Strain on Maryland Leadership Grows Amid Fallout From Football Player’s Death

University System of Maryland regents met behind closed doors on Friday to discuss personnel and legal matters, capping a tumultuous week that saw alumni and students accuse the flagship campus’s top leaders of not doing enough to prevent a 19-year-old football player’s death in June.

Some critics are calling for the termination of Wallace D. Loh, president of the University of Maryland at College Park, after The Washington Post reported late Thursday that he had previously rejected a proposal that would have made trainers in the football program more independent of the athletics department by having them report to the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, on the system’s Baltimore campus. A system spokesman said he believed Loh would be on the board’s conference call, which was announced before the Post published its article.

“A lot of students” have expressed their opinion that Loh should be fired, said Jonathan Allen, Maryland’s student-body president. Allen, who would not say whether he agreed, called for more transparency from administrators and said Maryland should be investigating the culture of each of its athletics teams.

A spokeswoman did not immediately make Loh available for comment on Friday.

Attention to Jordan McNair’s death resurfaced last week, when ESPN reported allegations of verbal abuse and intimidation within the football program. Sources told the news outlet that McNair’s death followed signs of extreme exhaustion, which he had suffered during a team workout two weeks earlier. McNair, whose body temperature reached 106 degrees, could not stand upright as he ran 110-yard sprints, ESPN reported.

Loh on Tuesday said the campus “accepts legal and moral responsibility” for the death of McNair, an offensive lineman. Staff members did not diagnose McNair’s heat-related illness, take his temperature, or treat him by immersing him in cold water, which were “significant” findings, said Damon Evans, Maryland’s athletics director.

Questions About Reporting Structures

Dismissing a proposal like the one outlined by the Post would appear to break from guidance by the NCAA’s Sports Science Institute, which encourages member universities to “adopt an administrative structure for delivery of integrated sports medicine and athletic training services to minimize the potential for any conflicts of interest that could adversely affect the health and well-being of student-athletes.”

An organizational chart from 2016 on Maryland’s website lists health and wellness in the Program Support and Integrity division of the athletics department. Katie Lawson, a university spokeswoman, said in an email that trainers are university employees but that coaches do not have direct responsibility for hiring or supervising any sports doctors. Trainers are supervised by University of Maryland School of Medicine physicians, she said, and she characterized the university’s organizational oversight as “widely adopted.”

“Because the trainers were university employees, we retained the ability to make necessary personnel decisions, as we did recently in placing members of our athletic training staff on administrative leave,” she wrote.

But many universities are moving toward a more independent model, said Chad Asplund, president of the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine and director of athletics medicine at Georgia Southern University.

He said that while some institutions do not follow the independent medical model, the culture at those programs has to be such that trainers can stop practice events “without fear of retribution.”

The NCAA’s recommendation was not a requirement, Asplund said. But often universities will re-evaluate their own structures after guidance from the association, even without new rules.

“If you didn’t make the change,” he said, “things get kind of complicated.”

Andrew N. Pollak, chair of the orthopedics department at Maryland’s medical school, said in a statement through a spokeswoman that the university’s reporting structure was not at fault, but that he pledged to make sure a tragedy like McNair’s death would not happen again.

“You cannot draw a line between organizational structure and the death of student-athlete Jordan McNair,” he said. “We can and will work with the university to implement changes that improve the environment and conditions where student-athletes compete and how athletic trainers provide care.”

A Continuing Tension

Tension between college-football trainers and coaches is common. In 2013 nearly half of major-college football trainers who responded to a Chronicle survey reported that they had felt pressure from coaches to bring concussed players back onto the field before they were ready.

About 100 sports-medicine professionals, including head athletics trainers, from the NCAA’s Football Bowl Subdivision responded to the survey, which was conducted by The Chronicle and the National Athletic Trainers’ Association.

“Too many medical decisions are made by individuals outside of the medical profession,” one trainer wrote.

McNair’s father said on Thursday in a television interview that DJ Durkin, Maryland’s head football coach, should be fired. Durkin is on leave as the university investigates. Evans said on Tuesday that Rick Court, a strength and conditioning coach, is no longer employed by the university.

Allen, a rising senior, said on Friday that many of his peers were reading and sharing the Post’s article.

“If we were going to put our coaches on leave pending investigation,” he said, “that should have happened immediately after the death, not after the ESPN report.”

Lindsay Ellis is a staff reporter. Follow her on Twitter @lindsayaellis, or email her at lindsay.ellis@chronicle.com.