EDITORIAL: Mich. Football Fails Student-Athletes in Winning as Surely as it Does in Losing

LOCAL AND DETROIT media touted U-M football quarterback Devin Gardner’s “toughness” as he played with an ankle injury in last Saturday’s victory over Penn State. Gardner, like Shane Morris, didn’t want to come out of the game. Gardner, like Shane Morris, ended up absorbing crushing tackles for the simple reason that, injured, he couldn’t scramble to avoid them. The only difference is that Morris took a helmet-to-helmet hit and Devin Gardner was lucky enough not to have done so. Thank goodness.

Once again, Coach Brady Hoke did not put the health and safety of students before other concerns—including his own job and a multi-million dollar salary. The media paint a compelling portrait of this instance of student-athlete exploitation—that Gardner could not be kept out of the game. The fifth year senior insisted on going back in at quarterback despite being unable to dodge brutal tackles. He was desperate, a fighter.

This is exactly why there are coaches, trainers and physicians who are paid very well to make that decision. A college player in the midst of a game isn’t in the position to decide whether one injury could put him in danger of another injury. Judging from what happened at the Penn State game, at the University of Michigan the football coaches,  trainers and medical doctors employed by the program aren’t able to make that decision, either.

What sports writers howled about two weeks ago as callousness and gross negligence on the part of Hoke and his staff in putting an injured quarterback into the game, is this week portrayed as bravery on the part of Gardner in the face of pain and danger. The hypocrisy is stunning not only on the part of University of Michigan’s football coach and his staff, but the media, as well. The Michigan Daily, which only weeks ago editorialized about the “exploitation of Shane Morris,” touted Gardner for “saving the night.” Student journalists who covered the 1,000-student protest march in response to the exploitation of Shane Morris, shamelessly neglected to draw an analogy between both injured players.

Devin Gardner was shamelessly exploited by men earning six and seven-figure salaries just as was Shane Morris. In the face of his college’s football program putting another student deliberately in harm’s way, President Schlissel, a medical doctor, has made no public statement. His silence is as inexcusable as Coach Hoke’s  continued irresponsibility toward student health and safety.