Report: Big Ten Conference expected to require player-availability reports for football games

The Big Ten is reportedly considering a major move to how injuries and availability for football players is reported. The league is considering requiring player-availability reports to be released prior to kickoff for league games, Andy Greder of the Pioneer Press reported.

The move, which is still being considered by the Big Ten and has not been enacted, is popular behind-the-scenes, according to The Action Network’s Brett McMurphy. He added that the measure is expected to be approved.

“I’d be shocked if it didn’t pass,” one source said to McMurphy.

McMurphy added that the reports would be required for conference games and would be released two hours prior to kickoff of their respective games.

While these reports wouldn’t be as frequent as NFL injury reports — which come out throughout the week — it’d be a major step forward for a college conference in terms of transparency and clarity around player health and availability on game day. It’s unclear how in-depth the reports would be beyond a basic available/unavailable designation.

With Nebraska and Minnesota slated for a conference matchup to open their respective seasons on Aug. 31, the league doesn’t have a long runway to approve and institute the policy. Ohio State and Indiana play each other just two days later on the Saturday of Week 1.

The Big Ten would be following in LSU’s footsteps in offering basic injury or availability reports

LSU made a bit of ripple early in the offseason when news broke that the Tigers would be releasing NFL-style injury reports twice a week leading into games and an available/unavailable list on game days. Head coach Brian Kelly explained the impetus for the decision.

It mostly centers around the proliferation of sports gambling, which has recently caused a number of scandals at various college athletic departments. Kelly doesn’t want there to be any pressure or ambiguity around the players on his roster each week.

“We thought it was important, given the nature of what is going on today out there relative to reporting and gaming that we wanted to make sure that we were transparent with injuries, not putting any pressure on anybody here to guess who’s in, who’s out,” Kelly said. “So we came up with a protocol and procedure that’s similar to what the NFL does relative to reporting injuries. So we’ll do that twice during the week so you’ll have a good sense who’s in what state and then, you know, we get to Saturday if somebody was doubtful, we’ll give you available or unavailable.”

Kelly added the only exception would be a player getting sick, but he intimated that were that to happen the coaching staff would be forthright that an illness was keeping a player out.