not partners.”
“The frustration was there. It already existed,” he said. “Now, we’re finally verbalizing these frustrations and moving on to what we can do to enact change.”