On Wednesday, a Pennsylvania jury awarded a former Penn State athletics physician $5.25 million after he claimed the college fired him in 2019 in retaliation for arguing with soccer coach James Franklin over participant therapy and whether or not or not athletes had been match to play.
Formally, the lawsuit was filed towards Penn State Well being’s Milton S. Hershey Medical Middle. Franklin and the college had been dismissed as defendants as a result of statute of limitations. This entire story from ESPN’s Paula Lavigne is basically value a learn to grasp the complete scope of the trial, however there’s one half I can’t get out of my head.
Among the many appalling, however fairly unsurprising, revelations from the testimony was simply how a lot of a priority spatting — the observe of taping an athlete’s ankle round their cleats — stays in faculty athletics.
Didn’t we do that a decade in the past? Don’t attire firms have larger issues to fret about, like say, whether or not or not their jerseys are clear or legible?
The controversy basically boils all the way down to attire firms whining about spatting overlaying up their logos. That is, in fact, absurd, nevertheless it mattered sufficient for Nike to put in writing it into Penn State’s contract.
Per Lavigne:
A number of witnesses mentioned a clause within the college’s contract with Nike, which was as much as $1.6 million by 2018, that prohibited “spatting,” or the observe of wrapping athletic tape round athletes’ ankles for better assist. The tape wasn’t allowed to cowl the Nike emblem on any footwear, in keeping with witness testimony concerning the contract, which interfered with the actions of athletic trainers and different medical workers.
[Dr. Peter] Seidenberg stated a Nike consultant spoke to a bunch of athletic trainers, listed the athletes who had been spatted the weekend earlier than “and requested why the athletes had been spatted and stated that the athletes shouldn’t be spatted.” He stated Franklin required discover every week of gamers who had been designated to be taped.
“Coach Franklin didn’t need the medical workers to spat,” Seidenberg testified. “He was involved concerning the Nike contract.”
USA TODAY Sports activities beforehand investigated the difficulty of spatting in faculty soccer again in 2013, however Penn State was not required to supply copies of their attire contracts on account of state open information legal guidelines regardless of being a public college.
USA TODAY Sports activities obtained the attire contracts for 54 public colleges that had been within the Atlantic Coast Convention, Huge East, Huge 12, Huge Ten, Pac-12 and Southeastern Convention final season. (Per state public information legal guidelines, Penn State and Pittsburgh weren’t required to provide contracts.) Of these contracts, 22 didn’t permit spatting and 32 supplied for it in instances the place it’s medically essential.
That these agreements inhibit the taping of ankles, together with monetary penalties on multimillion greenback contracts, illustrates what’s seen because the ever-expanding affect of shoe firms in collegiate sports activities. It additionally raises questions concerning the launch of gamers’ non-public well being data and calls consideration to the gamers’ lack of management over their very own our bodies.
It’s now 2024 and we’re nonetheless speaking about the identical dumb problem, nevertheless it positive looks as if change is inevitable. The NCAA is quickly evolving earlier than our eyes, amateurism is on its loss of life mattress and gamers have extra autonomy than ever.
So let’s put this in phrases attire firms can perceive.
Sure, spatting could or could not present extra assist in sure conditions. Sure, your emblem is essential. However let’s think about a scenario the place a participant who isn’t allowed to wrap their ankles over their cleats suffers an damage to the joint. How good is that emblem going to look when the printed is zooming in on the cleat to get a greater take a look at what went improper?
Wait, we don’t even have to reply that one. We already noticed it in 2019 with Zion Williamson at Duke when he blew out of his Nike sneaker within the yr’s most-anticipated sport towards North Carolina. Nike was lucky to keep away from the worst-case situation of Williamson severely injuring himself and nonetheless took a nasty public relations hit.
There may be merely no cause any attire firm needs to be telling athletic trainers what they will and can’t do. There may be definitely no cause for Nike to ship trainers an inventory of gamers who had been spatted in a given sport and tsk-tsk them into ensuring it doesn’t occur once more.
You’d suppose firms like Nike, with all of their huge assets, would be capable of give you a greater resolution than threatening colleges who cowl up their logos. Or at the least heed the solutions made a decade in the past when this final popped up.
Is there a cause Nike hasn’t created athletic tape with it’s emblem throughout to permit athletes to proceed spatting and present that they’re sporting a selected model? Why hasn’t Nike simply added logos to components of the cleat that aren’t spatted? Does the corporate actually suppose individuals at residence can’t join {that a} workforce sporting Nike jerseys and pants can also be sporting Nike cleats?
What are we even doing right here?
The truth that that is nonetheless a problem is baffling when the options have been available all alongside. It’s a brand new world in faculty athletics, one which attire firms helped revolutionize. Now it’s their flip to develop up.
