COLUMBUS, Ohio – While Michigan football coach Brady Hoke gets the dreaded “vote of confidence,” the university’s athletic department will start using a new system to prevent a repeat of last week’s situation where an injured player was allowed to return to the game.
Wolverines athletic director Dave Brandon says he prefers to wait until the end of the season before evaluating his coaches, suggesting Hoke is safe for now at the helm of the school’s storied football program.
Coaches deserve “every opportunity” to compete through the season, and that all 31 of the school’s coaches are then evaluated — with football being no different, Brandon said.
Hoke and Brandon have both received criticism for the handling of injured quarterback Shane Morris in last week’s loss to Minnesota not to mention the team’s 2-3 record and disappointing ticket sales.
In the wake of the Morris injury, Brandon says, starting with Saturday’s game against Rutgers, a certified athletic trainer will be in the press box to better spot possible injuries and communicated with staff on the sideline via two-way radio communications.
“We place the utmost importance on the safety and welfare of our student-athletes. Our system failed quarterback Shane Morris last week. We never want that to happen again for a student-athlete. We are confident in the new measures,.” Said Darryl Conway, associate athletic director for student-athlete health and welfare, who developed the system in collaboration with the team’s training staff and team physicians from the U-M Health System.
The trainer in the press box will have a full view of the field and access to the TV video feed to spot injured players. In addition to the traditional system of using hand signals, the press box trainer will use two-way radios to communicate immediately and directly with medical staff on the sideline, Conway said. Hard-line phones will be used as needed and cell phones will serve as backup, he said.
Once the decision has been made to take a player out of the game, Conways says a member of the medical team will take the player’s helmet.
Hoke and Brandon came under criticism this week after Morris returned to the game even though he had suffered what was later diagnosed as a probably concussion during a hard hit in the fourth quarter.