The Real Scandals of College Football Part 3
The Reality of Medical Interference
This is a free online newsletter for Jason Stahl, Executive Director of the College Football Players Association (CFBPA). If you are a past, present or future college football player, I ask that you consider becoming a member of the CFBPA. For a short YouTube introduction on the CFBPA, click here. Members of the general public who would like to support the CFBPA can donate at this link or volunteer at this link.
We’re now wrapping up the college football season with the national championship game set to be played this coming Monday. This seems like a good time to wrap up my newsletter series, “The Real Scandals of College Football.” As a reminder, this series has taken a look at key issues pertaining to the health, safety and welfare of college football players. In particular, I’ve tried to focus on issues which reframe how we think of “scandals” in college football. Within the insider world of college football, “scandal stories” are rarely related to the health and safety concerns of college football players and are instead about other less consequential matters. So, for instance, during the 2023 season there were infinite stories about sign-stealing scandals but few about football player deaths (the subject of my first newsletter in this series) or about the use of the transfer portal by coaches who wanted to get rid of injured players (the subject of my second newsletter in this series).
Another true scandal which rarely gets discussed in the mainstream college football press is the issue of medical interference. Medical interference involves coaches disrupting a player’s independent medical care—usually in an effort to get them to return to play before fully healed. This problem is truly of a scandalous nature. For instance, a 2019 report from the National Athletic Trainers’ Association indicated that 36% of athletic trainers reported that coaches influenced the hiring and firing process for sports medicine staff. Such influence is usually done so a coach can secure a medical staff which will yield to the coaches’ decisions regarding medical care.
I saw this exact dynamic in my career at the University of Minnesota when I advocated for players as a faculty member. A new head coach pushed out medical staff that were providing truly independent medical care and hired staff who would be willing to “rush guys back.” However, would it surprise you to know that there is an even more high-profile example of this problem among the final four teams vying for the college football national championship?
Some readers of this newsletter may know I’m talking about Penn State University football under their head coach James Franklin. However, this may come as a surprise to readers as the issue has received strikingly little coverage. For those who don’t know, this past summer Dr. Scott Lynch, the former head doctor for the Penn State football team, won a jury trial in Pennsylvania against his employer Penn State Health. The jury awarded Dr. Lynch $5.25 million finding that he had been fired “in retaliation for complaining about head football coach James Franklin interfering with medical treatment and return-to-play decisions.” The suit also alleges that former Athletic Director Sandy Barbour acted as an enabler for Coach Franklin in these actions and in hiring medical staff which would be more easily influenced by the football coaching staff. Penn State Health has appealed the decision.
For those who read the preceding paragraph and have no idea what I’m talking about, it is worth asking why. This is even more strange when you consider that Penn State just played in three college football playoff games and I didn’t hear one announcer address that the head coach of the team was implicated heavily in a court case involving such a serious issue. Moreover, there has been no investigation by the NCAA or by the Big Ten Conference. In other words, all of these institutions: the NCAA, the Big Ten Conference, the College Football Playoffs and most of the college football media don’t consider this case scandalous enough to even talk about.
I’ll leave all of these institutions and the individuals within them to speak for themselves about why they don’t care about the issue enough to even discuss it—much less investigate it or level penalties for the wrongdoing. At the CFBPA we obviously do care about the issue as it is addressed in the first plank in our organizing Platform for Change: guaranteed independent medical care enforced by a CFBPA-employed full-time employee representative. An independent players association is needed to enforce this platform plank because the NCAA and the Big Ten have completely abdicated the responsibility to provide for and enforce independent medical care for players.
As we hope to take up this role in the future, we’re proud to announce that Dr. Scott Lynch has now been added to our Board of Advisors. I’ve filmed a podcast with Dr. Lynch at our CFBPA Youtube channel which I urge you to watch. In it, we discuss how to best fix the problem of medical interference in college football and Dr. Lynch discusses how and why, to this day, no one from the NCAA or Big Ten has reached out to interview him about his case.
Also related to this case and to the issue of medical interference, I’ve released the CFBPA Alumni Member of the Month podcast for January 2025. In it, I interview former Penn State University football player Robert (Rob) Windsor. Rob provided key information on Dr. Lynch’s behalf in his case by detailing his own personal examples of medical interference by the Penn State football coaching staff. In my podcast with Rob, he discusses the evidence he provided in Dr. Lynch’s case and poignantly discusses what it’s like to live as a 28-year-old young man suffering from the injuries he sustained in college football. Additionally, Rob and I reflect back on the summer of 2022 when the CFBPA attempted to establish our first chapter at Penn State University. This really is an episode you don’t want to miss.
In the end, past, present and future college football players will need to come together if this problem will ever be fixed. If you fall into any of these categories and wish to make positive change in the game, I urge you to become a member today.