Kirby Smart offers extensive comments on injury availability reports
By Keith Farner
Published:
Kirby Smart is in favor of injury availability reports, something the Big Ten has started this season.
The Big Ten is working toward a new league-wide mandate that would require teams to provide player availability reports 2 hours before kickoff of each conference game.
“I’m for whatever helps curb the gambling issues,” Smart said at a Monday press conference. “I think it’s a major issue in all of sports. With the states now taking on more and more gambling, the tax revenues that states are able to get, and the pressure that they put on student-athletes sometimes trying to get information, which I have no proof that happens, but it certainly scares you as a coach.”
The issue comes into when outside individuals try to collect any information they can about certain players, and their injury status.
“You worry about pitfalls, you worry about where your kids can make mistakes,” Smart said. “That’s an area that’s really hard to police for us as coaches, because outside of this building, what they come in contact with, what information they may or may not share is scary.”
Smart said he favors a uniform policy, and often defers to SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey because the league office looks at issues like this from a 10,000-foot view.
“I don’t have a whole lot to hide, if you want to ask me about it, I’ll tell you,” Smart said. “I can never say sometimes whether they’re going to play in the game or not, because I don’t know. I don’t know until right up until the game sometimes because we’re trying to make every player available that we can and we don’t know the most accurate information. A standard reporting procedure would probably make it better.”
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
