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Friday, April 11, 2008
Player’s death becomes controversial for UCF, O’Leary
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Former Georgia Tech football coach George O’Leary is once again in the middle of a controversy, this time over the workout his Central Florida team went through before the death of a player.
Let me preface this by saying what we don’t know is still much more extensive than what we do know. The autopsy results aren’t in. But O’Leary’s credibility is being called into question with a story in the Orlando Sentinel with four players saying the workout was far more intense than O’Leary and his staff have said and that the player showed signs of distress. O’Leary, the players said, cursed at the player for lack of effort.
Here’s the link.
The story raised some questions for me:
—How much is too much?
—Is there a danger when people glorify the toughness of conditioning drills? How far do we as a society encourage coaches to go in pursuit of “winning the fourth quarter” and outworking the opposition?
—Is this death a fluke occurrence, or something that was preventable?
I’m curious what you think. And I’m also curious what it’s like to be a coach or the team’s medical staff who have had a player die in this way. I doubt, in our litigious society, they would be at liberty to be open on the subject. But wouldn’t it gnaw at you?
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