Oddsmakers and fans alike can parse reams of statistics for Monday’s football championship between the University of Georgia Bulldogs and the Alabama Crimson Tide.
But one on-the-field stat that neither team has revealed is the number of concussions sustained by its student athletes.
The AJC sought concussion data from 62 Division I, II and III and found that about 1 in 6 athletic programs do not count student-athlete concussions by sport, even though such data collection could lead to better safety protocols for their athletes.
UGA said they kept concussion numbers for a time as part of a grant proposal, but stopped five years ago. Alabama said they kept the data — but declined to release it.
Read more about concussions in college athletics, and the steps some schools are taking to minimize concussion-related injuries on myAJC.com.
