Much Has Changed Since "Meat on the Hoof" Rocked College Sports
In 1972, former Texas Longhorn football student-athlete Gary Shaw published a book titled "Meat on the Hoof: The Hidden World of Texas Football" that chronicled his experiences at the University of Texas at Austin in the mid-1960s. In what is still considered by some to be one of the most controversial sports books of all time, Shaw depicted a world of inadequate medical attention, hazardous practice drills that were intended to injure, and a questionable academic support system, and he expressed extreme dissatisfaction with his coaches and life as a football student-athlete. Although it was discouraging to read Shaw’s account of his student-athlete experience, I was heartened by the progress that intercollegiate athletics has made in the half century since Shaw was a student-athlete.
I am a firm believer in the value of the student-athlete experience and an advocate for continuously improving it. As a faculty member at the University of Iowa, I have taught dozens of student-athletes over the years, and I serve on the campus advisory committee to the Athletics Director and university President. Prior to beginning my academic career, I worked for the NCAA. On the 45th anniversary of the release of "Meat on the Hoof", it is important to consider how the student-athlete experience has improved since Gary Shaw played. Three key areas to consider that Shaw was critical of in his book are academic services, sports medicine and player safety.
Academic Services
Although Shaw disparaged the support provided to the football team by academic advisor Lan Hewlett, credit must be given to the Longhorns for being the first program in the country to establish an academic staff position. The academic services function in intercollegiate athletics was in its infancy under Hewlett, and it has undergone significant expansion in the past 50 years as the NCAA and member schools have invested heavily in enhancing the academic experiences and outcomes of student-athletes.
The Student-Athlete Academic Services (SAAS) staff at the University of Iowa, for example, is an 11-person unit led by Dr. Elizabeth Tovar, who holds a Ph.D. in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology. The SAAS staff regularly contacts me during the semester for reports on all student-athletes in my courses so they can plan appropriate interventions to help student-athletes achieve their full academic potential. My wife, who holds a Master’s degree in Experimental Psychology and Bachelor’s degree in Education, works part time as one of the dozens of highly qualified tutors that SAAS employs to assist student-athletes in need of additional instruction in specific courses. All student-athletes, even those not receiving a scholarship, are eligible for the free tutoring services that would cost non-athlete students hundreds of dollars each semester.
In his book, Shaw described study halls held on the third floor of the English building on the Texas campus. Today, athletics departments dedicate entire buildings to the delivery of academic services. The University of Iowa has a 28,000 square foot Athletic Learning Center with computers, meeting rooms for group project work, a snack station and other resources to support optimal performance, and the building is scheduled to be improved with a $6.3 million renovation despite being only 14 years old.
The SAAS staff focuses on much more than simply keeping student-athletes academically eligible to play their sports. For example, each year SAAS organizes a graduate school symposium, which I attend, so current student-athletes can conveniently explore various graduate programs and hear from a panel of former student-athletes now in graduate school.
The University of Iowa's efforts in SAAS have led to a record 90% graduation success rate by Iowa scholarship student-athletes. Iowa’s SAAS program is just one example of what is now standard at Division I institutions. To help ensure that all schools can pay for expenses such as tutoring, equipment and personnel, the NCAA distributes more than $26 million annually to Division I institutions for the enhancement of academic support programs. Such services help thousands of student-athletes across the country attain the valuable education they went to school for so they can graduate and conquer their goals beyond the playing field. The bottom line is that student-athletes today have academic opportunities and support available to them that far exceed anything Gary Shaw experienced during his playing days in the 1960s.
Sports Medicine
In "Meat on the Hoof", Shaw described instances when the athletic trainer denied student-athletes permission to see a team physician for what later turned out to be serious injuries. According to Shaw, this was usually a problem for players who were low on the depth chart because the coaches placed less value on them.
The withholding of medical services as alleged by Shaw would be deplorable, but this is another area of the student-athlete experience that is dramatically different today than what Shaw described in his book. A more holistic approach to the delivery of sports medicine services has evolved over the years. Team physicians, athletic trainers, physical therapists and strength and conditioning coaches work collaboratively as a single sports medicine unit to make decisions together on student-athlete health, treatment and recovery outside of any silos that may have existed in the past.
It is safe to say that student-athletes at many Division I athletics programs receive better medical services than the general population, thanks in part to highly ranked university hospitals that are on the sports medicine team at many institutions. The University of Iowa, for example, is home to a teaching hospital that provides the top health care in the region. Our student-athletes have convenient access to specialized care that thousands of patients travel hours to receive. The orthopedics clinic, among the top 20 nationally, is next door to several athletics facilities on campus. Student-athletes are evaluated by distinguished physicians and scheduled for therapy and surgery with ease, regardless of their contributions on the playing field.
Perhaps Shaw's disturbing allegations 45 years ago caused programs around the country to evaluate sports medicine services and led to advances in this area. Fortunately, the culture in college sports medicine today is best exemplified by the University of Southern California's Athletic Medicine mission statement: "The mission statement of the Department of Athletic Medicine is to create a fair environment for all student-athletes at the University of Southern California to access the best possible health care for sports related injuries. Our objective is to address the health care needs of each individual athlete both physical and mental."
Player Safety
In "Meat on the Hoof", Shaw described alarming practice drills that student-athletes were allegedly sent through if the coaching staff wanted to run them off the team. The drills, as described, involved violent collisions that resulted in numerous injuries. Thankfully, the culture of college sports as it relates to player safety has come a long way in the past half century, with schools and the NCAA continually seeking better methods for protecting participants as more is learned about the risks associated with contact sports.
The most publicized player safety issues in recent years relate to concussions. The NCAA, conferences and schools have committed millions of dollars to the study of concussions and developed playing and practice rules to help reduce their occurrence. Among a list of many initiatives in this area are:
Football kickoff rules were changed to create more touchbacks and reduce the number of times during games that players would be exposed to the threat of high-speed collisions that are most common during kickoffs.
The NCAA and some conferences have adopted guidelines and rules to reduce contact during practices in football and other sports.
The NCAA and the U.S. Department of Defense launched the most comprehensive study of concussions ever conducted, including $30 million in total funding, with a goal of more accurately diagnosing, treating and preventing concussions.
College football games now include medical observers in the press boxes who watch from above for possible undetected concussions and neck injuries with the help of video replay. These observers have the authority to stop a game and remove a player for medical evaluation.
The NCAA established a Sport Science Institute and hired its first-ever Chief Medical Officer.
Many college football programs are using helmet sensors to monitor the accumulation and severity of head impacts during practices and games.
The NCAA is, of course, also addressing player health and safety concerns beyond concussions. Examples of other initiatives among many intended to further protect student-athletes include rules and guidelines to reduce the potentially fatal risks of over exertion during practice and competition, and NCAA funding of the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research, as well as funding for substance abuse prevention and health promotion programming.
Beyond rules and research, an important factor in the college sports culture change has been the increased authority that medical professionals now have on college sidelines compared to when Shaw played. As Dr. Andrew Peterson, a member of the University of Iowa sports medicine staff and founder of the university’s concussion clinic, recently told the athletics advisory group of which I am a member, “If we need to remove someone from play, we remove them from play, and if I take a little bit of heat from the media or someone anonymous on a blog, I don’t care at all.”
Final Thoughts
According to "Meat on the Hoof", Gary Shaw’s student-athlete experience was, unfortunately, mostly negative. But I can confidently say that intercollegiate athletics today is much improved, and the benefits received by student-athletes and the systems in place to enhance the student-athlete experience have never been better.
The University of Iowa Presidential Committee on Athletics, on which I serve, oversees many concerns raised by Shaw 45 years ago. The committee monitors and helps set policies in areas related to student-athlete well-being, academics and equity, and the student-athlete voice is heard with current and former student-athlete representatives at our committee meetings. The committee’s mission is to help ensure that current student-athletes never experience anything like what Shaw described in his book.
Similar efforts and systems are in place throughout intercollegiate athletics. As an example, the NCAA Student-Athlete Experience Committee has collected survey responses on student-athlete time demands from nearly 50,000 coaches, administrators and student-athletes. This feedback was used to develop NCAA rule proposals that are intended to better balance the demands of academics, competition, practice and travel and provide student-athletes time to pursue such opportunities as studying abroad and internships. These proposals will be voted on during the upcoming NCAA convention.
Finally, in evaluating whether today's student-athletes receive enough in return for the time and energy they put into their sports, consider the following information. One of my students, a scholarship athlete in a women’s “non-revenue” sport, recently wrote a paper on why student-athletes should not be paid. In defense of her position, she carefully considered everything she was personally receiving as a student-athlete and the dollar amount associated with each benefit. After counting up out-of-state tuition, living expenses, academic support, travel, health insurance, facility access, coaching and more, she calculated the value of her being a student-athlete at slightly over $100,000 per year.
Annual tax-free benefits of $100,000 from 18-22 years of age, the opportunity to play the sport one loves for four years at a high level and a diploma that research has shown is worth up to $1 million in lifetime earnings – while I am disappointed that Gary Shaw’s student-athlete experience in the 1960s fell far short of his expectations, I am pleased to report that there has never been a better time than the present to be an NCAA student-athlete.