CHICAGO -- A student-athlete advocacy group has urged the NCAA
to immediately enact reforms to protect athletes following the
deaths of three college football players who collapsed during
workouts in recent months.
The Collegiate Athletes Coalition, started in January by a group
of former and current UCLA football players, wants the NCAA to
establish and enforce safety standards for voluntary and mandatory
workouts, and require schools to expand health insurance and life
insurance benefits for players.
"We can no longer stand by shaking our heads and shrugging our
shoulders while our peers across the nation lose their lives,"
said CAC chairman Ramogi Huma, a former UCLA linebacker.
Huma held a news conference Thursday at a Chicago hotel with Leo
Gerard, the president of the United Steelworkers of America, which
is advising the CAC on organizing, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson,
whose Rainbow/PUSH Coalition is partnering with the CAC.
"All around the table have a voice. The coaches have a voice,
the athletic director has a voice, the university has a voice. The
students must have a voice," Jackson said.
In the last month, Northwestern's Rashidi Wheeler died after
having an asthma attack and Florida's Eraste Autin died of heat
stroke. Florida State's Devaughn Darling died in February, most
likely of heart arrhythmia.
Jackson and others at the news conference raised concerns about
how voluntary so-called "voluntary" offseason workouts are for
college athletes and what they said was the lack of emergency
medical care available at these sessions.
"There's no such thing as a voluntary workout," Huma said.
Jane Jankowski, a spokeswoman for the NCAA, said the
organization was open to ideas from the CAC, but noted there are
student-athlete advisory committees through which
athletes can forward their concerns.
She said the NCAA annually sends out a sports medicine handbook
to its members addressing a variety of issues, and just last week
sent out a reminder to all schools about heat-related illnesses.
As for the voluntary workouts, she said it's largely up to the
schools to monitor them.
"The NCAA is a member organization and one of the foundations
of a member association is that they're self-policing," Jankowski
said. "It is incumbent upon our member institutions to monitor
what is happening within their programs."
| |
|
